11I didn't plan on doing this, I planned to leave the original on an open vagueness. But then I listened to the rest of the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, as well as a couple of others, and got more ideas. Also, it seems like a couple of people expected more even though I marked the original as "completed", but in any case, here we are.
This was taking way too long to come out, so instead of this being the second part of two, it'll be the second part of three. Hopefully, that won't take as long to come out, what with me having written part of it already - and also, lockdown thanks to the coronavirus.
Yet again, we can play the same game we played the last chapter if you so choose - Hunt the Musical Easter Eggs, now with extra musicals and even more obscure references!
Ryan made his exit.
He would've been seen more easily if he hadn't chosen to wear all black that night, as if he was attending his own funeral already. It gave him the sense of blending into the background, melting into the shadows, just on the fringes of reality and the aether. The liminal space between "what was" and "next". Lost in the "in-between". He'd been slowly slipping away for the past several months, like a candle burning out before being forcibly snuffed out altogether.
Better to burn out than to fade away, right? Kurt Cobain said that in his letter. Sadly, it seemed Ryan didn't have that luxury, that choice. He'd tried for so long to keep burning. Even when he'd been a whole fire, out of control, a blaze that couldn't be tamed, at least he'd been burning. At least he'd been alive. Now, with his flame contained to a simple candle, he had been running low on wax for what felt like forever, only able to stay for brief flickers. What was the point of trying to keep himself going? There was simply no means to. The wax would run out completely, and then he'd disappear forever.
Then again, if he succeeded, then burning would be one way to describe his eventual fate.
Ryan turned his gaze towards the sky, at the stars. Through the thick, impenetrable isolation that cloaked him, they filled the darkness with order and light. Silent and sure, keeping watch on the whole world through the night. Burning so brightly that they could be seen from billions of miles away.
But what about all the stars that couldn't be seen? Those that burned just as brightly, maybe more so, and yet were never seen? They just flickered out, coming and going without anyone seeing that they were ever even here, simply because they happened to be too far away, or positioned in some spatiotemporal blind spot. That was their fate, through no fault of their own.
No one could see him now, just like those faraway stars. He could barely hear his own footsteps anymore. Even the normally obnoxious timbre of vehicles speeding down nearby seemingly bypassed him. It was quiet in his head. Like silence, but not really silent. Just a still sort of quiet, like the sound of your heart in your head.
His heart had been through a lot. After all that had happened, he could feel it was charred black, clogged with soot and grime, yet still beating, still soldiering on. Working too hard for him.
Ryan arrived at the bridge earlier than expected. He'd meant to leave later, but he'd felt so claustrophobic in that grim flat that he'd had to leave. He hadn't bothered to leave a note, not even for Chloe. She didn't get to know what he said. She had forfeited all rights to his heart.
He'd saved every letter she'd written him, over the years, until she'd finally torn their relationship apart. The night before, he had taken a lighter to the box and burned every single one to ashes. If she had erased him, he could erase her just as easily.
The fire had been the warmest thing he'd felt in weeks.
It was then that he caught sight of a plaque attached to the railings:
SAMARITANS CARE
TALK TO US ANYTIME
NIGHT OR DAY ON
0845 790 9090
Oh yeah, he should've figured that something like that would be there. If he had been less cynical, he would've taken it as the universe giving him a sign not to go through with it. Too bad it didn't cancel out the overwhelming reasons to the contrary. No amount of talking about the steaming pile of utter shit that was his life could convince him it was somehow worth living.
Yet at the same time, he'd be waiting for a while before the clock struck midnight. If nothing else, it would pass the time. Maybe they could both pretend they had friends.
Barely knowing what he was doing, he pulled out his phone, dialled and called.
"Hello, thank you for finding the courage to reach out to us today," came the voice on the other end, a gentle lilt belonging to a young man, scarcely older than Ryan himself. "With whom do I have the pleasure?"
"... I can't go on."
A tiny crack in the dam, allowing a steady stream to persist through, splattering on the ground with the weight of all that had preceded its leakage. The cracks grew, more fluid spilt out, until the dam caved in on itself, letting the water burst free.
The flood swept the whole world, toppling mountains, shattering structures, drowning valleys and fjords and cities, swallowing whole continents. The Earth was trembling with its magnitude, scarcely able to bear its own weight.
Then a hurricane came, covering every square mile as far as the eye could see, sucking up the debris of the ruined Earth and spitting them out again haphazardly. It was coming right for him. He saw it coming but didn't move. It got closer, closer ...
In the eye of the hurricane, there was quiet, for just a moment.
He was back in that flat. It had been severely neglected, left in shambles. His mother was staring right at him and he was teetering on the knife-edge of uncertainty.
