The In Between

Chapter one

• I Get Yeeted Off A Cliff • 

Ricky

 •  October 25th •

'I want to die,' is such a common term that it's hard to believe that the speaker actually wants to die. They don't. Except for James. James does want to die. He did die. He is dead. 

I was sitting after school beside the road near a cliff, with some of my friends, which isn't that smart, because my friends aren't smart, and they might run into the road or jump off the cliff at any time. 

Josh laughed. 

"Remember that kid who went to our school? The gay one? The gay one that died? You remember? Guys? You remember?" Michael was quiet. He didn't remember. 

"Yeah, that one. Can you believe he killed himself?" They laughed, but I didn't find it funny. 

I hadn't seen James at school in a while. I got worried. It shouldn't have mattered to me because I wasn't his friend. But it did. James was smart. Like, really smart, which was why it was weird he wasn't there. My friends are idiots so I didn't ask them. 

I got home one day, and walked to the kitchen.

"Hey mom, I haven't seen this guy at school for a while and I found it kind of weird. His name is James, Do you happen to know anything about it? I mean I don't think you do but if you do--"  I got a glass out of the cupboard and started pouring some orange juice into it.

Her smile quickly turned into a frown. Uh oh. 

"You might want to sit down for this." I paused.

"Why?" I sat down across from her, my half empty cup of orange juice trembling a bit in my hand. Please don't be—

"He passed, sweetheart," --dead.

"He— he what?"

"Oh, honey, his mother is heartbroken. She says he overdosed on painkillers after he had gotten into a fight one night."

"He-- when?"

"Only about two weeks ago, i didn't want to tell you--"

I didn't hear the rest of the sentence. I was too busy connecting the dots. That was around the same time I had stopped seeing James, which was also coincidentally around the same time Josh had told me about him, Michael and Mark beating up James. He didn't really commit suicide, it was technically an accident, but my friends had kind of caused him to die. My friends were murderers. Sort of.

"The power of the gay killed him." I would have laughed if that was funny. 

"What a fa-" Josh started. 

"Stop!" I had had enough. 

"-g," he finished, looking smug.

"Stop!" I stood up. "We get it. It's 'funny' but he's dead now and he honestly doesn't deserve this, so can you just, shut up!? For like, a minute about him!?"

Josh smirked and stood up, probably trying to get his eyes level with mine, but it probably would have been more accurate if he was sitting down. "Well look who's getting protective." 

"Not protective," I said, "just calling out some dumb people," Josh's smile turned grim.

I punched him in the nose. He smiled. It was at that moment I knew I messed up. Badly. I didn't think it was a good thing that he was smiling after I caused him to bleed, so I ran. I didn't manage to escape. Josh, Michael and Mark cornered me. I had two choices; 1. Get into a fight with 3 boys twice my size, or 2. Jump off the cliff.