My Best Friend Didn't Commit Suicide

"Brian! What the hell are you doing?" I yelled at my best friend who was currently standing on the top of his parent's two story colonial.
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"Getting you to believe me!" He yelled back down.
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He had been acting really weird the last couple of days. Brian was usually the type of guy to complain about having to walk a mile during P.E. or break out in hives at the thought of having to do anything that would cause even a scratch. The last couple of days, however, had been a big change.
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"Believe what? That you can't be hurt?" I yelled at him. Not only had he turned into the most stupidly brave person I've ever met, he confided to me that he believed that he couldn't be hurt by anything. When I mentioned the most recent scratches on his arm, caused by a stray tree branch when we had ridden our bikes through the woods the day before, he didn't even seem to notice them.
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"I saw the look on your face when I told you!"
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"Brian! Get down from there before you get hurt!" I regretted what I said the second it came out of my mouth.
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"You'll see. Everyone will see..." His words trailed off as he brought his arms in the best impression of a professional diver that a teenager in a hoodie could do.
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"Brian!"
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It was too late as he bent his knees as soon as I said anything. I watched as his feet left the roof and his body went forward. His body went in a perfect arc, his head going from the top to the bottom before he started plummeting towards his front lawn. The jump was so shocking that I couldn't even react as I watched him go head first past the window that showed his mother on the couch watching daytime TV.
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He impacted the neatly kept lawn in front of the bay windows with a sickening crunch as his neck bent in a way that it shouldn't. It was followed by the thump as the rest of his body impacted the grass and soft dirt.
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I couldn't move.
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The sound had apparently caught his mother's attention though because she looked outside of the window directly at me. I think she saw the look of shock on my face because she got up from the couch and came close enough to see what I was looking at.
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When she did she started screaming.
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***
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I was still holding the unopened can of Orange Crush the officer had given me at the station when my dad opened the car door.
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"Hey buddy."
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I looked up and saw that we had already arrived home. It felt like I had just sat down in the car. According to the radio clock, however, it had been almost twenty minutes since we left the police station.
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"Do I have to go to school tomorrow?" I asked without getting out of the front seat.
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"Of course not. The school..." He trailed off without finishing the sentence. I had been in front of Brian's house so we could walk to school together so of course the school knew what had happened. What I had seen.
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"Okay." I got out of the car and was blindsided by my dad clasping me in a tight embrace. I dropped the soda I had been holding in surprise and flinched as I heard the aluminum crunch of it hitting the ground.
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As he squeezed me he said, "Your mother and I are here for you. Anything you need. Anything you want, just say the word. Okay?"
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I lifted my arms and gave a weak hug back, "Okay."
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Another second and he broke the embrace, "Your mom should be home any minute. I'm really sorry that I can't stick around right now but I should be out of the lab by six. You going to be okay?"
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I didn't respond.
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"Stupid question. Forget I asked." He walked me to the front door of the house and unlocked it, "I love you."
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"Love you too dad."
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He hugged me again before heading back to the car and driving off.
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I tried to forget about what I had seen earlier in the day and been forced to talk about for the past two hours at the police station.
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I tried to forget the wailing of Brian's mother as she screamed into her cell phone at the 911 operator.
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I tried to forget the fact that my best friend had swan dived off the second story of his roof because he believed he couldn't be hurt.
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I tired.
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And failed.
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I went to his facebook page. The cover photo for his page was of the two of us playing a game of Magic The Gathering at his dining room table. I scrolled down to see that, despite the fact that school was still in session, there were multiple messages from our schoolmates talking about how much of a wonderful person he was. How nice he was. How much he improved everyone's life and that what had happened made no sense.
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A lot of the messages were from people who had never talked to him when he was alive. A couple were even from people who had openly mocked us when we played our nerdy card games during lunch.
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They made me angry. I know I should appreciate any nice words said about my friend but it was so easy to tell how hollow most of them were in the face of their previous interactions with us. So I wrote a message of my own on his page.