All he saw was the yellow sky.
"For the first time in my life, I had a reason to believe I'd be okay."
The sun was streaming in, shining on his face.
Maybe, if everything could've stayed that way for forever, he could've been alright.
But this was only the eye of the hurricane. A moment was never as long as you wanted it to be.
He'd lost Chloe. It was as if their mother had taken her with her after she died. Away from him for good. It was the lack of Chloe's light that had made his world go dark, not his mother's.
Maybe in hindsight, it should've been a sign. Much like the scorpion destined to sting, no matter how much he wanted to believe, however much he tried not to see what was really there, there was no hiding who he was.
And then
the sky
collapsed
without
a
sound.
The attack had stripped away everything that wasn't the absolute worst of him. There was no more pretending he was something better than these broken parts, this mess that he was.
The broken pieces of sky plummeted around him, hitting the ground with the force of flaming asteroids. All the stars soon followed, noiseless as falling tears, leaving behind only empty blackness.
The rest of the world fell away. Now there was only him and Sylvester, connected only by a silvery thin thread.
And yet, Ryan couldn't seem to die.
Wait for it.
"I can help," Sylvester was saying. "I can direct you to people that can help you, they'll come running right to you."
A tiny, lone hand reaching out from the darkness.
"I'll even report Richard for you."
A little bit of light, the tiniest chink. "Will they believe you?"
"I'll make them believe me."
Prospects of support, company, a way out - "You will be found." Everything he wanted, everything he wished he had, dangling right there, right there in front of him.
He wanted to believe it was true. So badly.
But it wasn't. It was just a mirage. A sad invention. Ryan wouldn't let himself be deluded again.
Wait for it.
The only way out was the fifty-foot plunge onto the cold, hard concrete below him.
Wait for it.
If a person fell from a bridge and no one was around to see them do it, did they really let go of the railing?
Wait for it wait for it wait for it wait ...
BONG
The clock finally chimed midnight. He was now an adult. No one could tell him what to do anymore.
"Why did you call this number? I think that-"
"Shut up!" Ryan interrupted. Truth be told, he himself wasn't sure of the underlying reason he had called the number. He just knew it wasn't the one Sylvester was insinuating.
If a tree fell in the forest and no one was around to hear it, did it make a sound?
In any case, the tree would definitely crash if someone was there.
"I guess I just ..." needed to say goodbye, one last time, "... wanted someone to know I was here, even for a brief moment."
There was a large bus speeding down the motorway below. If he timed the jump right, the impact from that would be sure to finish him.
"I have to go now, my ride is almost here."
"It sounds like a road, are you at-"
"It's been nice knowing you, Sylvester."
Ryan hung up the phone. He debated holding onto it, but in the end, decided to leave it near the edge of the bridge. The closest thing to leaving a note he had. Besides, he knew that phones could be tracked. It was more akin to a headstone than anything else.
He climbed over the railing, leaning forward, staring hard at the city skyline. His line of sight went higher, aiming for the sky. The stars burned themselves into his eyes.
His eyes fell closed.
Serenity took over.
He let go.
Ryan expected the feeling of falling to be a rush. Unburdened, wind in his ears, almost like flying. One final moment of euphoria before it all ended.
Instead, it was more like when you're walking downstairs and you miss a step.
His stomach dropped out from under him before he realised abruptly that he wasn't falling. His eyes opened and, sure enough, the motorway was still far below him, the large bus speeding by under the bridge.
"Oh, thank God," breathed a female voice from behind him.
His brief surprise consumed by frustration, Ryan tried forcing himself over, only for his left arm to be tethered to the bridge. "Let me go!"
"Absolutely not!" cried a female voice from just behind him, tugging on his arm. "Just, please, come back over, we can talk about this."
Ryan groaned audibly. "I've just gotten off the phone with doing just that. Didn't help a buggering thing."
Another voice came from behind him. "I'm calling 911."
Ryan hadn't missed the American accents on both voices. He could've let her call 911 without telling them that the emergency number in Britain was 999, then attempted again while they were distracted. But at the moment, he'd been too shaken to think like he normally would've. "No way," he'd said, climbing back over the railing. "Don't get them involved, please."
The grip on his arm wasn't letting up. Its tightness felt sure enough to leave a bruise - and familiar enough to make his skin crawl with too-fresh memories. "Please, just let me go."
"I'm not going to do that," the first voice spoke again, spurring Ryan to finally turn around and look at them.
His detainers turned out to be two women, both appearing in their late forties. One had slightly curly blonde hair that hung just below her shoulders and delicate features that had probably been strikingly beautiful in her youth. She wore a long khaki trench coat and - strangely enough for a woman of her age - yellow high-top Converse. Her phone was clenched in her hand, still poised to call emergency services.
