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    Suicide.  Noun.  Meaning "self murder" or "one guilty of self murder".   It's the one thought I think that crosses everyone's mind at least once during their lifetime, no matter who they are.  And when that thought hits, it arrives with an undeniable and unforgettable presence. It's one of those things that can come at you all of a sudden, overwhelming you before you even have a chance to defend yourself.  It can also be an urge that grows gradually with time, becoming stronger and stronger until it finally has all the power it needs to make itself a serious threat.

    Most don't look at suicide as a noble thing.  Supposedly, even The Bible says it's a sin...if one is into the whole religious thing.  People can say whatever they want to against it.  But until it's their time to experience it, they'll never be able to understand what the other person is feeling, no matter how much they try.  When a person thinks about suicide, it's because life has dished out something (or in most cases many somethings) so harsh that they don't see any good reason to continue living it.  To be completely honest I used to be one of those people that didn't understand suicide.  Being only fifteen, I didn't want my life to end.  Shit was just beginning!  Now, though, it was my time to experience the dark emotion.  It was my time to feel like life was no longer worth hanging around for.

    Everything started with the loss of my mother and father.  They'd been taken from me a year earlier when a drunk driver overcorrected and swerved into their lane.  They didn't even have time to react before that bastard plowed into them head on.  I was told they were dead on arrival.

    Wanna know what real pain feels like?  Loose your parents and you'll find out real fast.  Imagine knowing that everyday for the rest of your life you won't see the two people who cared the most and loved you the most in the world ever again.  You'll never see your mother's caring and loving smile again, or hear the mellow, but strong voice of your father as he tells you what you need to do in order to help him with a project you and him put together to help better the house.  It hits you on every single level, and the pain, sadness, and emptiness it puts in you is un-fuckin'-real.  Its something nobody would never EVER want to voluntarily, or involuntarily, experience.

    The state became my legal guardian after the wreck.  They claimed that I didn't have any next of kin to take me in, and I believed it because I'd never met any family on my mother's or my father's side.  I'd always thought it was a little odd, but I didn't trip on it too much.  The thing about The State is that they're just like juvenile hall, except there's no bars and you've got freedom.  They could've cared less that my parents were dead and how it was affecting me.  All that was on their minds was that getting rid of me wasn't going to be easy.  I was a 15-year-old black male.  I was way past the age the majority of people adopted kids at, and the color of my skin got me looked over by those that did adopt teenaged kids.

    After six months had gone by and no interest was shown in me, I was sent to another spot in another town.  At least before the move I was able to go to school and still see my friends.  Now, I didn't have a damn thing, and I couldn't do anything about it.  Because The State was my guardian, they had final say on everything.

    I met Ricky a couple of weeks after I'd gotten relocated.  When a person is a ward of The State, the place they chill in is normally a shelter.  It's filled with all kinds of other people at different ages and privacy becomes a thing of the past.  In any setting like that, you always got those that think they are the shit and then some, and have to go around fucking with anyone else they think might be an easy target.   That target was me, and the bitch who tried to assert himself against me was this other 16 year old black kid named Leon.  He was the big bad-ass of the shelter.  I guess he chose me because I looked like an easy target and he was a pretty solid, husky kid.  I might've been short for my age and a little on the scrawny side, but what's on my bones is mostly muscle and little fat.  What I don't have in strength I could make up for it in speed.  So when this jackass came up to me and told me I had to pay him to sit on the shady side of the tables outside where we could go eat at, I told him to get out of my face.  He didn't like that too much and waited until I had my back turned to him and rushed me.  Then, he proceeded to show me the error in my ways and introduce his fist to my face.  Oh, did I mention that he had his two little friends with him and that after he rushed me one of them threw dirt in my eyes so that I couldn't see?

    He got off three good, painful, solid hits.  It was enough to bust my lip and my nose.  That's when I heard commotion going on and what sounded like Leon getting his own ass beat.  Then I heard the yelling of some of the adults saying to "break it up" and the next thing I knew I was being escorted to the office.

