Books

Up ahead is Ballantine Hall. It was once the tallest academic building in the country, and still is the tallest building here on campus. Everyone has a class here at some point. It has eleven stories, a six foot metal globe in the atrium, and a notorious history of suicides throughout the years. Yes, I said suicides. Panicked students who couldn’t bear a looming failure. Worried teens stressed about an upcoming exam. Heartbroken young adults feeling love lost for the first time. Causes not nearly monumental enough for the deed and its inevitable effect. That’s where my class is today. Suicide Hall.

I look up at the top as I approach, to the ledge perched high above the trees overlooking the concrete steps and bicycle racks below. I imagine being one of those kids at the end of his or her wits, standing there looking down at the parking curb that’s about to go through their head at thirty miles an hour. All because of a piece of paper with questions typed on it, handed to them by a total stranger. Or because someone didn’t want to be with them anymore. Or who knows why. I honestly can’t comprehend it. I try to wrap my brain around the idea and make sense of it. What were they thinking? What were they feeling? How could they possibly justify jumping? Did they regret it during the two or three seconds they were suspended in the air before their bodies crashed messily in front of people? Did they spend that time thinking about their grades? About the test? About a girl? Or about the infinity they are leaping into? What was that final moment like? When their atoms became part of the earth and no longer a part of themselves. When the spaces between dissipated. Dreams and hopes exploded on impact. Books and music scattered on the pavement. Love and romance liquified. Sex and pain and memories drying in the sun. The past, present, and future in a thousand shades of red painting the sidewalk. Oozing from a former something. A current nothing. A memory. Surrounded by the screams of others. Maybe that should be our house mural. That would surely make people think. But their demise makes no sense to me. A test or a class or a grade is a blip on the radar. A dot on an infinite line. A commercial break. A meaningless, forgettable thing. A speck on the vast mural of life! It pales next to friendship! It dissolves next to Love!

Thinking about it all makes me lose my appetite for my next class. Statistical Probabilities. Probably, pun intended, my least favorite class ever. But I can’t do it today. I can’t sit through another commercial right now. So I walk back down the steps of Ballantine Hall, across the grassy area, and sit at the base of a tree outside of Woodburn Hall across the way. No one has ever jumped off of this one. It’s not tall enough. It would only add pain to pain.

Winston stared ahead and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He didn’t need to see the path to know it was there. He idled forward and eased the car off the road, through the tee and into the grass. When his bumper was only fifteen feet or so from the corn, he slowed to a stop and held his foot on the brake. He stared ahead of him at the wall of green and listened to Carter’s words replaying over and over in his head. “The universe will get you where you are supposed to be… You just have to believe…”

He felt the engine rumble as he held his foot on the brake and revved it up. The sound reverberated in his ears and the sun gleamed in his eye. You just have to believe… He closed his eyes and pictured Emma, sitting on her porch waiting for him. “ I believe.” He didn’t know if she hated him or missed him, or even thought of him. He didn’t know if he could find her again, but he didn’t care. “ I believe.” He had to try. He had to go to Salima Falls. “ I believe.” He had to look into those eyes again…

He opened his eyes and stared one more time at the corn in front of him.

“I believe,” he said. Then he closed his eyes and slammed his foot on the gas.

He stood there, staring at the beach house in total silence, motionless, lost in the horrible idea that maybe this wasn’t a dream at all. That this was his reality, a reality he could never wake up from. Fittingly, the words to one of his favorite poems that he ever wrote crossed his mind. “Maybe I have walked these very shores before, but never as it now had seemed. And maybe life and death are simply doors, among the many hallways I have dreamed.”

His eyes were focused on the beach house. He took a step towards it but stopped. I… I can’t go in… He was torn between desire and fear. He knew what going back inside could mean. Another wonderful, yet fleeting glimpse of a life with Sovannah. Another day in the perfect Eden of her existence. Another dip in the sublime sea of their life together.

But it could also mean something else. Another pain-filled departure. Another torturous, yet futile struggle to hold onto the dream. Another startling and defeating return to this desolate place. Another undetermined period of time that would be lost to him forever. A gaping hole in his mind. A forgotten piece of himself.