Love Letters & Suicide Notes

I trekked the whole five minutes across the quad, passing the administration building, the athletic building, and the recreation center on the way back to our residence halls: a three-story building standing crookedly on a plot of land. Outside the front door was a small patio, and just down the steps from that was an area they tried to turn into a courtyard, but the grass was starting to turn brown, all the trees were beginning to die as winter threatened to roll in, and the gazebo they probably installed thirty years ago was rotting and tilting like it’d fall over if you even coughed on it.

I shoved through the glass door, mumbled a hello to the security guard who was paying more attention to her youtube video than to me, and I swiped my ID card to get through the turnstile. I stepped through another glass door and into the same dreary hallway I walked into every day for the last two months on the way up to my even drearier room. I made a right at the end of the hall, headed for the stairwell, but the east wing of the first floor stretched on in front of me, deserted except for poor Ellie van Rossum being shouted at by a six-foot moron wearing a red snapback. That hat was the only thing keeping his shoulder-length brown hair remotely tamed. I’d seen Bryson Alves without the hat, and I’d rather gouge my own eyes out than have to stair at his greasy mop of hair ever again.

I ducked into the stairwell just as Ryder popped out of his room to inspect the scene. Ryder lived on the second floor, a few doors down from me, but he was down on the first floor more often than not. For some reason, Ryder had it in his head that he fit in more with the druggies, and he spent more time in Cash Irving’s room than his own. Bryson, too. Bryson lived up on the third floor. Hardly anyone ventured up that far unless they lived there. If you wanted to find the really tortured souls, they were up on floor three. That’s where they housed all the kids in the Red Zone.

It always seemed kind of ironic, considering the Red Zone kids were on suicide watch, though they all had bars on their windows “just in case.” If the suicides weren’t deterring enough, 20% of the Red Zone kids also posed a threat to others. So, the main attractions on floor three were the possibility you might find someone in the process of dying, or you could get killed yourself. Dr. Slade was the head counselor for them—since the first thing the most unstable patients needed was a drug-dealing head counselor.

Ryder, like myself, actually lived on floor two with the Orange Zone. Personality disorders, mood disorders, behavioral disorders, you name it. If it falls into the spectrum, it’ll get you placed on floor two. I never thought we were all that exciting, though Holly Novak would occasionally forget where she was and run through the wings asking if anyone had seen her mother. Ellie also had her moments, but they weren’t nearly as amusing.

Floor one was far more relaxed, possibly a little more sane. The Yellow Zone was full of drug addicts and kids with eating disorders. Ironically, it was still full of drugs, and everyone threw up so often it was hard to tell if the bulimics were purging or if someone had shot up heroin again.

A lot of people liked to congregate in the second floor lounge—Bryson Alves & co., which by extension often included Ellie and her friends. Me, though, I preferred my room. Nobody bothered me in there.

I climbed the stairs up to floor two and headed for the west wing. I walked fast and ducked quickly into room 223, but someone caught the door just as I was about to close it. Ellie van Rossum poked her head in the door and forced a perky smile at me.

“Hi!” she said.

“Hey.” I shifted uncomfortably and put my hands in the pockets of my hoodie.

“Can I come in?”

While most of me wanted to say no, I didn’t really have an excuse to turn her away. I wasn’t busy. I wasn’t working on my independent study work. I wasn’t doing much of anything, to be honest. “Uh, sure.”

Her eyes squinted up when she grinned. “Great!” She slipped into my room and shut the door behind me. She tossed her white blonde hair over her shoulder as she looked around my room. “Wow, kind of empty in here, huh?”

“I left all my posters at home,” I said. Ellie nodded slowly but kept looking around. “Was there something you needed?”

She snapped her head toward me and blinked. “Huh?”

“Did you need something?”

“Oh.” She laughed. “No. Well, Holly’s off somewhere, and I forgot my key, so… just wasting time, I guess.”

“Right,” I said.

“Is that okay?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

If she was going to hang out, I might as well have started doing whatever I wanted. I sat down in my wooden desk chair and opened my laptop. Ellie strode across the room and flopped on the spare bed. When her body fell, the material made squishing noises.

“What about that Cal kid?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Seems pretty weird.”

The idea that anyone in this building thought they had the right to call anybody else weird was insane, but I wasn’t going to get started on that.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I heard he lives on the third floor,” Ellie said. I started scrolling through Facebook, but Ellie kept talking. “Bryson said he’s supposed to get a new roommate today. I think it’s Cal. What do you think?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I turned over the back of the chair, and all I saw were Ellie’s feet propped up on the bed frame. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“He’s still pissed.” Her voice dropped with disappointment. “I don’t think he’s gonna get over it this time, either.”

But he would. He always did, and the only person who never saw it coming was Ellie.