Choking Game (14 page)

"Wow, that's wild."

~You didn't feel like that, did you? I guess you weren't in a coma.~

"I hung in there, unable to either finish whatever journey I set out to travel or return to my motionless body in a cold, lonely hospital bed, attached to monitors and breathing tubes. For days, I watched my mom and my younger sister sitting by my bed, crying, praying, and talking to me like I was still in my body. I heard everything they said, but I could not respond. That was the most frustrating thing. Knowing someone who cares about you is doing everything they can to connect with you, but no matter how loud you're screaming back at them, they cannot hear a word you say. That helpless state of non-being and the hopeless stares of my little sister and my mom are what haunt me every night when I go to sleep because I worry that I may fly away again."

TWENTY

Teenage Revenge
@TeenageRevenge
if I had wings I'd never set my feet on the ground again

~Are you sure about that?~

"Yeah! I could see everything from a bird's perspective."

~That's true, but is that really what you want? Do you really want to be even more detached than you are now? Yes, you'd be flying high above everybody else. You'd see the world far and wide, but you'd miss the little things.~

"What's so important about the little things?"

~They make up the whole.~

Teenage Revenge
@TeenageRevenge
if I had wings I'd never set my feet on the ground again #wings #angels #soul #lifeafterdeath #hope #suicide

"What makes you think I tweeted about suicide?"

~You didn't.~

"So why the hashtags?"

~Because of what Angelica said. You'd like to experience what she did. You'd like to float outside your body and watch the people left on the ground. Watch their reactions while you're invisible. Am I right?~

"Maybe."

~I hope you'll forget about that idea. It's not gonna happen. You'd have to be clinically dead to be outside of your body. And even that is not a given. You'd most likely die way before you'd float outside and watch the people left behind. Not many people end up as lucky as Angelica. It's time you took her advice and considered how your actions affect everybody around you. Those are the little things. Everything you do, everything you say, is a tiny part of the whole. Tiny but powerful.~

"There you are!" Luke said.

"How's your neck, MJ?" Angelica asked.

"Better. So, what happened next in the hospital?"

~I'm dying to find out!~

"I like to think that it was my mom's and my little sister's love that brought me back. You see, when I was up there, looking down at my comatose body, I wished for nothing else but to return to them and tell them how much I loved them. I realized I’d never even told them. That was my biggest regret about the whole thing. Not that I slashed my wrists and bled until I fell into a coma, not that I ran out of school and let everyone believe the rumors were true, not that I would never live again; my only regret was that I did not even remember the last time I told my mom and my sister how much I loved them. I never pray, I don't even know how, but that's all I did while I was out of my body. I prayed over and over again to return and tell them I loved them more than anything else in this world.

"Then my little sister came again to sit by my hospital bed. She sat there for a long time, holding my hand and stroking my hair. Then she got up and kneeled. She was still holding my hand as she cried and spoke out. She said,
'I am the luckiest girl in the world because I have you, Angelica. Every day I wake up and you're in the room next to me, and I smile. When I go to school, I know nothing bad will happen to me because I have a big sister who will beat up anyone who's mean to me. I can't wait for you to come home after school so that our family is together. And now you're somewhere else, and I don't know where. I sit with you here and I talk my head off, but you're quiet. It scares me to death. I don't want to go back home because you're not there. Our family is not together. Angelica, I love you so much! Please come back because I do not know how to live without you.'

"My sister didn't get up. She put her head down on my sheets and cried quietly. I couldn't quite see them but I could feel my sister's words float up to me on a thin, barely visible line, like a rope connecting her to me. I couldn't grab it because I had no hands, but I could feel the line of words circling around me. I stared at this thin rope and imagined sliding down on it. All I could think of was my sister sitting by my bed, holding my hand. Suddenly, I felt my hand that was wrapped inside my sister's hand as if the sensation returned to me even though I was still up in the air watching my sister and me. All I could think of were the two entangled hands. I'd swear my sister was pulling me down as I floated back towards my body alongside the thin rope of my sister's heartfelt words. And then the monitors sounded off, and my sister jumped. In a split second I was back, fluttering my eyelids. I opened my eyes and saw my sister jumping on my bed and my mom and a bunch of nurses running into my room. Mom hugged me, and I finally had a chance to say
I love you
."