    Once all the damn sand was out of my eyes and my bleeding nose was taken care of I met the person responsible for the sudden commotion.  Ricky.  He asked me if I was all right and I told him I was.  I asked him why he'd helped me, since he didn't know me from a spot on the wall, and he told me that he knew I was a new kid.  He knew Leon would pick me as a target because he always went after the new kids.  He'd seen Leon and his friends step to me at the tables, and he'd come over to help me out after seeing the other kid throw dirt in my eyes.  I thought that was really cool of him to help me out and thanked him.  We introduced ourselves to one another and from that day forward we were friends.  Leon and his punk-ass friends didn't try anything else after that day.  All that ever happened between us were just dirty looks whenever we crossed each other's paths.

    A week after the thing with Leon, Ricky caught what he called one of his `world famous head explosions'.  He said they were like headaches, only with pain strong enough to make a person who didn't have pain receptors cry.  They'd hit him suddenly from out of nowhere and he'd have to stop whatever he was doing and go back to the room we shared with two other boys near our age.  It wasn't until a few weeks after that when Ricky had another headache and his nose started to bleed that they finally sent him to the doctor.  What the doctors told him scared him so badly that he wouldn't even tell me `til three days after he'd come back to the shelter.  He had a brain tumor.  That was why he'd have sudden headaches and then the nosebleed.  There wasn't enough room inside his head for his brain and it, and to make it even worse, the thing was located on the underside of the front part of his brain.  If something wasn't done to stop it soon, it was going to start forcing his brain into his skull and more than likely kill him.

    It was a good thing that the husband of one of the ladies who was in charge of the shelter had a friend who was a doctor.  He had friends who were also doctors and it was because of him that they were able to work with the shelter and get Ricky into the hospital for the operation a week after he'd come back home.

    Nobody but the people in charge of the shelter were allowed to go to the hospital to be with Ricky.  I didn't trip on it too much because they said I'd be able to see him by the end of the week.

    ...That day never came, at least not for Ricky.  He died during the operation.

    I cried.  Cried for almost two days straight.  Out of all the other people I knew in the shelter, Ricky was the only one I'd gotten tight enough with to consider a best friend.  Me and him had connected on this level that I had never connected with anybody else on.  He'd lost his mother to drug addiction, so he knew what it was like to loose a parent, and just a lot of other things that had happened similar in our lives that we could relate to each other on.  To be straight, we had become all each other had in the world.  Now the only other person in the world I cared about was gone...just like my parents.

    Shortly after that was when Sharon and Bill came into the picture.  Bill was one of the doctors who'd been operating on Ricky.  I don't know the details of why they chose to adopt me.  The only time I saw both of them was during Ricky's funeral, and I didn't even talk to them.  In any case they came in and were interested in adopting me.  I thought it was strange them wanting me, seeing as how I was black and they were white.  But as long as they weren't some crazy ass freaks, a home was a home.

    It took almost a month before things were finalized and Sharon and Bill got to take me home.  I should've been happy.  Nothing but smiles and giggles.  That wasn't the way it went, though.  Right after Ricky's funeral is when I locked up tighter than a vice grip.  I didn't want to get close to anybody and I didn't want anybody trying to get close to me.  It seemed like once those two things happened, whoever it was that had gotten close to me (and me to them) got taken away from me.  I didn't (more like couldn't) deal with that happening to me anymore.  I didn't want anymore best friends and I especially didn't want some cheap imitations who thought they could even make an attempt at taking the place of my parents. Even the fact that they had a son, who was two years old than me, couldn't change the way I felt.

      Things only got worse when I started school.  It's so funny.  You see all these commercials on television with the kids and adults saying don't judge a person until you get to know them, or don't be a bully, or stand up and help someone who is being bullied.  I would like to know what kind of chronic those people in those commercials are smokin' on because in the real world, the situation is handled way differently.