Her companion, the one that held his arm, wore a coat in an almost identical style, except hers was dark blue. She had sleek dark hair and her features were lined with a certain world-weariness like she had been through and learned to live with things that were unimaginable to most people.
Something in her face compelled Ryan to trust her. She looked like she would understand horrors like what he had been through.
"Why are you here?" he asked them, finally.
"We saw you," Yellow said, shortly. "We just driving through and we saw you and we knew what you were about to do and ... I just had to pull over."
"And you're not gonna leave me alone, are you?" Ryan realised.
"Hit the nail on the head there," Blue said, adopting a small smirk that still carried a hint of juvenile triumph. "We'll drag you right over to our car and lock you in. Cuff you to the door if we have to."
"You don't look like a copper."
"Would you rather we get the real ones to do it for you?" she replied.
"Didn't know that trying to kill yourself was a crime," Ryan muttered, realising that there was little point in fighting anymore. He was so tired of fighting.
The two women, who Ryan later learned were named Dr Barrett Watts (Blue) and Sophia Lance (Yellow), stayed true to their word and dragged him over to their car. They didn't cuff him inside, but Sophia opted to stay in the back with him rather than riding shotgun with Barrett. Presumably, so he didn't try to scramble out of the moving car.
When they set off, they almost immediately started interrogating him on his life and experiences that had led him to attempt to take his own life. He relayed the same story he had told to Sylvester just prior, similarly but differently. There were no tears or anger or even cynicism to be found in his account, just the matter-of-fact, impersonal delivery of a newscaster reporting on a terrorist attack. It was as if his spirit had already died when he'd tried to.
"Lost my job, slowly running out of food, haven't eaten for a couple of days now. Can't see a way out that won't end in me dying horribly. Might as well die on my terms," Ryan finished blandly, closing his eyes and slumping in his seat. He'd imagined death so much it felt more like a memory, yet it seemed like sleeping would be the closest thing to death he would get for the foreseeable future. Not to mention, sleeping would save him having to answer to anyone for a while.
Sophia shook him rather sharply, her manicure digging into his worn shirt. "You don't get to avoid things that easily. We're talking about this, now."
"Fine," Ryan retorted, anger and frustration suddenly re-igniting his numbed mind. "You wanna talk about it? You want me to say everything on my mind? Fine, I'll say it - I don't want to live any longer. Even if I somehow did, do you really think I deserve to? With all the shit I've done in life, and with the pile of shit that is my life? I don't deserve to live!"
"I. Respectfully. Disagree."
The three authoritative words from Barrett were spoken so firmly that they coursed through the framework of the whole car. Her face was fixed firmly on the road ahead, but they saw she was gripping the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.
Ryan was momentarily stunned by her declaration. Much like when he'd first laid eyes on her less than an hour prior, something in him felt compelled to trust her words. Unlike most people, she wasn't just saying them because she felt she had to - she meant them.
"How old are you?" Barrett queried.
"Eighteen." The answer felt strange in Ryan's mouth. Admitting to his own adulthood felt like spitting out a piece of chewing gum that had been there long enough for you to have to re-learn how to not be constantly chewing.
"How long have you been eighteen?" she continued.
Ryan checked his watch. "Thirty-seven minutes."
Sophia blinked. "Today's your birthday?"
"Yep," Ryan said. "As I've just said, it all started on my birthday, might as well end it all on the same day."
Barrett huffed. "Well, no matter. Point is, not a single person I know has stayed in the same place they were when they were eighteen, or seventeen, or nineteen, or whatever age. Things may have changed back then, but they could change again."
"Yeah, they could get worse." Ryan cringed internally at how childish he sounded, especially considering he was an adult now. "Get real, Barrett, how could they get better? I can't get a job, I'll probably be evicted before I can, and I barely have any qualifications to my name. That's not even taking into account the mess up here." He indicated towards his head, before realising that Barrett couldn't see him. "I'd still be a freak, damaged beyond repair."
Barrett sighed. "We're all damaged, Ryan, and we're all freaks."
"But that's alright," Sophia said, squeezing his hand. "Believe me, we know."
"Care to spill?"
Sophia swallowed, before taking a deep breath. "When ... Barrett and I were teenagers, our senior year of high school, we were at the top of the food chain. We just floated above it all."
"You did," Barrett snorted. "I actually had to work to get there." She was still staring forward, meaning she couldn't have noticed the deeply uncomfortable expression Sophia had adopted.
