Reminders.

Miranda talks about suicide more than anyone I’ve ever met, but I’m not particularly alarmed by it. So much the opposite, in fact, that I think I am being poetic when I tell her strange sentiments about my own impending doom (“I will not be happy until I am six feet under,” etc.), and I’m overcome with honor when she wraps her peppery arms around me and in response, says, “I know what you mean.”

I do know about suicide. Thirteen is too old to be oblivious to such things that are happening around me, and I pride myself on being more “mature” than the average kid my age. Miranda is in high school, after all. I know for a fact that none of the kids at my middle school have best friends that are in high school. And if you asked, I’d tell you about my previous year- cutting, scars, poetry, etc., and I would tell you that I’d been through enough to have figured things out.

I’m wrong, of course, but I don’t know that yet.

Still, suicide is something I would like to think I understand- it is so poetic, I think, and it makes for great lyrics. All of the greats have used it: Marcy Playground, Tupac, Wilco, Armor For Sleep. Hell, The Mars Volta based an entire album off of the concept. Most of the people I look up to ended themselves in such a way: Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain. Thus, I think, there is actually no reason for alarm, and it doesn’t matter anyway, since Miranda is unbreakable. Sure, she has cuts down her arms, but they are merely artistic representations of what is brewing inside of her. It is the same as how I spend my time drinking cappuccinos and macchiatos and writing poetry about it, habits that I tend to claim are representative of my own inner torment.

But her scars are increasing.

I do know that she has been trying to slow down and turn to other vices for help. She claims her greatest mistake yet has been picking up razors, putting down alcohol, bringing up her depression. She says that she would be happy if only she had not begun these habits in the first place. All she has to do to feel better, she tells me often and with thrill, is to stop cutting, stop drinking, stop focusing on depression. She has a plan, she tells me, and she and I are going to use it to our advantage together.
I can’t see any reason to stop doing any of these things. But her voice echoes with excitement and sincerity, so I don’t tell her that I’m going to continue as long as I can. I can’t see the problem in things that make me feel better (read: more mature) and therefore have no plans to quit.

One afternoon I come home from school and I see a crumpled Miranda on my sister’s bed, sobbing so fervently that I’m tempted to leave the room. Megan shushes me and tells me later the events of the afternoon, which left Miranda single and still in love with her ex-boyfriend. Her crying seems so persistent that I plan for an afternoon filled with it, but only a few minutes after I come in, she gets up and wraps her gangly arms around my frame. Then she stands up straight, all five feet and eleven inches of her, and declares, “Fuck Julius. I need a shit-ton of pizza.”

Her tank top rides up slightly on her hips to reveal soft and gingery skin that I will forever know as “fragile” as my sister and I find ourselves unable to stop Miranda from going to find my mother to announce her need for a “shit-ton of pizza.” But that’s Miranda, and it has always been Miranda, and I find her lack of care for anything endearing. The ambivalence that she displays on these nights mirror the Miranda I knew long before, and I use it to deny that she has changed in any way.

These Fridays are the best and the worst, though. First she decides that she will get better, no help from razors or scissors or vodka. She announces this with thrill, inspired to feel better naturally. She says things like Julius or her parents don’t matter, and you can almost see the plan forming in her mind as she speaks. Spoken with a subtle distance, I know she is with me, but also off in a better future where she will be happy all the time. Most important to her is that she won’t have to rely on anyone or anything to attain it.

This Miranda is my favorite Miranda, but she only lasts so long. She is a burst of energy on these nights, screaming nonsense sounds and shouting obscenities and doing things I only wish I could do, like call cute boys or hold the notes to songs I love. These nights will result in an excess of inside jokes, and I know it even as they are being born. Her raspy laugh that mirrors her orange hair fills the room, and she kisses me on the cheek randomly throughout the time we spend together.

I love these nights, but her fade is more than evident sometimes. Eventually, her laugh just runs out. She loses all hope in any plans she might have had, and her eyes glaze over. She is a zombie by the time she says goodnight to me, and I’m unsure of whether or not I should say something that might help her. One night she tells me at the recently renovated rec center that we spend most of our time in that she’s not particularly looking for help, but that she appreciates me listening to her bullshit anyway. She is a statue as she cries in the bathroom, and I wonder how it is that she can be so majestic even when she is so lost. She asks me if I want to sleep over, but I can’t because my step dad will be angry. She is still in and out of tears, but she reminds me to text her as I am picked up from the rec. I forget to text her. I regret it almost instantly.