    It became evident to me on the first day that the kids who attend my school had never seen one of my kind before.  One of the few (and normally proud) black kids out there who like skateboarding and the whole environment that surrounded it.  As far as the majority of the black kids are concerned, everything about me is unacceptable.  A few of them started calling me "Oreo" and the next thing I knew all of them were calling me that.  And the white kids?  They think I'm some kind of poser, just because I'm into something that primarily white people are into, and happily rejected me with as much love as the black kids did.  As for everyone else in between, why would they want to complicate their social lives anymore by hanging out with the school outcast so they could get picked on and talked about as well?   All this shit just because I dressed a certain way and liked a certain thing, and didn't go around looking all thuged out like some reject from a 50 Cent video.

    After dealing with loosing my parents and my best friend, I considered myself a pretty strong individual that I was able to deal with extreme amounts of negativity before I just snapped.  It was a good thing too, because my strength got tested to its outer limits daily.  Not a day would go by without somebody trying to tease me or pick at me.  One or two wasn't bad.  But when you had a whole group coming down on you...that shit is harsh.  I will admit that I was broken a couple of times and that I did cry.  I cried because I couldn't do anything about it.  I might be able to take out one or two of them, but I wasn't gonna be able to whoop everybody's ass.  I honestly believe they got off on what they did to me, because they didn't let up after they made me cry those first few times.  They did it more.

    Then on top of that Sharon and Bill's son, Carter, was a two-faced punk.  He was on the football team at school as their star quarterback, which meant he had popularity status and an image to maintain.  So he was cool with me when we were at home and stuff, but when we set foot on campus...that fool had the nerve to tell everyone his parents had taken me in `cause they felt sorry for me but he could care less.  As far as he was concerned at school, I was just another kid to him and nothing else.

    There's one bad thing that goes along with being 15.  They're called hormones.  They're just coming to life and they're raging inside of you like Indianapolis 500.  Sometimes you can control them, but nine times out of ten you can't.

    I'm one of those rare kids who didn't know what a boner was until I was nearly 12.  I'd heard of jackin' off, but didn't really know what it was, and honestly was too afraid to ask anybody `cause I felt it was something I should already know since seemingly everyone else did.  It was Sean (one of the kids who shared the room with me and Ricky back at the shelter) who told me what jackin' off was and then he showed me how to do it.  This was after Andre (the other kid who shared our room) had gotten a blunt from one of the older kids, and had us smoking it and reading this dirty magazine Sean had stolen from the store.  Normally I wouldn't have done anything like that in front anybody, but the weed and being horny from reading the magazine changed that.

    After that night, I was hooked on jackin' off, and sometimes we'd all do it together, or with three of us, or two of us.  I wouldn't do it unless Ricky was one of the people.  I don't know why, but I felt more secure when he was there.

    My experiences at the shelter must've written something into my brain `cause I still had girls on my mind, but sometimes I'd have boys on my mind too.  It didn't bother me much, though. I figured it was because that was my only experience with anything sexual and that once I got some pussy it would go away.

    During my third week in school, while getting clothed for P.E., some of the guys were finishing with taking their showers.  I wasn't really paying them any attention until I spotted this one particular junior guy.  His name was Eric.  He was in my math class and was one of the few students in the school who knew who I was and was actually civil toward me.  Up until that point I had never seen a naked male body over the age of 15.  I was mesmerized when I saw Eric's 17 year old body.  He was in the weight training class in the period right before my P.E. period.  The workouts from that had built up his chest and given him six-pack abs.  He was also a swimmer so his entire body (except his head and eyebrows) was hairless, including his crotch.  His dick easily put mine to shame.  Just looking at it I could tell it was thicker and longer than mine.  Mine was about five and a half inches when it was hard.  His looked like it wasn't far behind that and it was limp.  Even his nut sack was bigger than mine, and that was with it shrunk up and pulled close to his body.  His legs were slim, but toned, and even his ass was as well crafted as the rest of him.

    I didn't look for too long, but that was long enough to reach that part of me that associated seeing a naked boy with jackin' off, and associate jackin' off with my dick, and associate my dick with getting hard.  Lucky for me, I was just about to put on my PE shorts, so I was standing there in my underwear and a T-shirt pitching a damn tent in a locker room full of other boys.

    Of course somebody just had to see and had the nerve to start talking shit.  Being quick with my wits, I was able to come back with: "Fag?  Bitch, I think you need to re-evaluate the situation because I'm not the one looking down at my dick now am I?"  That managed to change the situation enough so that the guys were talking about him instead of me.

