38. Simone
Simone
I’m lying on my bed when I get the text.
Lani is on the floor, laptop out, scrolling through the classes she wants to register for in the fall.
It’s a normal night.
Normal.
Was normal.
Now…now nothing feels like it’ll ever be normal again.
When my phone lit up and I saw Lydia’s name…I don’t know, I thought it was good. I thought she’d text me something funny or cute—our way of always apologizing to each other. I thought maybe she’d be telling me she was on her way back to the dorm, where she hasn’t been in two days now.
Fuck, I don’t know what I thought.
But I didn’t think it would be this.
Lydia: I love you, Simone. I’m sorry. For all of it…
The message is long, way too long. It keeps going, line after line, and my brain refuses to process any of it because my brain knows what a goodbye text looks like, and I can’t accept that that’s what this is.
My whole body freezes, but I keep reading it.
I have to. I can’t not read it. Because Lydia is Lydia.
She’s dramatic sometimes, and she spirals sometimes, and she says things she doesn’t mean sometimes, and I need to be able to tell myself this is just another one of those times. But it isn’t. I fucking know it isn’t.
This isn’t her being dramatic or her trying to hurt me; it’s her apologizing for leaving me. Apologizing like she’s already gone.
“Simone…“ Lani’s voice sounds distant even though she’s right beside me.
“Stop,” I whisper, like it’ll make the words disappear. Like it’ll stop my best friend from doing the one thing I’ve always been scared of.
But it’s already here. It’s already happening. It’s already stabbing me in my chest with no warning.
My eyes blur from tears, making it almost impossible to keep reading.
You were my home when everything else burned down. If there are angels on earth, you are the proof. Please don’t be sad when you think about me.
The sound that comes out of me is so foreign that I don’t even recognize it was from me at first. It sounds like something between a gasp and a sob, and a scream that’s stuck in my throat. It hurts as badly coming out as my heart feels right now.
Lani reaches for me, but I jerk away without meaning to. I don’t want her acknowledgment to be what makes this real and not just a nightmare I’m stuck in.
“No,” I say. “No, no, no—she’s not—she’s not doing this.”
“Simone—”
Lani stops when her phone buzzes, too. She looks down at the screen and then back up at me with an even more horrified look than just seconds ago.
I snatch her phone, unable to stop the panic, and read her screen too.
None of it is fully registering. Everything feels like it keeps slowing down.
I can’t believe she’s actually doing this.
Lydia: Thank you for loving me loudly. For calling me out and calling me in. I know I’ve made it hard to be my friend sometimes, yet you were brave enough to try anyway. You saved me more times than you know. I’m sorry. I love you, always
I shove the phone back at Lani and frantically look for mine.
Where is it?
“Where is my fucking phone!”
Lani looks around, scared, and then finds it on the bed, grabs it, and hands it to me.
“No—no—no.”
I fumble trying to unlock it and then scroll to my recent calls and hit her name.
“Simone,” Lani tries again. “Breathe.”
“I have to call her!” I’m hitting call before my brain fully catches up. “I have to stop her!”
It rings.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then voicemail.
Lydia’s stupid, nonchalant, mellow-toned recorded voice greets me like a slap.
I hang up and call again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
Again.
My thumb shakes so hard I can barely hit any buttons on the screen. I try to text her so fast that I keep misspelling everything, having to delete and retype.
Simone: Where are you?
Simone: Pick up
Simone: Lydia please
Simone: I’m not mad. I’m not mad at all. Please just pick up
My chest physically hurts. Like my heart is trying to beat its way out of my body.
“Oh my gosh,” I whisper. “I have to find her—I have to stop her—”
“Simone—”
I grab Lani by the arms, not being able to control the way I feel helpless and trapped. “Lani, she’s going to fucking die if we don’t find her!”
My whole body goes numb at the realization that it could already be too late.
Lani wipes at her face, trying to be the strong one here.
I can’t stop my tears, though.
“Okay,” she says, trying to be calm even when I can hear the emotions she’s holding back. “Okay. We’re gonna find her.”
“What if she’s already—” I can’t say it. I can’t even think about the possibility of a world without my best friend in it.
Lani grabs my shoulders—hard enough to get my attention. “Don’t.”
I shake my head, eyes stinging. “This is my fault. I fought with her.”
“That doesn’t matter right now.”
“It does matter!” I shout. My voice hurts from how raw it feels. “We’ve been fighting so much lately. I pushed her, and she left! I thought she was just being dramatic, and would come back, and I didn’t—I didn’t—”
“You couldn’t have known,” Lani says, but she’s crying now too, the strength leaking out from the corners of her eyes. “You couldn’t have known.”
