short story

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She smiled and looked at me for the first time still holding my hand. She stepped down from the ledge and hugged me tightly; I hugged back. We stood there for a minute not saying anything. After a bit We started walking slowly over to the stairs that led back into the building. I had my hand on the small of her back just slightly guiding her back towards the steps.
“Wait.” Annabel said stopping short at the top of the stair case.
“What is it?”
“I have something for you.” she reached into the pocket of her jeans and handed me a folded piece of paper. “I wrote this last night.”
“Oh okay.” I took the paper and started unfolding it.
“Thanks.” she said and quickly sprinted back towards the ledge that we’d just come from earlier.
I couldn’t get to her in time. She didn’t hesitate this time. She didn’t linger. She didn’t wait. She jumped from the fourth story of Redwood Recovery Center. I watched her small frame float to the ground below. In some horrible, terribly heinous way, she looked free. When Annabel’s body hit the pavement looked as if it would not have wanted to be anywhere else. This was not her fourth attempt to kill herself, this was the first and and time she succeeded. I screamed, I cried, I shook as I watched her body hurl to the earth by it’s own doing. Part of me, the part that so often keeps me up at night, wanted to join it, but part of me couldn’t. The blood curdling sound of a human body hitting pavement that hard will forever ring in my ears. It goes past hearing bones crack and break, it is as if you hear the soul leave the body through the newly found cracks that no metaphorical band-aid can cover. Annabel died that day. She died because it was the only way for her to feel the freedom that she had withhe...

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...nfinite expanse that only you and I could conquer. You made we want to explore, to dream of something, and to feel. I cannot explain how much more time I wanted for us, but God, I know that I wanted more than we got. You are truly the first person that I loved, and I would not have had it any other way. James, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for you, nor can I express how sorry I am for me. You will go on to do amazing things, you will fall in love and explore and write and make art and make people happy and do the things that you have always dreamed of, I just ask that you do not forget me, because I know that in the very depths of my soul I won’t forget you. The world is waiting for you, so go see it up close, go write your book, go paint your canvas, and go play your music. It’s what I’ve loved about you since the beginning. See you around.
––Annabel

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