    Needless to say that pissed homeboy off, and a couple of days later him and some of his little friends tried to corner me in the bathroom.  They shot a bunch of names my way, and when they saw that that wasn't affecting me they attempted to jump me.  If it would've been one, or even two, I could've probably taken them.  But since there was five of them, I had to resort to desperate measures.  I put my trusty skateboard to use as a weapon.  I regretted doing it ten minutes later when we were caught by a custodian, who then called campus security.

    The Dean preached to me like we were in Sunday service.  He didn't care that the five boys had been the ones that had started the fight.  As the matter of fact he didn't give a care about anything I had to say.  All he knew was that one kid had a broken nose and another had a dislocated jaw.  He didn't see what I'd done as self-defense.  He thought it was some low level Columbine High School-esque attack, which of course was not going to be tolerated.  He said that he had every right to expel me, but instead, he decided to give me a week of suspension and my foster parents a phone call.

    The Dean was bad, but Bill was worse.  He was so angry that his face turned a deep color red, and every word that came out of his mouth could be heard by the people all the way at the end of the block.  It seemed that the Dean had spoken to the boys who's asses I had to kick and they'd told him that I told them this was something I'd been plotting to do ever since one of them had called me fag in the locker rooms.

    Sharon was to the point of tears and couldn't understand why I'd done what I'd done.  Every time I tried to explain things, Bill would cut me off.  When I got mad and started yelling back he grabbed me roughly by my shoulder and escorted me to my room, where I was told to stay until he told me to come out.

    During that time I overheard him and Sharon talking.  I couldn't hear the whole conversation, just little bits and pieces.  What I did hear was what I'd hoped I wouldn't hear, but had been getting myself ready for the possibility.  They were thinking about turning me back over to The State, and that was the last place I wanted to be.  So if they were going to send me back, I decided that I would save them the trouble.  I had already lost my mother and father, and the only other person I could relate to had been taken away from me too.  I had nothing left and I didn't see things ever looking up from the level at which they were at.  So it was time to take back all the control that had been taken away from me.  It was time to do the one and only thing I could do that would end the nightmare that my life had become.

    Spending nearly eight hours, minus the one where I got to come out and eat, alone in my room had given me time to figure out what I was going to do.  I wanted to do something that once it was done I couldn't back out of it.  I didn't want anyone prematurely discovering me and destroying the whole thing.  This was going to happen and nobody was going to stop me.

    That's why I was there at The Bluffs at close to three o'clock in the morning.  I'd waited until I was sure everyone was sleep before I'd left the house.  The Bluffs was a cliff that overlooked a river and had a horse trail and a bike trail on the right side of it.  I'd heard the place used to look like crap until the city decided to actually invest in it and they hooked it up something serious.  Joggers, power walkers, lovers, whatever, would walk (or run) the paths during the day and into the evening hours, come out to look at the view, have a picnic, play football, just about anything a person could do at a park really, except play basketball `cause there aren't any hoops.

    The river down below was very inviting during the day, so calm and beautiful that it made for an awesome view.  But as I stood against the metal boarder and gazed down at it, I didn't see that beauty at all.  I only saw chaos and darkness.  Chaos as the water rippled wildly and formed powerful waves that crashed angrily against the base of the cliff.  Darkness because it seemed that not even the bright silvery light of the full moon was penetrating its black surface.

    I reached with my hand up toward my neck and grabbed hold of the chain I wore.  It had been a gift to my from my mother and father on my fourteenth birthday, two weeks before they'd died.  I pulled it out from under my shirt until I was holding the silver cross that was attached to it in my hand.  I stared at it for a moment feeling sad and angry at the same time.
"How is it that a person is supposed to have faith in you?" I spoke to the cross.  "You're supposed to be this good god, but then you make people suffer for no good reason.  What did my parents ever do to you to make you take them away?  What did Ricky ever do to you that he had to suffer like he did and then die when he was supposed to be saved?  What did I ever do to you to make you fuck up my life like you did?  If this is what having faith in you has gotten me so far, I wonder what NOT having faith in you would be like."

