Killing Jane

In a way, she was already dead.

Her eyes were downcast in English class that day. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her head mostly ducked. Occasionally she would look up and notice Frank was looking at her and give him a watery smile. She was usually ace at hiding her emotions but today something was off. It made Frank uneasy, enough to the point where he was tempted to ask the teacher if she could keep an eye on Jane for the rest of class, or at least move her somewhere so she wasn’t so close to the door.

“I think doors are the meaning of life,” Jane had told him long ago. Her lips had been pressed to his ear as she whispered these words so carefully to him. He had no clue what she was talking about and just nodded because he liked her close proximity and the way her hair tickled his cheek. He didn’t even hear her as she added, “There’s one way in, one way out, and I’m getting out, Frank.”

“Go on and leave,” he had urged without really thinking about his words. “Go find another door and conquer.”

She smiled against his skin and rested her head against his shoulder. “Thank you.”

Why had he encouraged her suicide?

The way her eyes lit up when the final bell rang made his skin crawl. It was like the starting gunshot at a race, and she was a little too eager to take off. Jane was out of her seat and pushing open the door before he could even grab his backpack. He didn’t like the way she had run out the classroom so fast. “I was on my way to my next period,” she had told the police, the parents, the principal, and all those who inquired about the incident. If she was really in that much of a hurry to get to her next class, she would have brought all her stuff with her.

In Frank’s hurry to chase after her, he tipped over his desk.

“You’re my tick,” Jane had said back in October. “You’re the thing that sets me off and makes me do things I don’t want to do. You make me feel . . .” She never finished her sentence because Frank interrupted it with a kiss. He wanted Jane to trust him and feel safe when he was around. He didn’t like that she was so cautious all the time, yet carefree all the same.

Would things have been different if Frank hadn’t decided to follow her? He often wondered that now after everything had passed. His backpack slid off his shoulder as he thundered down the hall, chasing after the girl that had told him flat out that he basically made her . . . what? Happy, sad, mad? What about him sent Jane yearning for a life that was only existent in her head, and what kind of life was that in the first place? All he wanted to do was make her happy.

Frank shouted her name in hopes that she would stop. They were attracting attention now and people were starting to stare. A proctor joined in on their chasing game before he rammed into a group of students that had gotten in the way. Frank vaulted over him and followed Jane out of the front of the school.

“Stop running!” a teacher shouted as they ran past.

Yes, please, Jane, please, Frank silently prayed. Stop running.

He knew where she was headed. They had crossed it many times.

Once, a couple days after they’d started dating, Frank and Jane had walked home together holding hands. They were crossing a large overpass a short walk from their school when Jane stopped him and said, “Do you ever wonder about those people in the cars down there?” She was talking about the wide freeway beneath them that caused the sidewalk to tremble slightly. “I always like to pretend they’re having a bad day and need a little something to make it all better.”

She paused here to let go of Frank’s hand and crawl one foot up the gothic barred fence. She would have gone higher had Frank not grabbed her around the middle and pulled her back down.

“Don’t worry about me, Frank,” she had laughed when he scolded her. “I’m a good climber.”

“You don’t have any reason to climb up there,” he pointed out. “What kind of pick-me-up idea did you have in mind?”

Now he knew.

Jane ran away from school that day and immediately turned left towards the large overpass. In his head, Frank saw her running and climbing up on the bars just as she had on that day she walked him home. She had a sadistic kind of humor and was usually sarcastic in the few jokes she made. Of course she didn’t mean that she wanted the people in the cars to have a better day; she just wanted to make it worst.

Frank couldn’t find himself running fast enough. He was practically in tears, choking on his words, feeling his throat turn hollow and sore as he screamed at her to stop. The edge of his vision had gone blurry and all he could see was her. Nothing else mattered. Nobody else mattered. His whole life was Jane.

A handful of people were sprinting after them. They thought Jane and Frank were ditching school. All they could see was a light-haired girl cheerfully running all the way home while her boyfriend chased after her in glee. He could only imagine the thoughts that went through their heads when they saw Jane grab the bars of the overpass’ fence and begin to climb. The things they must have told their families back home when Frank got up and started to climb after her. A modern day Romeo and Juliet is what the principal had told the newspapers.

How wrong they’d all been.

“Jane. Jane, please.” Frank struggled to catch his breath as he shakily climbed the couple feet to match her height. She was sitting at the top of the fence with one leg thrown over on each side, her back straight and poised as if she were a queen at a parade, her head lifted high. Her eyes never met his as he begged for her to come down.

“Frank, leave me alone,” she told him between deep breaths. “You’re being selfish.”

“I don’t care, Jane, I can’t let you do this to yourself.” He grabbed the bottom of her ankle in a death grip and held it close to his chest. It was all that he had to hold onto. “You can’t do this to me or to anyone else. Please just come down and talk to me. This isn’t the way to go.”

“I’m done!” she screamed, throwing one hand in the air. “I’m fucking done! I hate the world. I hate everybody. I hate everything. And I swear to god if they come any closer, I’m jumping right now!”

She pointed a shaky finger towards the people that had chased them down the hill. A couple cars were beginning to stop, too.

“Get the hell away from me or I’m jumping!”

Frank held her tighter. “Come on, let’s talk. What’re your hobbies?”

“Make them back up.”

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Frank, I swear to fucking god.” She was crying now, coughing and practically hyperventilating. “Don’t try to save me. I’m seriously done.”

“What makes you happy?” Frank asked. “Please, what can I do to make you happy?”

She pressed two hands to her eyes and sobbed heavily. Someone came up and tried to reach for her but she swiped at them before they could and screamed, “Don’t touch me!” through all her tears. She was trembling so hard that it made the fence shake. Frank felt like he was going to puke.

“Don’t kill yourself now, Jane,” he told her. “If you’re going to, just don’t do it this way.”

“Shut up,” she muttered, turning away from him. “I really hate you.”

“Okay, you hate me, fine. I’m your tick and you never want to see me again.”

“You don’t get it!” she shouted at him. “You don’t understand how I feel.”

“I try to, every single day. You’re so confusing, Jane. You don’t like to admit things to yourself and accept them. I’ve been trying so hard to make you happy the whole time we’ve been together but you won’t let me. You don’t even like to hold my hand some days because it makes you too upset. Am I the problem in your life? Do you just want me to just go away and leave you so you can continue making mistakes like this? Do you? Please tell me now because I’m honestly about to start crying. I just want to make you happy.”

She fell silent, her hand continuously rubbing tears away from her cheeks. “Please don’t leave me, Frank . . . God, you’re fucking killing me.”

“I'm trying not to.”

“I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Me neither, Jane.”

“And I’m so scared.”

“We all are.”

She looked around while chewing on her bottom lip. Finally, she said, “. . . Alright, I’m going to get down now.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Can you let go of my foot so I can get over, please?”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

But before he could, she grabbed his hand and held it to her chest, looking seriously into his eyes. “Frank, remember when you promised to take me to France?”

He didn’t but nodded anyway.

“I’m holding you to that, okay? You promised.”

He grinned. “Anything for you.”

She let out a small breath and gave him a smile so genuine that he felt tears cloud his eyes. “Thank you,” she sighed, slowly letting go of his hand. He would remember her lingering touch for years to come and the look she gave him as she touched his face and whispered, “J’adore.”

Right before she flung herself over the edge.