"Wow! What a story! It must have been wild to see yourself down on that bed. I mean you saw your body, but was it really you?" Luke said.

"That's what I've been asking myself many times since then. When I was floating, I felt no attachment to anything physical, not even my own body. For a while, I thought that was it. I was dead. If it weren't for all those machines and medical instruments, I would have been dead for sure. Looking back at how it all went down, I really believe my sister brought me back somehow. I'm still trying to figure out how. The only thing I remember is that feeling. Right after she spoke to me I had this incredible rush of energy inside my bodiless self and then I saw that rope. Well, it wasn't a rope but that's what it reminded me of. I don't know how to explain it to you. I couldn't quite see the individual words, but I could feel them like they were written all the way from my sister's heart to where I was floating. And I perceived this strong current, almost like an electricity that pulled on me. I could not resist it. It was a high like no other. A feeling I've never had before or after. It changed me completely. When I woke up in that bed, I knew I was a new me."

"Gosh, that is so awesome."

~Don't get any ideas!~

"What happened to me doesn't happen to everyone. Don't bet on it happening to you, MJ. If you're planning to die just so that your parents or whoever you care about feel sad and sorry, or you want to show the world how brave you are to go through with it, you won't come back. People usually don't come back like I did. I don't yet know what I believe in, if anything at all, but I do believe there is something out there we don't understand. Some kind of a connection, maybe a spirit, a thought, a feeling. I don't know. The stronger and the more genuine this connection is, the more powerful it becomes in these life and death situations. I swear I felt something wickedly evil along with something unbelievably peaceful and beautiful."

"You're right. I didn't feel any of that, but the moment you believe it's over is kind of calming."

~More like a calm before the storm.~

"Promise me, MJ, you won't do it again. Don't get carried away by an emotion of a particular moment. That emotion is often wrong. Your life is so much more than a single event—a feeling that betrays you because it takes over your better judgment. There are always consequences to everything you do. Nothing is ever detached, not even you, despite of what you believe."

"I'm not going to promise you anything."

~You don't have to, but at least think about what she said.~

"When I was out of my body, I felt incomplete. Not incomplete in terms of being separated from the physical body. More like I didn't fulfill my purpose while I was alive. I felt this burden weighing down on me; this hole mixed in with all those different feelings I had at once. After I came back, I started to paint again. I realized what my purpose was. It's my art; it's what I can do with it. I can't die until I finish all of the paintings I plan to paint. And each time I finish one, another idea sparks and I have to start all over again. That's how I see life. Now. In this moment. Do what your heart tells you. Don't take on life with all of its problems and demons at once. It's too heavy like that. Instead, see the little things, the little moments. They are a lot lighter, a lot easier to carry. Tackle one at a time, like a note of a song. Don't die until you play all the music in your heart. The purpose is not this one big thing, this life as one humongous undertaking. The purpose is these little moments that make you happy. We all have some purpose, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Don't die until you figure out what that is," Angelica said.

"So you think everything happens for a purpose?" Luke said.

"Absolutely. I do not believe in coincidence," Angelica said.

"But how do you figure out what your purpose is?" Luke said.

"It's not easy. If it were, we wouldn't have to stick around our whole lifetimes to figure it out," Angelica said.

"Then what was the purpose of Stanley's death?"

~Did you really have to say that?~

"I'm not a wizard, so I don't have answers to everything," Angelica said. "Maybe his tragic death happened to show us that there are consequences to everything we do. Remember how all of you connected in school and on Facebook after he died? Maybe someone else thought about playing the choking game or someone was thinking about suicide. We'll never know, but maybe Stanley changed a few minds back then. Nothing can remind us of how precious life really is better than death."

"When I think of death, I see it in black and white. That's my color of death," Luke said.

"Why black and white?"

~I think I know why.~

"There's no gray area. When you're dead, you're dead. You can't see the colors anymore. You can't even argue that there are colors you cannot see. You're done, expired. It's clear as night and day. It's black and white."