     I let the cross slip out of my hand as I looked back out at the water.
"I know you guys would've wanted me to keep going, and keep living.  I know you guys'll probably be disappointed.  But I tried...and I just can't anymore.  I just...can't deal with this shit anymore."  I was thinking of my parents and of Ricky when I said it.

    A tear that I didn't even know was there fell from my eye and went cascading down to the water below.  I really believe that a person can feel a thousand times worse mentally than they ever can physically.  I knew because I was feeling so bad at that moment that it almost defied comprehension.  The pain from loosing my parents.  The pain from loosing one of the best friends I'd ever had.  The extreme sadness that came from knowing I'd never see any of them again until I was dead myself.  And the feeling that I was completely and utterly alone in the world.  All of those things came down on me like two tons of bricks, and there wasn't going to be any holding them back or ignoring them like I normally tried to do this time.

    The river's rage suddenly fell calm.  The waves quit thrashing as hard against the base of the cliff and the moonlight made the surface shimmer elegantly, but still didn't pierce its dark veil.  It was almost like my tear touching the water let the river know I was there and now it was trying to make itself more inviting, trying to lure me in.  If only it knew it didn't have to pretty itself up for me.  That was why I'd chosen it.  I knew that once I was in its wild, twisting grasp that there would be no way out.  I put my left foot up onto the metal guard fence, took a deep breath, and got ready to bring up my other foot.  This was it.  I was really going to do this.
"Now you're sure that's what you want to do?" spoke a new voice.

    My body reacted before I could even think about reacting.  My right foot immediately went back to the ground and my left foot followed right after, putting me back standing on the ground.  Quickly I turned around to see who had interrupted me, like a little kid who's hand had been caught in the cookie jar after being told he can't have anymore.

    I knew it was another boy from the voice, but he was standing near one of the big trees, which had a lot of branches, and all of them were casting shadows over him, keeping me from getting a good look.  I squinted to try to get myself to see further and better before he took a few steps toward me out of the protecting shadows.

    He was a white boy with short black hair.  It could've been dark brown, but he wasn't close enough for me to really tell.  He looked like he was a little bit taller than me and had a skinny, but solid build.  I guessed he had to be either my age or older because his voice sounded like it was in the final processes of changing or had completely changed.  He wasn't close enough for me to clearly see his face or the color of his eyes.

    Who the hell was this, and why of all the nights in the world did he have to choose to come here and be around just in time to fuck with me tonight?
"What's it to you if it is?" I answered him, letting the fact that I wasn't too thrilled about his being there show.
"Just thought I'd ask.  I mean for a kid to want to end his life, something really traumatic must've happened." he continued, coming closer toward me.

     He stopped walking, leaving nine feet between us, and giving me a better look at him.  His hair was in fact black.  It was parted off center on the left side and styled so that the left side was combed off to the left side and the right side was combed off to the right.  I had been lucky enough not to get hit up by the acne affliction as of yet, so my face was still pretty clear.  I would like to say the same thing about his, only I don't think clear is quite the word to use for it.  If there was a word that meant "more than clear", I'd use that because that is what his face was to me.  No zits.  No blemishes.  No hair.  No left behind traces that might even hint at the use of a razor or clippers.  Just a clean, nice looking face that to me looked...I dunno, more vibrant and colorful than normal.  It was like looking at an image on a digital camera instead of a Polaroid.

    Then there were his eyes.  Girls and my mother always used to tell me I had pretty eyes, because when the light would hit them right it was like they'd sparkle.  His eyes, though, looked like they could put mine to shame no contest.  They had to be the softest shade of light brown I'd ever seen, and there were a lot of people I knew with light brown eyes.

    I saw something sparkle in his left ear.  I strained to try and get my eyes to focus tighter on it and saw that he had a stud.  The jewel in it was what had sparkled.  Up until that point, I'd never seen a jewel that color before.  It looked like it was both white and blue at the same time.  The awkward combination of colors made it look like it was glowing dimly.

