Let's Die Together

It was Sunday morning, hours before church when they found her. She was down at the deepest end of Mcgowa's creek, pieces of sediment already settling on her blue skin. I watched from our old favorite tree as they dragged her lifeless body from the depths and laid her out on the sand bar. There was a collective gasp when they inspected my friend and saw the long, oddly colored gashes that adorned her arms, and in that instant I felt a flash of fury race through my veins, along with traces of shame and guilt. Because, you see, this is all my fault. I never told her what she was doing was wrong, even though deep down we both knew it was. I just let her continue on her destructive lifestyle, and now look what at it got her, probably just a day long headline of the local paper; the fifteen minutes of fame no one had paid her while she was alive.

I jumped down from the tree and ran away before anyone could realize I'd even been there, and I didn't stop until I made it to the little clearing in the woods behind her house that we'd visited ever since we were old enough to venture off into the woods by ourselves. I stood there,gazing at our playground of trees, and remembered what Karson had told me just weeks before her suicide.

"Harper," Karson muttered from her perch in an oak tree right next to mine.

"Yeah?" I said back.

"You know, if I ever die sometime in the near future, I want this to be the place they bury me. That way I can always be in my favorite spot in the whole world, and when you visit me, you can remember all of the fun things we used to do together."

We sat there for a few moments, the weight of those words washing over both of us, before I finally spoke.

"Don't be silly, Karson, everyone knows your one of the healthiest girls in our class, there's no way you're going to die any time soon, unless you get involved in some sort of freak accident or something." I gave an uncomfortable little laugh, and Karson continued to stare out into the rows of trees, blank faced.

"Just promise me, okay?" She whispered, the choked sound of unshed tears warping her voice. She gently tugged the sleeve of her shirt down a little farther, and the breath caught in my throat. We both knew what that meant, that she'd been cutting again. But we had made a pact that none of us would mention it.

"I promise."

I stepped into the sunlight, and was blinded by the glint of something metal propped up against one of the nearby trees. Upon further investigation I discovered it was the shovel I'd seen Karson's father digging with a long time ago, and taped to it was a note, the only five words written on it.

You know what to do

A tear from my eye dripped down on the paper, which I then let flutter from my hand. You know what to do. She didn't honestly want me to dig her grave for her, did she? She must have, or she wouldn't have left the shovel here. For a few minutes I pondered my next move, but deep down knowing I'd soon be digging anyway.

And I did. I don't know how long it took me to do it, but finally I'd dug a six foot deep hole, approximately the right size and shape for Karson to fit in. I squinted up at the sun peering into the grave, wondering how I was going to get back up. I wiped a hand across my sunburnt forehead to catch the dripping sweat, wincing when the warm skin of my hand touched the overheated flesh on my face. Backing up against the cool soil of Karson's grave, I sank to my bottom and closed my eyes, knowing that I owed it to myself to rest for a bit. A single, terrified thought passed through my mind, but before I could process it, I was already asleep.

"I don't know what I'd do without you." Karson said to me suddenly from across the lunchroom table. I knew that her comments shouldn't mean so much to me, but there was something about them that just made me feel really good.

I smiled back at her in reply, spooning a bit of J-ello into my mouth, not knowing that she was serious.

"How cool would it be if we died together?" She wondered aloud, and I put down my utensils so I could focus all of my attention on her.

"Die together?" I whispered back.

"Why not, right? We've practically lived together for the past however many years, dying together just seems . . . right." I thought it over for a minute, taking the time to construct an answer.

"I always thought it was kind of cool reading about the people who were forced to dig their own graves, you know?" I answered finally. "I can't imagine what must've been going through their heads as they did it."

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It had been hours since anyone had seen Harper. At first they’d chocked it up to her just losing her best friend, but now it was getting just a tad ridiculous, so her parents sent her brother Griffin to go look for her.

He didn't know why, but something was pulling him down a barely noticeable path that lead into the woods. After about a half hour, Griffin found himself in a clearing. The moonlight illuminated the surrounding trees, as well as the rather large hole in the middle. A feeling of dread settled into the very bottom of his stomach, but he moved closer to it anyway and looked inside. Down at the bottom of the barely moonlit pit was the unmoving body of his sister, and in that moment he knew.
She was dead.