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You mother****ers didn't know ****. If you had you would've known that something was going on with him. That maybe there was something you could've done to convince him he wasn't invincible. That, in fact, yes you will die if you faceplant the ground from a second story house. There was something wrong with him and you people want to make it about 'how sad and empathetic' you are. All of you make me ****ing sick.
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I didn't even hesitate as I pressed the little paper airplane that told me everyone who visited his page would see the message. His mom would probably be angry with me. She would never get the chance, however, as the message disappeared from his page seconds after I posted it.
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"What the hell?" I said out loud. I had posted plenty of things on facebook in the past that had gotten deleted and they never did it this fast.
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I wrote the same thing again and watched as it appeared at the top of his page for a couple of seconds before disappearing like it had never been there. First these *******s try to make themselves look good by feeling bad for him, then facebook won't even let me tell them off.
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I was in the middle of typing a new message when I got a private message.
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Megan Mullally: I wouldn't try to post that again. If you do they'll just suspend your account.
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I didn't recognize the name at first but placed it when I remembered the rumor of a girl who had gone so crazy that she had dropped out at the end of last year. Megan's twelve year old brother had committed suicide in the middle of our junior year and supposedly she had lost her mind.
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The next thing she sent was a phone number and a link to some app that promised secure and private messaging with military grade encryption. Thinking that she would want to offer some condolences I thought about not getting the damn thing and just telling her to **** right off. But of course her brother had committed suicide only last year. And if there was anyone who knew what I was feeling right now it would probably be her.
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So I downloaded the app and texted the number she gave.
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"Megan?"
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"Is it true what you wrote?"
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Not the question I was expecting but one I was happy to answer, "Yes. All of those ****wads deserved to get chewed out. They didn't care about Brian."
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I was about to continue my rant but she answered before I could.
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"Not that you idiot. About the feeling invincible part."
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I stopped the message I was writing. Had she actually seen my post to his page before it had gotten deleted?
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Another message came in before I could think of what to write, "Was he braver the last couple of days? More willing to do physical activities than usual? Not caring whenever he got scratched or hurt?"
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The breath I had been taking froze in my chest, "How did you know?"
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It stayed in my lungs as I held it in, feeling the burn of it as I waited for Megan's response. When I realized it had actually been causing me pain I let it out. Her next message came in a second later.
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"Brian didn't kill himself."
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"Of course he ****ing did. I watched his neck snap as he hit the dirt."
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I thought about saying another few choice words but she messaged me again before I could.
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"Did he tell you he thought he couldn't be hurt? Did he just have to prove that to you?"
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"How is it possible that you know that?" I hadn't talked to anyone besides the cops about what he had said. While it had leaked out pretty fast that he killed himself no one seemed to know the weird **** that he had said before doing so.
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Except apparently Megan Mullally.
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"My brother said the exact same thing the day before he died. Two weeks before it happened my parents couldn't even get him to go on a walk with them. During that week though you could barely keep him in the house long enough to sleep. He skipped school to go ride his bike around the park. This coming from a kid who thought Fortnite was the pinnacle of human entertainment. That sudden change in behavior sound familiar?"
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I thought to the week before. Most of Brian and I's Friday nights consisted of playing Magic at the local shop or running our biweekly DnD campaign. During the last week though I don't remember a single day of hanging out with him where he didn't want to be outside doing some sort of physical activity. Honestly I had had to go home early on a couple of occasions just from being exhausted by his seemingly boundless energy.
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"My brother didn't kill himself. And neither did Brian. Someone did something to them."
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As I read her message I heard the front door open and my mom's voice call from downstairs, "Tim? Are you upstairs?"
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"Yeah." I said in the loudest voice I could manage with how I was feeling right now. When I looked back at my phone there was another message from Megan.
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"Meet me tomorrow at four. Metrocenter Mall food court. I'll tell you everything I know."
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r/cawdor23


Source.