    After being distracted by the stud for a couple of seconds, my eyes went straight back to his, only to find them already looking at me.  As soon as our eyes met a strange feeling crept into my body that made me very uneasy the second our eyes made contact.  It was a cross between what you feel when you know you're getting something you really want, and the feeling you feel when you know you're about to get into deep trouble.  I'd won many stare down contests against boys a lot bigger than him, and none of them had ever made me feel like this.  I looked away first, pretending to clear my throat.
"Hmmm.  You don't seem to be traumatized." he informed me a few seconds later.

    I made a "Psssshhh" sound and shook my head at him.  I was not in the mood for this.  I really wasn't.
"Look.  I don't mean to be rude, but I didn't come here to chit chat or for a psych eval."
"Then what did you come here for?  An easy solution to whatever your problem is?"

    Okay, who the hell did he think he was?  This boy didn't know the first thing about me, much less a damn thing about ANY of my problems.  Now he was tryin' to stand here and act like he knew what was going on with me?
"Look, you don't know what the hell my problems are.  As the matter of fact, I don't know who the hell you are, and you sure as hell don't know me.  So I suggest you get out of my face and let me handle my business." I suggested in a tone that hopefully would let him know he was about a paragraph from getting his ass kicked by me.

     He looked off to the right and kicked his foot at the soft ground.
"You aren't gonna do it." he said simply, looking back at me, sounding like he wasn't affected by my tone of voice.
"Oh, yeah?  Then why else am I here since you know so damn much?" I urged him to keep going, thinking he had about two more complete sentences to go before I was going to let him have it.
"If you were going to, you'd have done it by now.  You wouldn't be letting me stop you."

     What?  Letting him stop me?  I wasn't letting him do anything.  He was the one who was messing stuff up by being here, and he was the one who was standing here trying to analyze me like I was his patient or something.

     I told him exactly that as my response.  I expected him to come right back with something that would just add more fuel to the fire that was making me hot to the point of making him go away if he didn't choose to himself.  Instead, he sighed heavily and looked away from me again.  I could tell that he was thinking.  Then, he turned back toward me and his eyes gazed into mine again.  That strange feeling returned.  This time, though, I wasn't going to let it scare me.  I wasn't going to let him win and I wasn't going to be the one to turn away.  I narrowed my eyes and intensified my stare to the max.

    I don't know how long the staring contest lasted, but it was he that looked away first. "That's right."  I thought to myself.  "You better look away."
"I'm really trying to figure you out, but man, you aren't making it easy." he said.
"Then maybe you should stop trying to figure me out and just leave me alone." it sounded like there might be hope of me getting rid of him without having to introduce his face to my fist, because I really didn't want to do it, but I also didn't want to be kept from what I'd come out there to do.
"Oh, and be a quitter like you?"

     I was nice enough to give him an extra sentence.  Two was supposed to be it before he either walked away, or I gave him a reason to walk away.  After what he'd just said to me, I was thinking that when I was through with him he might not be able to walk away.  The stuff he was saying before might've been hit and miss.  But what was just said was deliberate.  This shit from somebody who hadn't lived my life and hadn't gone through any of the shit I'd been through and was currently going through.  Now he was trying to call me out my name like he knew what the hell was up?  K.  Time to get ready to kick some ass.

     I covered the ground between us so fast it would've made a person's head spin.  I got right up in his face and locked eyes with him for a third time.
"What did you just say to me?" I growled through clenched teeth.

     His eyes remained locked as he responded,
"You heard me."

    He said it in a way that didn't sound quite like a threat, or quite like a challenge.  It sounded more like he thought I was ignoring him when he'd said it and he wasn't going to repeat himself.
"Look, don't you fuckin' stand here and judge me like you know who I am and what my situation is, because you don't!" my attitude didn't get any better.

     Still he didn't falter not one bit.
"I'm not judging you.  I'm just calling it like I see it."
"Well why don't you see your way up out of here?" I suggested, pointing off to the left. "Give me one good reason why I should."

    Okay, through talking now.  Talking was doing no good.  He wanted a good reason as to why he should go?  It was time to give him two very good ones.  My hands balled up into fists and a tight grimace took over my face.
"I'd think about it if I were you." he said, a hint of a smile crossing his lips. "Every action has a consequence."