"What color do you imagine when you hear the word
rumor?
"

~That's my kind of question! Are we switching identities here?~

"I haven't thought of that," Luke said.

"Green, slimy green. It's green as it grows like a flesh-eating plant. It darkens as the green gets old and slimy. And one day the slime solidifies into dark-green glass that shatters before it explodes like a bomb full of shrapnel. It cuts your world into unrecognizable pieces that end up turning white, wiped clean, free of thoughts and pain," Angelica said.

"I don't like the color of rumor."

~I hate it.~

"Me neither," Luke said.

"I got this tattoo right before we moved here. Mom didn't want me to get it, but she changed her mind after I explained to her why I needed it." Angelica raised her t-shirt and revealed the words tattooed on the left side of her rib cage.
Don't kill my demons because my angels might die too.

"It doesn't matter if you believe in angels and demons," Angelica said. "What this means is that I battled my own kind of demons that made me believe I was dirty, hopeless, that my life wasn't worth living. When I was about to pass, my little sister turned into my little angel. Maybe there were many other angels with us that day, but I didn't see them. I do know for sure, though, at least one angel pulled me back and showed me I was loved so much, people would be hurt if I went away for good. My angel let me feel that love and its rush of the most amazing kind of high. It was during that ecstasy that I saw myself as a beautiful being, clean and happy, loving life and all that comes with it. If the demons weren't a part of my life, I would have never experienced the incredible, loving power of my angels. Both angels and demons create the balance that keeps me grounded."

"I love your tattoo."

~I love it, too.~

"Me too," Luke said.

"It's my way of knowing that the good and the bad always come together. Rarely you'll have only one all the time. I believe in my own angels, whatever they may look like. They could be good people that help you sort things out, or an opportunity to do something you love, or a good luck charm you believe in. It doesn't matter what you imagine your angels to be; what matters is that you believe they exist. If you believe that, your demons will have very little power over you."

"I could listen to you for hours," Luke said.

"When exactly did all of this happen?"

~It couldn't have been that long ago. That one big scar is still dark pink. It looks pretty raw.~

"A few months back," Angelica said. We moved and stayed at our grandparents' home in Albany after I was released from the hospital. It was summer break anyway. Then I was home-schooled for a while until Roger contacted Mom and wanted us to come back. Mom said no, of course, and he got mad again. He brought this lawsuit. He's suing Mom for the custody of my sister. That's when Mom packed and we moved here. She wanted to be as far away from him as possible. She jumped on the job offer, but it's not over. He's still suing her. It's scary because Roger has so much money and he's such a good lawyer, we're scared he may win."

"Can't you do anything about it?" Luke said.

"Like what?" Angelica sounded a bit nervous.

"I know this is hard, but can't you testify about what he did to you?" Luke said.

"I already told you, it'd be my word against his. How would I ever prove any of that? Especially now, after I tried to kill myself. He'll have his psychiatrists testify that I'm crazy and that I made it all up," Angelica shook her head.

"What about the picture someone posted on the Instagram?" Luke said.

"You mean the one where he's got his hands under my shirt? It doesn't support my claim. Remember? The rumor was I was sleeping with him. The picture doesn't really show I wasn't."

"So? Isn't it illegal for him to sleep with an underage girl?"

~That didn't come out very well. It sounded like you believe the rumor.~

"One picture, big deal! I'm sure he'll find a way to discredit that too. Even if I claimed he tried to rape me, how would I explain I waited until he filed a custody lawsuit to tell anyone? My mom would get in trouble too for not reporting it right away. It makes no sense. I don't have enough proof. I'm done," Angelica said.

"The question is," Luke furrowed his brows, "who took the picture?"

"I have no idea," Angelica said. "I tried to figure it out, but I can't come up with anything. It wasn't me. Roger couldn't do it either. Was there someone by the window watching us? It's unlikely because I was in my room on the second floor. Someone would have had to be on a ladder or something. It doesn't make any sense."

"Was your computer on?" Luke said.

"You mean like my computer camera?" Angelica said.

"Yeah," Luke said.

"I do have a camera on my laptop and it was on since I was writing my paper, but I wasn't taking any photos, if that's what you're asking," Angelica said.