Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(51)
HARBINGER JONES
“Mom?” I asked again, totally unable to keep the fear out of my voice. She regained enough composure to pull away from me and start over.
“Mrs. McKenna called. . . . Oh, fuck, I don’t know how to say this.”
My mom never cursed.
CHEYENNE BELLE
Harry’s mom never cursed.
“It’s Johnny,” she said, choking on his name. She took a deep breath, put her hands at her sides, palms down, like she was trying to steady herself, and started again. “I’m so sorry, kids. Johnny is gone.”
At first, I didn’t know what she meant. Gone where? He’s not coming to rehearsal? Then my brain caught up.
“Gone?”
The word was a sucker punch to my gut. All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe.
I tried to will the universe into having Johnny just be gone from this house, gone from Yonkers, gone from the Scar Boys, even gone from my life, but not gone from the world. Johnny couldn’t be gone like that. He was one of the things that made the world real, like air. Johnny was air for me, oxygen. Even though we hadn’t really talked in months, he’d still been there. Johnny was gone and I couldn’t breathe. There was no air.
RICHIE MCGILL
“How?” I asked. I mean, shit. I knew the answer. We all knew the fucking answer. But the whole scene was kind of like a car wreck. I couldn’t stop looking and couldn’t help myself from asking how.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I’d already forgotten Richie was in the room. I’d forgotten anyone was in the room except for me and Harry’s mom. I craned my head to look at Richie, and his eyes were wet. I looked back to Mrs. Jones, waiting for her to say what I already knew.
HARBINGER JONES
Everything came crashing to the fore like a tidal wave—that lost look Johnny had in his eyes all the time, that little black book he’d started carrying around, the way he was letting himself go. All the clues were there for anyone who bothered to look.
My mom sighed. It was almost a moan. “I’m so, so sorry. Johnny took his own life.” Her voice croaked, and she started crying again.
CHEYENNE BELLE
All I could think about was my phone call with Johnny the night before. I could have stopped this. Oh, my fucking God, I could have stopped it.
The room started spinning, and without realizing how or why, I was on the ground.
RICHIE MCGILL
Chey fell to the floor. It was like the weight of it made her sit down hard on her ass. She landed with a thud. Everything was happening in slow motion.
HARBINGER JONES
A million thoughts about Johnny tried to push their way through to the surface: My confusion at how he could do such a thing. My morbid curiosity about how he did it. Was it pills? A gun? A rope? My wondering if he’d left a note, because that’s what people who commit suicide are supposed to do. My anger at him for leaving without talking to me first. My anger at myself for not trying harder to talk to him. My heart breaking for his older brother, Russell, who loved Johnny so much. My own thoughts about suicide and how many times over the years, when I was younger and things were really bad for me, I wondered what it would be like and if it would make everything better. My wondering if it made things better for Johnny and then my hating myself for thinking that.
My endless lists of useless facts tried to come crashing in, too. Presidents and Oscar winners and SAT vocabulary words getting jumbled together and trying to drown out the screaming noise of the universe. All of the signal being replaced by noise, nothing but noise.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I screamed.
A bomb had been shoved down my throat and had exploded all of my insides. It made me break into a thousand pieces, all of them sharp and jagged. I was Humpty Dumpty and I was made of glass.
I could see a kind of swirling vortex opening up in front of me. It was black and gray, with flashes of lightning. It was filled with pain and misery, and it was where I wanted to be. All I wanted to do right then was follow Johnny and our baby into oblivion.
Every inch of me hurt, inside and out. From the soles of my feet to the hair on my head, I was a pulsing knot of hurt. I’d never known such pain. This was the miscarriage times a million. Times infinity.
HARBINGER JONES
Cheyenne’s scream ripped a hole in me. It ripped a hole in the world.
I turned away from my mom, went to Chey, and knelt down beside her.
“Chey,” I said, but I don’t think she heard me.
“Chey.” A little louder, still nothing. I touched her gently on the shoulder.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I looked up, and Harry was standing next to me. I never saw him cross the room, but somehow his hand was on my shoulder. That black vortex of death was trying to suck me in and pull me away from all of this, and that was what I wanted. I wanted it so bad.
The alternative, to keep going, to face what had happened, to live knowing that Johnny’s suicide was all my fault, was more terrifying than oblivion. I was more afraid of living than of dying. Way more afraid. If I could just fall into the black hole, everything would be okay.