Stalked by Suicide

Stalked by Suicide - Becca Cross (A. W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Eleventh Grade)

To withhold the privacy of the people in this story, names and minor details were changed.

1994 in Gilman, Wisconsin was not a time to be alive. It was not the time to live, to experience

the prime of youth, or to do anything remotely interesting. Especially as a fifteen year old girl

with over sixty hours of free time a week, and no license to do anything with it.

Gilman is a village in the literal sense, bustling with a population of 1,324 people. There

are more cobs of corn than there are people. The only grocery store in the village was the Dollar

Tree, and the closest mall was a forty-five minute drive away—and technically it was an airport.

The most entertaining place I could go was the creek behind my house.

I don’t regret leaving Gilman as soon as I could. Whether or not I regret leaving my

parents, college, or the love of my life at eighteen, I’m still not sure—but I needed to leave

Gilman.

My childhood was far from miserable, it was boring at most. I was the youngest of three

and the only girl. I was never close to my older brothers, Mark and Joey.

When we were younger, Mark and I were close. He was just like our father, mischievous.

I remember once he convinced our grandma that a helicopter came to our school, and they let us

on for just a quarter. And she believed him. We grew apart when he entered high school. Having

a close relationship with your little sister wasn’t going to benefit him in the high school social

ladder, I guess.

Joey and I were never that close. He’s a quiet boy, and has always been an isolated

person. I still don’t know why.

Four years after this story, when my oldest brother, Joey, was 25 and scammed out of his

money by a girlfriend our mom warned him about, I gave him mine. I was 19 and a fulltime

2

college student working three jobs, all retail and two of them being night shifts. It was the only

way I could afford college.

When all three of us were still in mom and dad’s house, I took on most of, if not all, of

the chores: making dinner, cleaning the yard, anything and everything my mom didn’t have the

time to do and my brothers wouldn’t do.

I am the youngest, but had the responsibilities, and in turn, the maturity the oldest should

have had. They were boys, my mother never expected them to do the work she expected of me. I

am the oldest daughter, after all.

My mom is a compassionate, albeit stubborn soul. When I was growing up, she worked

from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. as a secretary at an insurance company, leaving me home alone for

two and a half hours after school everyday.

My dad is where I got my wit. He worked from 3 p.m. to 12 a.m., hindering his ability to

multitask his family and tire factory work. To this day, he continues to tell me and anyone who

will listen that they found me on the side of the road as a baby and kept me.

Both of my parents picked up smoking when they were teenagers. In the 1970’s, they

didn’t see anything wrong with it, and evidently they still didn’t in the 1990’s.

My bedroom and my brothers’ rooms were the only ones on the second floor. When I

tried to sleep, I could smell smoke wafting through the ceiling into my room. I asked my mom

to stop smoking inside more times than I could count, but she didn’t listen, and anytime I took a

too hot shower, I could see the nicotine condense with the steam on the wall.

3

We would fight over her addiction. My teachers and peers could smell the smoke on my

clothes. They all thought I was the one smoking, and treated me like it, too. No matter how many

anti-smoking pamphlets I would give her, she remained a stubborn woman.

Besides rewatching old VHS tapes and fighting with Mark over who got to pick the

channel, I had nothing to do without a car or license. I envied sisters, people with built in best

friends at their disposal. Mark, only two years older than me, refused to hang out with me, and

Joey, six years older than me, had already left for college. I had to find my own sister.

Taylor Jane Miller, a redhead I met in band in junior high, attached to my side like glue,

and I did the same. By our sophomore year, we were practically inseparable. Taylor Jane is also

the only daughter, and the oldest of three. We were both artists, painters and sculptors and

musicians. When we first met, she loved all things rainbow and fun, and had the energy of a

squirrel on cocaine. She was the perfect match for me.

I’ve always been a quiet person. I guess me and Joey were alike in that way. Taylor was

not. She was funny, charismatic and popular. Socially, we weren’t supposed to cross paths. But

we connected with each other in a way I hadn’t with anyone else before. We used to joke that

when we turned 30, if we weren’t married, we’d marry each other. She’s always been my

platonic soulmate.

But over the course of our sophomore year, her energy drained. Her bubbly personality

diminished, turning her quieter than me. She stopped coming over to my house after school, and

I to hers. There was a different look in her eyes, an exhaustion I couldn’t recognize at the time. I

figured it was just her trying to be mature, and passed it off as nothing.

4

Gilman, Wisconsin may have known who my family, the Wilsons, were, but they knew

the Millers inside and out. Nobody liked Mr. Miller. He was a bully and a narcissist. Taylor

would complain to me about him sitting around, drinking Bud Lights while yelling at her to

clean up the mess he had made. But whenever they were in the public’s view, he made sure his

family looked perfect. Whenever I was at the Miller’s house I felt uneasy around him—but he

had money, so the community pretended to love him.

