The Haven Project

Chapter 3

        Eight years after that fateful day, I haven't changed much.  I still have short brown hair and hazel eyes.  Luckily, two years of braces has straightened my crooked teeth, and I have grown to about five-eight.  Even though I have straight teeth, my smile still feels awkward.

        Ever since the day my parents died, life has been rough.  I have been in and out of foster homes, always running away and trying to escape to live on my own.  The police eventually find me and drag me back, so now I reside in St. Christine's Orphanage.  In school, I am the butt of every joke.  School bullies shove me into lockers or throw food at me in the cafeteria.  Teachers look down on me as if I somehow wronged each and every one of them in some unforgivable way.  I feel like a ghost who was damned to endlessly roam these halls in habitual torture.  The only thing that keeps me rooted to life is my girlfriend, Sydney.

        Sydney is fairly tall, almost as tall as me.  She has long brown hair and big brown eyes.  Her smile can light up an entire ballroom with its brilliance.  She is basically my everything, and she is the only reason I am still on this earth.

        Two years ago I hit my rock bottom.  My dreams were becoming more disturbing with each restless nights sleep.  I gave up and planned to kill myself.  I took a rope from the tool shed at the orphanage and walked out into my favorite field.  The grass was tall and golden in late autumn, and the air was crisp and refreshing.  I walked half a mile to a huge oak tree that watched over the field.  Its branches reached higher than I ever dared to climb, and I often spent my nights letting its natural curves cradle my body until I fall asleep.  This evening was different.

        I climbed up about thirty feet, just to where the branches swayed with the gentle breeze.  I looped the rope and tied it around a branch.  The noose fit tightly around my neck as I put it in place.  I was just about to let my body drop when I heard a soft whimpering from below.  I looked down and saw a pretty girl crying into her arm on a lower branch.  She hadn't seen me yet, and I pulled my neck loose and began to climb down.

        When I was just above her, she turned around.  She didn't say anything, just stared at this strange boy who emerged from a tree.  After a few minutes of awkward silence, I decided to introduce myself.

        "Hi, I'm Bryson.  What's your name?"

        Nothing. She just sat as if I hadn't said anything at all.

        "Are you from the orphanage?" I asked.

        Still no reply.

        I just about gave up and started climbing back up the tree when she finally spoke.

        "I came here to kill myself," she said softly.

        "Why would someone as pretty as you want to do that?"

        "I'm tired of living, if that's what you could even call it.  No one loves me enough to care if I'm alive or dead.  I was going to climb up this tree and let myself fall from the top."

        "I was going to kill myself too," I responded.  I pointed to the rope that dangled from the branch above.  She didn't seem at all fazed by the fact that she just ran into another suicidal kid.  In fact, hearing this almost seemed to cheer her up.

        "You know," she said, "we could just leave now and no one would know what we were going to do.  We could get some ice cream or something?"

        "That sounds great, but I've only just met you.  Heck, I don't even know your name."

        "Sydney. My name is Sydney, and I think we just saved each others lives."