    I thought about it for a good thirty seconds.  During that entire half a minute I was ready to kick that ass.  That little comment meant more to me than I think he knew.  I was tried of people talking their shit to me and then coming up with the assumption that they could beat me in a fight.  That was always the truth because normally it would be "people", groups of three or four that were doing it.  So of course I wasn't going to be able to kick everyone's ass without getting my own handed to me somewhere in the process. This time, though there wasn't a group.  There was just him.  And it was already on my mind to do my best to hurt him as much as I could, because right now he was every one of those bastards at school who had taunted, teased, and jumped me.

     When the thirty-first second rolled around, however, is when another concept came to mind.  In health class, we were learning about mental health and psychology and all that junk.  We were learning about different methods psychologists used on their patients during treatment.  The one thing that was standing out most in my mind was a class discussion we had on suicide and what could be done to prevent a person from doing it if you ever found yourself in a situation where you had to.  One of the things this girl named Clarissa said was to get the person to think about, or focus, on something else.  Let's see, this kid had come along and interrupted me, he wouldn't go away, and he was saying things that would piss me off to the point of wanting to fight him.  Those things, plus the fact that he was there period, was enough to get me to focus on something else.  That something else had become the other kid and my new objective was to get him to go away.

    I don't know if it made me madder or made me feel more high and mighty when I figured out that this punk was trying to pull some psychological mess on me and that if I wouldn't have stopped to think about it for a second it actually would've worked.  All I knew was that he wasn't going to take my attention away from why I was out there for another second.  He didn't want to go away.  Fine.  He didn't have to.  He could stand there and watch.

    I unballed my fists and took a step backward.
"You're right.  Every action does have a consequence.  So now, you get to suffer yours."

     A person sounds a certain way when they think you've found out something about something you aren't supposed to know.  Like if a "friend" has been talking mess behind your back and you go to confront them on it, but you did it in a roundabout way.  The way that friend starts talking and acting changes because they think you might know it was them who said it.  That's what the other kid sounded like when he responded with,
"What are you talking about?"

     I continued walking backward back toward the metallic barrier wall.  Walking forward toward the wall would give him a chance to rush up and stop me.
"You don't want to go, then you don't have to.  You can stand right here and watch me jump." I told him.

     He knew I knew what was up now.  He didn't even try to play it off anymore.  The look on his face didn't really change much to show this.  It was the look in his eyes.  Sometimes, what they do can speak a lot louder than any words or any other action.   He knew I'd figured him out.  He took a step toward me
"Wait.  You don't want to do this." he tried to sound authorative about the situation, but my mind was already made up.

     I felt myself come in contact with the metallic barrier wall.  Keeping my eyes on him, I studied myself on it with my hands and lifted myself up so that I could place my left foot up on top of it.
"Oh yeah?  Really?  Just watch..."

    My sentence got cut off abruptly as my right hand slipped suddenly.  I was in an awkward position where my left foot was mid way between the ground and the metallic barrier wall, so there wasn't much to keep me from loosing my balance and start falling backward over the wall.  Backward toward the wild river that had gone mellow in anticipation for my arrival.

    Moments ago I was ready to die.  Ready to bring it all to an end.  I wasn't afraid.  And now, that it had actually been set into motion, I was terrified.  Like a person who is deathly afraid of heights, but they work themselves into a frenzy to the point that they believe they are no longer afraid.  So they get on the elevator and take it up however many feet off the ground until the reach the top of a tower.  They step off the elevator, go to the window, look out and realize how high up they are...and the fear they've convinced themselves wasn't there comes back at triple the strength and the illusion is gone.

    In the last seconds before I went over, I reached out to the other kid.  This boy, who'd for some unknown made it his business to keep me from taking my life.  I knew he couldn't take my hand and save me.  He was too far away.

    I waited for my body to hit the cool water.  I waited for the river, which had offered to take away my pain and reunite me with my parents and my best friend by robbing me of my life, to swallow me deep into its dark womb.  This was it.  Tonight I was going to die.