Hum Hallelujah

The only thing worse for you than you is me.

It’s almost midnight, but you know your parents are still awake. You can hear your mother, furiously typing nonsense on her laptop, and the crackle of your father’s newspaper as he turns the pages, skimming through the stories. But this is just a façade. You know enough to be disillusioned. Your mother is online, speaking to the man she frequently has cyber sex with, and your father is searching for the adverts for shameless phone sex numbers. So you wait a little bit longer, cry a little bit more.

You were so afraid it would come to this. You’ve spent so long weighing the pros and cons of breathing. But now you barely feel a thing. You pick up your phone, blindly pressing buttons through a haze of tears. Moments later, my phone buzzes on the table beside me. It’s a message. From you.

“Have you ever wanted to disappear?”

It’s one in the morning. And it’s time. You grab your car keys and a piece of paper. You won’t need much. As you close the front door behind you, you realise you’re not even wearing shoes. The cold air infects you, creeping into every hole it can. And then you’re in your car, and it smells stale and worn out. It smells exactly the same as how you feel.

You start driving, and rain begins to fall. You’re as bitter as the weather. As you turn sharp corners and speed through red lights, you think of the first night you and I spent together. Shaking hands travelled over milky thighs, and soft lips found new spots to rest on. You were so beautiful that night.

Sometimes we take chances, sometimes we take pills.

You find an empty parking lot a few miles from your house and you stop there. You’re dreading what you have to do next, but you know it will be alright. You’ve already given up on yourself twice; third time is the charm. You reach into your pocket and pull out the bottle of Ativan you’ve been keeping in there for weeks. You hate dry-swallowing pills, but it hadn’t occurred to you to bring a bottle of water. You turn on the radio, and it’s playing Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah. You put a pill in your mouth. Swallow. Sob. Repeat.

You empty the bottle and throw it out of the window, into the steady sheet of rain that’s now falling. Your phone starts to vibrate on the chair. It’s been riding shotgun this whole time. You pick it up and answer it. Because it’s me.

“Where are you?” My voice leaks out into the empty space in the car.

“In my car. I don’t know where and I can’t remember why.” You’re slurring your words and sobbing.

“What’s wrong? What have you done?”

“I took some pills.”

“Again? Why? How many?”

“Seasons change. People don’t. I’m sorry.”

And then I hang up. You cry harder, thinking I don’t care. I’m grabbing my keys and running to my car. I drive around, trying to forget everything that isn’t you. I’m trying to work out where you could be. I think about your favourite places. And then your least favourite places. I speed past your house. All the lights are off. As I drive along, I pass a parking lot. It’s nearly empty, except for one car. Your car. I turn in, almost crashing into you. I wrench open my door and then wrench open yours. Pulling you out of the driver’s seat and onto the concrete, I see that there’s a phone in one of your hands and a piece of paper in the other.

Your eyes are closed and your lips are lined with blood. And you’re cold. The rain batters down on us and I feel for a pulse. But there’s nothing. I take the piece of paper out of your hand. Something is scribbled on it, in your perfectly imperfect handwriting.

“You can only blame your problems on the world for so long.”

We sit there together for a long time, and I can’t even cry. The sun starts climbing in the sky. Cars rumble past and birds start singing, but the world feels so silent. I can see someone walking towards us. For the first time, I look at your face. I really look at it. And you’re smiling.

You were the last good thing about this part of town.