Our school was no different—if not worse—than the village. It was small, cliquey, close

minded, and behind the times. The technology was almost as dated as the curriculum. We

weren’t taught evolution, still had a class on the correct etiquette when answering rotary phones,

and were told that Christopher Columbus was a kind soul who educated American Indians.

Everyone was somehow related through their parents. Taylor Jane had the social

foundation from her father, a rich pillar in the community, while I had the termite-ridden

equivalent: my brothers.

I was still considered “the new girl,” after moving from Arkansas to Wisconsin eight

years prior to sophomore year. It was a tainted badge I could never pry off. My badge, smoke

smell, and bonehead brothers’ legacies made me a complete outsider in Gilman.

Our school was too small to hold all the classrooms and had to share with the Junior High

adjacent to it. Us high schoolers had to slum it and walk among the inferior. Taylor Jane and I

were no exception, having to walk to the second floor of the Junior high to get to Mrs. Scott’s

class.

Mrs. Scott was our English teacher, and about as socially behind as the rest of Gilman.

She was a gossip, telling her fifteen year old students everything she knew about everyone–

5

“Gabriella and Joshua were caught alone in the bathroom during third period,” “Rumor has it,

Mr. Johnson sexually harrassed a freshman– I bet he’s gonna get fired.” I knew I was no

exception to that.

I once wrote a paper on Wicca, fascinated by the actual practices behind what everyone

saw as witchcraft. After turning in the paper, Mrs. Scott asked me, in the middle of class,

“Michelle, are you a Wiccan- are you a witch?” Of course, I denied being into witchcraft, but

gossip spread like wildfire, and the flame had already been lit. This stain and the smell of smoke

constantly polluting my clothing didn’t help my reputation.

I told myself that I didn’t care what they thought, and that one day Taylor and I would

leave that village and move to some beachtown together, and none of it would matter. My peers

and teachers’ low view of me affected me as little as they could affect a teenage girl—on the

surface at least..

One winter morning, before 8 a.m., through the breezeway and above Gilman Junior

High, Mrs. Scott gossiped with some volleyball girls. I sat at my desk, ignoring them and

doodling on my notebook. The bell rang, and Taylor limped in. Typically, she was there before

me, but it was nothing too out of the ordinary.

There were barely any windows in that room, which was illuminated by the one

flickering fluorescent light that still worked above Mrs. Scott’s desk.

“Work on your handouts from last class,” Mrs. Scott shouted at us from her desk, before

continuing to talk with her favorite students. Taylor could have been one of them, and if she

wanted, she could have joined, but instead, she worked at her desk, weakly scribbling at a piece

of looseleaf paper.

6

Ever since the month had started, Taylor’s energy and demeanor changed. It was gradual,

and to most—if not all. Today, she cowered at her desk, like a dog who had just been beaten:

weak, nervous, and scared. Taylor folded her loose leaf paper and handed it to me.

I unfolded the paper. Her handwriting was less neat than usual, and the pencil she used to

write with was dull. The paper started, “To Shelly,” and was ridden with I love you’s, and you’re

my best friend’s.

It almost seemed like a goodbye letter.

“Taylor, what the hell is this?” I leaned over to whisper to her, trying to stay under Mrs.

Scott’s radar.

“Nothing I just,” Taylor tried to get it out before I interrupted her. Her voice was weak,

and her arms were limp at her desk. She looked tired.

“Taylor what happened?” I said, raising my voice. A few heads turned our way, and

Taylor shushed me.

I had to prod her for another minute before she told me why the hell she’d written that

letter.

“I took a bottle of my dad’s muscle relaxers.”

Taylor’s father was almost 300 pounds. She was half of that. A few pills relaxed the pain

in his back. But an entire bottle? I had no idea what that would do. At the time I didn’t

understand what was going on. But I knew that something was wrong.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to make a scene. She wouldn’t want the entire

world to know. Taylor was naturally a paranoid and private person. She always left her bedroom

door locked, and whenever I came over I could tell she had shuffled certain items beneath her

7

bed and in between dresser drawers, She once sprinted out of a Walmart when the fire alarm

went off, leaving me behind.

I didn’t know who to tell, or if I should tell anyone at all.

I couldn’t feel my lungs. I could barely breathe and was sent into a fight or flight mode.

One wrong move, and one of the people I loved most would die. That feeling was unfamiliar to

me. I didn’t know what the right thing was, I didn’t know what to do.

Another thirty minutes passed before the bell rang. We walked down the stairs and

through the breezeway. I don’t remember if we talked about anything.

Taylor went into the bathroom and locked herself inside a stall. I saw her sit on the

bathroom floor, her hand sprawled out next to her. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that her

dad’s best friend, Mr. Oliver, was in the room next to the bathrooms. I thought I had to tell

someone.

