His chin crumples before he starts to cry. His mom hustles over, apologizing to me, which means she probably doesn’t know what I said, but Alexis gives me a weird look, which means she probably does.
So this is who I’ve become, someone who picks fights with toddlers.
I return my attention to the computer, scrolling through All_BS’s words: the tiny spark, the mighty flame. Screw your courage to the sticking place. The little kid is now sobbing from the safety of his mother’s lap. I feel ashamed, but the shame has forced some clarity upon me: I can keep picking small fights, or brave the big one.
Time to screw my courage. Or go down trying.
In quick succession, I send two messages. The first is to Harry Kang, asking him what kind of information I’d need to track someone down, because all this becoming All_BS’s buddy does me no good unless I can find out who he is.
The second is to All_BS:
I’m ready. I want to take the next steps. Will you help me?
As soon as I hit send on the second message, my anger, my angst, my self-pity disappears, leaving only a calm and steely resolve. I wonder if this was how Meg felt.
The little kid has stopped crying and is now staring at me resentfully with his tearstained face. I look back at him and smile.
26
It doesn’t take All_BS long to reply to my message, though he doesn’t respond in the way I expected him to: by sending me the same files I believe he sent Meg. Instead, what I get is a message quoting Martin Luther King Jr. “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.” To it he adds: You’ve already taken the first step in deciding. After that comes a link leading to a sort of directory with all these options: pills, poisoning, gunshot, asphyxiation, strangulation, drowning, carbon monoxide, jumping, hanging. When you click on each one, there is a detailed—and I mean detailed—list of pros and cons, as well as statistics listing success rates of each method. This is similar to the document I first found encrypted in Meg’s trash, but not the same.
Over the next week, more messages come:
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”—Lao-Tzu.
Do you know what that means? Letting go of the fear? Dying is not about ending something; it’s about beginning something. I keep thinking of the moniker you use: Repeat. It’s not accidental, I assume. But you realize, repeating is precisely what you’re doing. The same thing. It’s only when you’re willing to do something bold, different, that your life will truly change.
He’s proud of me. I can tell. Which makes me proud of myself. I know it shouldn’t. But it still does.
I keep waiting for him to ask for specifics. I’ve spent hours looking at the suicide shopping list, so, without intending to, I sort of planned how I might do it—or rather, I planned myself doing it as Meg did. Getting the fake business license. Ordering the poison. Having it delivered to one of those mailbox places. Writing a will. Packing up my room. Going to the bank to get a fifty-dollar bill for the maid’s tip. Composing an email. Setting it for delivery. Checking into a motel.
The information on the sites All_BS referred me to is so thorough that I know how it would feel to take the poison. The burning sensation in my throat, then my stomach; the tingling in my feet that would tell me it was starting to work; then the cramps, followed by coldness as the cyanosis kicked in.
I’ve imagined it so many times now, first with Meg, then with me, and it’s like how it always used to be, when I couldn’t tell one of us from the other—when I didn’t want to.