The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(83)

Chapter 33


Hanged

By Thanksgiving, it seemed like no one cared about Lizzie anymore. Not my family. Not the kids at school. Not the police or reporters. The mystery of her disappearance had been solved, and no one was interested in the mystery of her suicide.

Except for me. And, I assumed, Lizzie’s family. And probably Enzo. I thought about calling him to ask. I wanted to connect with someone else who was desperate for answers. She hadn’t left a suicide note. Did that mean her decision was spontaneous? Or did she just feel like she had nothing to say? In Lizzie’s mind, had she already tied up loose ends?

That’s what I thought about while the rest of my family enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner. My mom made a real turkey, which was how I knew she was still really worried about me. I wasn’t hungry though. I pushed my food around on my plate while everyone else acted as if everything were normal.

“I really appreciate you inviting me over,” Connor said to my mom.

“We wouldn’t have you eating Thanksgiving dinner on your own,” my mom said, making it clear that she disapproved of Connor’s parents going out of town without him. Despite her aversion to social conventions, my mom was really big on family holidays.

The rest of the conversation was boring. My dad kept saying how great everything tasted, and Rush shoveled turkey in his mouth like he thought my mom might snatch it away, shout, “Just kidding,” and run to get the Tofurky.

The whole holiday made me feel hateful. I wanted to throw my plate across the room just to get their attention. I wanted them to remember that Lizzie was dead, and turkey and forced conversation wouldn’t change that.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how Lizzie would have looked hanging in the woods. Did she even look like Lizzie anymore? I wanted to track down the hikers who found her so I could ask them exactly what it had been like to find her, but their names weren’t in the news. Probably so they wouldn’t have to talk to people like me.

“How’s your car been running?” my dad asked, trying to pull me into conversation.

“Fine.”

“No more issues?”

“Not really.”

I didn’t want to talk about my car. I wanted to talk about something that mattered, like why Lizzie chose to hang herself. It was supposed to be a really painful way to die. Since they’d found her, I’d done a lot of reading online. Had she done research too?

I couldn’t shake the idea that she could have changed her mind—but she didn’t. She made a decision and stuck with it. I guess she knew that if she could get through a bit more pain, then all the pain would end forever.

What if someone had stopped her? What if Enzo had woken up that night and followed her? Maybe Lizzie would have only put her suicide off until a later date. On the other hand, maybe he would have convinced her how much she had to live for. Not that Enzo was particularly great at dealing with tense situations.

What if I had been there? If I had just ten minutes with Lizzie, I could have told her how loved she was. That whatever she was going through would pass. That there was help out there, if only she was willing to ask for it. Lizzie would have probably looked at me and said, “Little Creely, you should take your own advice.”

“Why don’t we all say what we’re thankful for this year?” my mom suggested.

That pulled me out of my thoughts and made the rest of the table go silent.

“No one really wants to do that, Mom,” Rush said.

“Don’t be silly. It’ll be good for all of us.”

“What if we’re not thankful for anything?” I asked.

“Come on, Thorny,” Connor said, “It’s not all bad.”

“Lizzie Lovett is dead.”

“You hardly even knew her,” he replied.

I could feel my family go still, probably because they’d all been thinking it but hadn’t dared to say so.

“I wanted to know her though.”

“No, you didn’t,” Connor said. “You wanted to know the werewolf version of her.”

I looked around the table at my family. “I guess I’m thankful that someone I know will actually be blunt with me.”

“Is that what you want?” my mom asked.

It wasn’t about what I wanted. It was about what I deserved. But I didn’t know how to say that, so I went back to poking at my turkey and listening to my dad talk about how he was thankful for his family and that we were safe and healthy and happy—for the most part.

? ? ?

I’d thought doing research on suicide would make me feel better. That I’d find some answers or at least gain an understanding of what Lizzie was going through. But I’d read everything I could find about death by hanging and didn’t feel any closer to the truth. All I’d managed to do was fill my head with enough gruesome information to last a lifetime.

The worst thing I read was that when a person hangs themselves, they’re making a statement. It’s not fast or painless. It’s not a cry for help. They’re trying to punish themselves or the person who finds them.

I didn’t know if that was true, but it made me shudder. Why would Lizzie have wanted to punish herself? Why did she choose to end her life in such an agonizing way?

After Thanksgiving dinner, while my family and Connor were downstairs eating pumpkin pie, I hid in my room and thought about what it must be like to die, to make the decision to die, to know the exact time it was going to happen, to feel as if the pain of death didn’t compare to the pain of living.