Nothing around me felt real. I walked to Mr. Oliver’s class. He was paralyzed from the

waist down, and permanently in a wheelchair. He couldn’t rush over to her. The man was equally

if not more terrible than Taylor’s father. When I had had him for Geometry a year before this, he

hated me. To him, I was just a mini-Mark sent from hell to annoy him, just because we shared

the same last name. But he could help her, or at least I thought he could.

“Taylor took a bottle of her dad’s pills.” I told him, as privately as possible. I feel the

need to reiterate I didn’t know what this implied. I just knew that my sister could very well be

dying down the hall.

“Oh my god? What do you mean- we have to call 911!” He yelled something like that, I

think. I don’t quite remember what happened that day, frankly. The brain works funny like that.

8

He must have gone down to the principal's office to call 911—this was before cell phones or

walkie talkies were in classrooms.

The ambulance came, and took my sister out of the bathroom. I slightly remember that. I

think I might have gone home after they took Taylor away.

I didn’t want to go to the hospital immediately.

The doctors told her parents that they didn’t know if she would pull through or not. She

was in the hospital for a week.

I didn’t go to school the next day. With the nature of Gilman—smalltown, USA—

everyone was always in everybody’s business. The school decided their “grief support” was to

have an assembly with the entire school.

They told us that my best friend had tried to kill herself. Her father spoke. How he could

talk to an entire student body while his child may or may not be dying, I’ll never know. It was an

opportunity for that selfish bastard to be in the spotlight, I guess.

I think it was Mark who told me that he called for me from the audience to come forward

to thank me. Hearing that, I had never been more grateful to have missed school. If I would’ve

been there, I would have left the room.

I don’t know if they talked about what to do if you need help. Knowing that school and

that town full of idiots, I doubt they did.

I went to the hospital that night, I think. It’s honestly all a blur. I remember how much

the fluorescent lights flickered in the hall as I went to go see her. I remember Taylor strapped

into different IV drips and medicine that doctors rushed into her veins. I try not to remember how

small and helpless she looked on that bed.

9

I finally went to school again a week later. Taylor wasn’t there yet, she was home,

recovering. I remember walking by a bunch of girls that were friends with her from volleyball.

They all wore high ponytails and flaunted their varsity jackets, as if to tell the halls that, yes, they

were indeed popular.

I remember them whispering, “She just did it for attention.”

My eyes grew hot. My face must have turned red. I was a quiet person. People scarcely

remembered my name, and I didn’t care about that. I would have never said anything to them

ever. But they were talking about my sister.

“She would never want you guys just—sitting here talking about her like this, and if you

were any sort of friend to her, you would keep you fucking mouth shut!” I screamed at them, at

the top of my lungs. And I was raised Catholic. I never cursed. They looked at me dumbfounded,

one of them dropped her jaw at me even speaking to her. I stormed away.

I went to Taylor’s house after that. I left school early again. I was never marked absent

because teachers never noticed I was there, let alone not there.

I remember seeing Taylor, her red hair shining as she laid on the couch in her sunroom. I

walked in.

“I didn’t want to die,” she told me. She confided in me how depressed she was. How I

shouldn’t worry—a dumb thing to say, really, because, of course, I was worried—and that she

was going to see a therapist.

I tried to maintain a supportive smile and brave face. Because the last thing she needed

for me to play the victim.

10

My best friend had tried to kill herself. If it weren’t for me, she would have succeeded.

That thought terrified me. If I wasn’t there that day, if I didn’t tell anyone, or if she never wrote

me that note, she would be gone.

This was the first time I stopped feeling my lungs. I would stop feeling them again two

decades later, after I had left my parents and married a man fifteen years older than me,

whenever my now ex-husband raised his voice at my oldest child, our son.

I would relive those moments, in the Gilman High halls, at my son’s graduation, almost

three decades later, when I received a call from my youngest daughter’s school, telling me that

she, too, had tried to kill herself.

I would once again not know what to do, or what the right course of action was. I again

would cry myself to sleep, not knowing why suicide seemed to follow me and infest the hearts of

all the people I loved.

She stayed at a hospital for four days. Whether or not it was the right course of action, I

still don’t know. I do know that Taylor continues to live thirty years later. She loves rainbows,

has the mouth of a sailor, and is just as energetic as she was at sixteen. I know that my youngest,

16 year old daughter, alive and well, also has the mouth of a sailor, whether I want her to or not;

and that she, too, is just as energetic as Taylor was at 16.

I try to not think that it is my fault. But it seems that I infect the people in my life who I

love the most with the urge to die. I still don’t know if there’s something about me that makes

life too heavy for them to carry.

But I’ll continue to try to carry it for them.