After You

Jess

Alfie,

I already knew that English class would be a disaster. I thought I'd be the one creating the drama, so I was actually kind of pleasantly surprised when it turned out that Max had written some sort of declaration of love for you and showed it to Jacob. It gave me a chance to dispose of the letter I wrote, at least. I got a detention for not submitting any work, but that was better than the alternative. Spending the rest of my life in that bereavement counsellor's little Cupboard of Condescension? I'm good, thanks.

I thought that if I handed the letter in for Mrs Newton to mark, I could try and bluff that it was a creative writing exercise. I'd tell her there was no-one I felt the need to confess anything to, so I decided to create a fictional situation and borrowed your name. It sounds far-fetched, but I think I had a 50/50 chance of it working on Mrs Newton. She's always been nice without prying too much, so I could probably have trusted her.

When she told us they were being peer-marked, I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable. When she paired me up with Laura "Trigger Warning" Nuffield, I knew I had to get rid of it. She wouldn't be worried about my mental state after reading the letter. She'd just scream at me for finding fifty different ways to trigger her. I still remember her legendary rant about To Kill A Mockingbird's lack of trigger warnings – not for the racism or the rape, but for the mention of birds. It showed the author's "shocking lack of respect for readers with ornithophobia". I seem to remember she didn't take too kindly to you pointing out that the sort of idiot with a fear of birds who'd read a book called To Kill A Mockingbird actively deserved to be triggered. I miss you.

I'm going off on a tangent, sorry. Anyway, I made the most of the distraction while Laura Nuffield tried not to cry – I didn't bother asking what she was crying at; probably the injustice of scrunching up paper or something – and slipped my letter back into my bag. When it all calmed down and she asked me where my assignment was, I shrugged and told her I didn't do it. Of course, she told Mrs Newton straight away, and spent the rest of the lesson silently cursing me for goodness-knows-what, but I didn't care. It was worth the detention to not have her read my suicide note.

Writing a suicide note for an English assignment was probably asking for trouble, in hindsight, but it made sense to me. You're the only person I can imagine leaving a note for, and Mrs Newton seemed like the only rational person to leave it with. She wouldn't get a chance to read it until at least later that evening, by which point – with any luck – it would already be done.

So, why am I still alive to write this letter now, rather than chilling with Jesus and you in whatever afterlife we're going to end up in? Well, I went home and got really drunk and a little bit high, which seemed like a bad idea at the time, but probably saved my life. Then I realised that I was vaguely interested in seeing the outcome of the drama between Max and Jacob, so maybe I should hang around a little longer. I sound like a vulture, but Max impressed me with the "don't-give-a-shit"ness it must have taken to give gay fanfiction to the dead subject's twin brother, and I wanted to see what Jacob would do.

I think it's fair to say my life has taken a bit of a downwards turn since you died.

Oh, and my parents still don't seem to register my existence. They aren't sobbing over you all the time, which I can only assume means that they've decided they hate me. I think Mum and I have had one conversation that doesn't involve screaming in the last month, which is progress, but it's still not anything remotely resembling a functional family, is it? I can't believe I missed the deadline for university. Another year in their clutches, except I won't have school to escape to. I wonder if there are any companies just itching to hire an unqualified, depressed eighteen-year-old who writes letters to her dead best friend?

We're now four days on from Suicide Note Day, and I've seen the outcome – Jacob is a criminal and Max has a fucked-up face – and yet I'm still here. Do you think I've discovered a new zest for life, Alfie? Do you think that seeing the blood spurt from Max's nose reminded me of how wonderful it is to be alive? Or that Jacob's vim and vigour as he pounded his fists into every bit of Max he could find motivated me to find the energy to carry on?

That was completely rhetorical and facetious, and you're dead, so don't feel the need to respond.

When the news came out that you'd killed yourself, rather than dying in your sleep or some tragic accident, my immediate thought was "what a coward". I was furious at you for taking the easy way out and killing yourself, rather than facing up to whatever problems you were dealing with. You went down so much in my estimation, because I thought you were a chicken. If you were brave, you would have spoken to us about what you were going through and allowed us to help you through it.

I had everything ready. I had a plan and everything. Do you know what stopped me?

Fear. I suddenly realised that I was terrified of dying. I was terrified of passing the point of no return, something that's plagued my thoughts since August. I've been wondering if there was a point of no return for you; a moment when you realised that what you'd done couldn't be stopped or fixIed, and you were going to die. Did it sink in then? Were you scared or happy or just accepting of reality? Did you panic, or did you accept it calmly?

I'm not going to validate what you did by saying that suicide is brave or clever. It isn't. It's stupid and it's made everyone sad and now Jacob has been arrested for hate crimes, Max has a broken face and Finn and Willow won't keep their hands off each other and I want to die, so that's what suicide has done, but maybe it wasn't cowardly. Fear stopped me from doing it. If you were afraid, you wouldn't have done it.

Fuck, I wish you didn't do it. I wish you'd said something. Maybe you're in a better place now, but the rest of us aren't. It's like some kind of nuclear bomb. Yeah, it was over instantly for you. You were the lucky one. We're the ones currently trying to survive some kind of nuclear winter where everything is going to shit.

Thanks, Alfie.

Jess