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When we were in sixth grade, one of our friends was threatening to commit suicide. I don’t know what could have possibly been wrong with her life; she had the GAP clothes and the blonde hair and the “boyfriend” (a guy with whom she passed notes and held hands). Then again, most preadolescent woes are nothing compared to adolescent woes, which are nothing compared to real woes in the real world.
We stood around her, told her we loved her. She sucked up the attention, telling us that she was really thinking of ending it until we stood around her with love like that. After that she became dependent on our attention, threatening suicide whenever we weren’t giving her enough. Over time we almost regretted our decision. Then later, over more time, we in fact did.
Like it always happens, the shitty people always seem to remove themselves from your life. I don’t know if this is my personal trend, or if this happens to everyone, but let’s take a look. 1. The kid who used to beat me up, the one with one eye bigger than the other, who used to chase after me on his bike, moved. 2. The kid who used to tease me on the bus, the one with the druggie older sister, moved. 3. The former best friend who turned into a ditzy prep moved. 4. My former best friend who always had issues disappeared.
Implosion.
It happens all the time.
Now we have a different situation on our hands. I am standing in a bitterly cold parking lot outside my friend’s Jeep, leaning in and listening to a ska remake of “My Heart Will Go On.” He’s giggling. I’m tired.
“We should have another one of those...” I wave my hand around in the air.
“Interventions?” he asks.
“Yes!” I cry, grateful that for once in my life people were able to help me figure out the word for which I was searching. Usually they can’t.
“We should definitely do that. I’ll call you this weekend.”
We were all gathered in a circle around her. She had been pounced upon after coming out of her only class. It’s easy for you to be a slacker your senior year.
She glared at us, tried to slither by. It’s hard for someone so fat to slither, by the way. That’s why she’s “trying” as opposed to “succeeding.”
“I see that you have lost weight,” a friend told her. “It’s a start.”
She used to be bigger.
“Is it fun being soulless?” another asked.
“Does it suck to be you?” another asked.
“What is this? Get the hell away,” she glared at all of us.
“We’re holding an...”
“Intervention,” the Jeep friend informed her.
“I’m not doing any drugs or doing anything wrong,” she insisted.
“Actually, you’re rather bothering us,” a more bipolar buddy snapped. “We will not stand for it. Your attitude completely needs to be stopped.”
“I’m getting along fine. In fact, better off without you,” she said. “You’re all ugly homosexual failures.”
“In fact,” one of us said, “none of us are completely homosexual, for your information.”
“Not completely,” another agreed.
“We hate you,” I say blatantly.
“We want you to kill yourself,” the one with the Jeep informed her. “Or, to do drugs. And overdose.”
“But that is exactly the point of what an intervention isn’t!” she cried out, spreading her hands wide in a gesture of exasperation. “You’re supposed to be encouraging me to grab the bull by the horns and enjoy my life!”
“No no no, we want you to suffer and die,” one of us said, shaking a finger.
“You’re a pain in our collective ass,” the Jeep pal said. “We really, really hate you.”
“Is this for real? Is this a hazing ritual?” she asked, kind of terrified. “I never did anything wrong.”
Everyone pulled out printouts, her voice on videotape, her voice on cassette, all of her saying vicious things. Or they pulled friends out from behind the bushes , living proof that she’d been talking behind their backs.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“You suck at life,” I decreed.
“You should end it right here and now. While we’re watching. Because otherwise you’d mess it up, you’re such a fucking waste of air,” another added.
“Yeah. And water. And food. And when you walk on the grass you know it will never grow back because you’re a cursed she-devil,” the one with the Jeep added energetically.
We all pointed at the Jeep driver and nodded solemnly.
“This is supposed to be funny, right?”
“No, your entire life is like a drug, sucking the life out of all of us. And without you, we can recover and move on with our lives,” one of us informed her.
“Please, just do the world a favor and swallow some Mr. Clean!”
She blushed and walked away, muttering to herself that at least her life wasn’t cliché.
I woke up in a cold sweat. Wow.
It’s a good thing that girl moved away last year. Kids can be so cruel.