As winter break begins to conclude, I ask my sister why Miranda hasn’t been coming around lately. Megan waits until we are in the room we share alone and she tells me that Miranda is grounded and being put into treatment for depression.

I’m fuzzy on the details, but from what I understand from Megan’s retelling is that Miranda wrote a list. She called the list “Things I Can’t Tell My Parents.” She left the list, which chronicled everything from her suicide attempts to the boys she’d been sleeping with, out on her bed, and her parents found it. Her parents are considering putting her in an inpatient treatment center, and my sister and I are being dubbed “bad influences,” a title so far from the truth that Megan actually laughs out loud when she says it.

Megan can’t find any way to feel other than angry. She thinks that Miranda has just become one giant ploy for attention, and at first I agree. Still, my notebooks begin to fill with poetry and letters addressed to her, and Megan becomes a sort of messenger between us. Without sensing any change, I address my letters to the Miranda that I have known since I was four years old, the Miranda I knew on the night she felt better. Her replies are notably different, though: they are from an evolved Miranda, who speaks about Prozac and psychiatry and her progress with self-harm. She still tells me about her day-to-day life (not much different, honestly, but with new boys’ names to keep up with), and I try not to notice it, but her voice is different. She doesn’t laugh at funny sounds anymore, and she thinks our inside jokes are a waste of time.

It is March before Megan and I are allowed to go to Miranda’s house on a Friday afternoon again. It is raining out. I walk there after school, wearing my +44 hoodie and with so much excitement that my legs are trying to go faster than is actually possible. Summer storms are nice on the west coast, but March is miserable, and the gloom of the afternoon is almost tangible with the humidity. Miranda doesn’t care, though: she’s decided that we are going to relive the Fridays we used to have, walking to Walgreens to stock up on trashy magazines and candy that we will later feel guilty about eating. The three of us end up sitting on a bench before we return, waiting for the rain to let up.

Miranda still speaks haphazardly, attempting to catch me up on her life. “And there’s this kid, Token,” she informs me.

“His name is Token?”

“Well, he’s black,” she responds. I do not realize the racism in the moniker, so I laugh. I expect to be accompanied by my best friend’s laugh, but instead I feel uneasy about her in a way that I never have before: since her isolation, she has a new quality. “I know more than you,” the quality screams, but not in an arrogant way. I am simply naïve now; she has experienced things that I never have. She has a new smirk, a half-smile that reeks of a wisdom that I am incapable of understanding.

She points to two, milky, black bruises on her thighs. “I guess people on Prozac are more prone to these.”

I nod in feigned understanding, but she gets up just as quickly and removes her shoes, tip-toeing onto the soaked pavement. Her fiery curls burst into frizz, but she doesn’t care as she dances out into the street.

She moves rhythmically. She has always been the most rhythmically inclined out of the three of us, but this time I can feel the bruises she must be leaving on her fragile body. I can almost hear the balls of her feet crack. It is possible that I witnessing her total collapse as a human being, but she dances on, occasionally adding lyrics and holding the notes I could never dream of hitting.

Suddenly, the world under the grey ceiling is perfect, replacing the depressing March air with something more akin to what we felt in August, complete with laughter and memories and songs that aren’t really playing and I take off my shoes to join my friend. She is as free as anyone I’ve ever seen, and I laugh harder than I should as she sways in front of a truck. As she looks up to see, she folds over in familiar Miranda laughter, announcing, “Gotta watch out!”

And just as suddenly I watch her become a total stranger to me. I don’t really know the girl dancing on the concrete, and I will attempt for months to find some more common ground between us. Finally, I decide, it is not there.

Months later, she tells my sister, “You know, it’s funny you turned out to be such a good kid. And then there’s me.” She is swinging on my little brother’s play set in my backyard and, too afraid to actually involve myself, I am watching from the window in my kitchen. She flicks her cigarette and I wonder where she got tobacco underage. My sister rolls her eyes and dismisses what Miranda has to say, assuming it is only to obtain the attention she desires. At this point, though, I know better, and I recognize it as something else entirely.