"That's not important," the other woman dismissed, turning back to Ryan. "But, even though we looked so sure in ourselves, our positions were so volatile." She looked even more melancholy in the dark car. "Trying to stay at the top in our school was like floating in the tiniest lifeboat in a huge, raging black ocean, crowded full of people you know. You'll sink any minute unless someone goes, and the whole time you're hoping and praying and doing everything you can to ensure that it won't be you that gets thrown over the side ... and when it's finally your turn to go, you end up sinking so deep that it feels easier to just ... swim down."
Ryan sat, unblinking, in the car seat, his hand still held by Sophia's. Her words had sent shivers through every fibre of his being - after all, what she had said about constantly being on edge, too frightened to budge an inch out of place lest you lose what is familiar and comfortable to you ... was that not what he'd been doing for much of his life?
He didn't know whether to find her understanding comforting or disconcerting.
"Barrett stopped me though," Sophia continued, snapping out of her reverie. "I'll never forget what she said. 'If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be human..."
"...You'd be a game show host," Barrett finished.
A small bubble of laughter floated its way to Ryan's throat before bursting again. "Okay, maybe you don't need to be happy every day but you do need to be happy some days and I just... can't. I don't have a reason to. Not anymore. I've already told you why."
The two women were silent for a contemplative moment. During the long seconds, he thought that he had finally bested them, showing them once and for all that there was no reason for him to stay much longer, just like he had with Sylvester earlier. They would just let him go, let him make his way to another high surface, accepting him as one of those that couldn't be saved.
Then Barrett spoke again. "Do you really think that killing yourself would be the right thing to do?"
Ryan rolled his eyes. "Yes. Why the hell do you think I was trying to do it before you stopped me?!" he snapped.
"Alright," Barrett replied, remaining calm. "We're going to arrive at our hotel soon. We're going to check into our room and you're going to stay with us for the night. When the morning comes, I want you to think again about what would be the right thing to do."
Ryan sighed again, his eyelids and shoulders heavy with the weight of what her words implied.
He must've slipped off to sleep a little for the rest of their journey, as the next thing he knew, Sophia was gently shaking him awake and they were shuffling inside the polished lobby. Normally, Ryan would've been more self-conscious about his scruffy form alongside two sleek, well-dressed, middle-aged women, but he was too numb and too burned out to register the looks the receptionist sent his way, or Sophia's words regarding him.
Stepping inside their roomy suite, Ryan could definitely say that it wasn't to be sniffed at. It was even bigger than his little flat, with a large bedroom with twin beds and a sitting room with a few armchairs and two soft sofas sitting around a glass coffee table and a 36-inch TV. The rooms smelled of lavender detergent.
"Eat up," Sophia said, thrusting something in front of his tired eyes. The sweet smell roused him slightly and his eyes focused on a soft cookie in a small paper bag, chocolate with hazelnuts. Sophia held two more in her other hand.
Being the first sign of food in a good couple of days for Ryan, it bypassed the voice of common sense in his mind that said that the middle of the night was not the optimal time to be consuming sugar. He didn't even think to question where it had come from. Sophia could've brought them with her, though when he took it from her hand, he felt its warmth as an indicator that it had been freshly baked not long prior.
It hardly mattered - the first bite of that damn cookie was like a drug to him. Its soft insides crumbled away in his mouth in a way that rendered it almost molten. The cookie was gone before Sophia had gotten halfway through hers.
Just behind them, Barrett had commandeered the electric kettle and was sifting through the selection of hot drinks the room provided. "Coffee?" she offered, to neither of them in particular.
"It's the middle of the night," Ryan frowned.
"Jet lag," Sophia explained. "It's 6 p.m in Seattle right now. We're not gonna be able to sleep for a while."
"I actually meant decaf," Barrett clarified, giving her companion a look. "I have to meet with the Chief Inspector tomorrow, Soph. I can't be falling asleep in front of him."
"Chief Inspector?" Ryan echoed. "Is that why you're here?"
Barrett nodded. "Come sit down, we can explain."
They took their seats on the sofas around the coffee table, sipping their hot drinks. Despite their lack of caffeine, the heat and comfort were enough to keep them awake for the time being. Once her thirst was sated, Barrett told her story.
Yeah, I chose to include the actual Samaritans phone number in the UK in here, not only for authenticity but also for anyone reading this who may need it.
The part with the cookies was inspired by the times my family have stayed in hotels that are part of a chain called Hilton, specifically their DoubleTree line. They give fresh chocolate cookies to you when you checking in and my God, they taste the best when you're relaxing in your room, exhausted after a long journey. There's a DoubleTree hotel in Newcastle so Barrett and Sophia can stay there.
God, I miss Newcastle, I had to leave after uni was closed thanks to the coronavirus.
Stay safe and healthy, folks.