But I could have.
I should have.
I’ve always known.
Lydia disappearing isn’t new. Lydia hurting herself isn’t new. Lydia acting like life is something she’s tired of having to do isn’t new.
And I’ve been so self-absorbed lately…
I should have known.
I call her again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
Again.
I cry until I’m gagging on air, having nothing left in me but the pain.
“Where would she go? Where the fuck do we even look?”
Lani’s brain is already moving faster than mine as she yanks on her hoodie and shoves her feet into her shoes by the door. “Keys. Charge—”
“I don’t care about a charger, Lani!”
“You will when your phone dies,” she snaps, and the sharpness steadies me for a second, because Lani doesn’t snap at you unless things are serious.
She throws a charger in my bag for me. Like I’m a child, like I can’t function, like she has to be my nervous system right now.
And she does.
Because I can’t handle any of this.
We’re halfway to the door when my phone rings and Lydia’s name flashes on my screen.
For one desperate second, I feel hope so violently inside me it almost makes me sick.
“She’s calling,” I choke out.
My hands shake so hard the phone slips before I catch it and answer as fast as I can.
“Lydia?” My voice keeps breaking. “Lydia, please—hello?”
It’s a man’s voice that greets me, though.
Not Lydia’s.
My heart sinks all over again.
“Hey—this is Bash,” he says. “I—I found Lydia in my dorm’s community room. I think she overdosed.”
“Is she—”
“No. No, she’s…she’s not good, but she’s here. Pulse is really faint. We called 9-1-1. I’m taking her outside so the EMTs can get to her faster.”
“What building?” I ask breathlessly, already willing myself to be by her side as quickly as possible. “Tell me where—”
When he tells me which dorm building he’s at, I hang up and rush out the door with Lani.
“I called Sandro,” she tells me, “He’s already driving to us to take us wherever we need to go.
“Thank you.”
I can’t say anything else. I can’t even form a single complete thought right now.
All I can do is panic.
All my brain can do is play out the scenario of her not making it.
It hurts so badly that I feel like I could fall over from the pain as we run down the hall.
The elevator takes too long, so we take the stairs. It feels like the adrenaline is the only thing keeping me moving, not being able to think about anything else but getting to her.
The campus is always alive at night. Some people are still hanging out in groups, having a good time, as if nothing matters. I see a couple walking past holding hands, and someone else nearby is yelling something from across the sidewalk.
And my best friend is dying.
My brain can’t hold those two contradicting realities at the same time.
As soon as Sandro pulls up, we jump in. And as soon as he makes it across campus, I sling myself out of the car before he can even come to a full stop.
Lani and Sandro are right behind me, running to where we see the emergency lights at.
It’s all too real, and I hate it.
Staring at her being worked on by the paramedics, all I can do is beg God to let me trade places with her.
She’s not built for this.
Let me take it for her.
Let her have some peace.
Her story doesn’t get to end like this.
When they finally get the Narcan to work on her, I let out the longest relieved breath.
I feel lightheaded.
I feel drained.
I can’t stop staring at Lydia’s face. A face I don’t even feel like I recognize in this moment.
Her head falls to the side as her eyes flutter open for a moment.
Bash is close enough that Lydia’s gaze lands on his face.
He mouths something I can’t make out before they load her onto the stretcher, and it tugs on my heartstrings for some reason.
It’s like I can feel the way he cares…even when he barely knows her.
From the corner of my eye, I can see Lani and Sandro going back and forth from looking at Lydia to looking over at where Bash’s friend is standing. They look pissed, especially Lani, but I don’t have the time or strength right now to piece together what that’s about.
Riding over to the hospital in the back of the ambulance, watching her unconscious body just lying there…my heart starts to fully break with the reality of just how bad her pain had to have gotten.
The smell in here is all I can focus on. It’s so sterile and clean, and it makes me want to gag.
I don’t understand why life has had to be so cruel to her, why someone I love so much has been dealt such shitty cards in life.
“Hey,” I whisper, leaning down close to her face. “Hey, I’m here. I’m right here.”
My voice is shaky, and barely comes out, so I try again, try to steady myself for her. “You don’t get to leave me,” I tell her, and I know how selfish it sounds, but I can’t make myself care. “You hear me? You can’t leave me, Lydia.”
I just sit there and watch the slow rise and fall of her chest, because it’s the only thing I have to steady my panic, to tell me she’s still here.