Hope
A Short Story by
Bree Vanderland
Finding Hope
Bree Vanderland
Copyright Bree Vanderland 2012
This book is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of
people who have been bullied. Please remember that life
is worth it, no matter how many people say it isn’t.
Find the good in something and stick with it. Things will
turn out for the better.
I took a deep breath. This was the time. I was home alone and there was no one to stop me. Voices of the other people at school still rang through my mind, calling me names so unbearable. I wanted to just disappear. I wanted to be done with them forever.
I sat down on my bathroom floor, after gathering everything I needed and laying them neatly in front of me. My mother’s kitchen knife with a black handle filled with sand and my father’s simple silver handheld with one bullet locked and loaded were in front of me. For good measure, I had my grandmother’s pain pills in the original container. She wouldn’t know it was missing until it was too late; none of them would.
“Do you always need to dress like you’re homeless?” Vanessa’s voice rang through my mind, replaying one of my favorite scenes.
“What?” I questioned in the flashes. “I do not.”
“You do. With those rags, I’m surprised anyone talks to you. Why don’t you go back to the hold you climbed out of and stay there?”
Tears were clouding my sight. It was unbearable. Not only was Vanessa being mean, but she has everyone doing it, even Mark.
Mark. I let out a sigh. He was the guy I’ve had a crush on for years and now he was one of my tormenters. The irony just kills me. Even he was calling me a slut, telling people that I’ve slept with half the guys on our high school’s football team, which I haven’t.
My friends aren’t speaking to me anymore. Heather and Linda both abandoned me, leaving me to deal with this on my own. I couldn’t trust anyone. Just when you think your friends are there for you to lean on, they abandon you when you need them the most.
I stood up and walked through the door to my right and stepped into my bedroom. My door was closed and locked, making sure no one would get in. I made sure my cat was outside. I didn’t want her to see what was happening. I didn’t want any witnesses.
The sun shone through my curtains, illuminating my room with a pink glow. I looked on my bed where my computer was and glared at it. I know I shouldn’t be mad at the computer, but I was mad at the people I knew. I was mad at the world for abandoning me. I was mad because my parents didn’t care. They wouldn’t even miss me if I was gone. They wouldn’t mourn or even cry for me. They had another child. They had the perfect child in my older sister, Cheyenne.
“Why can’t your grades be as good as Cheyenne’s?”
“Why can’t you keep things as neat as Cheyenne?”
“Why can’t you look like Cheyenne?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t take my parent’s comments anymore. I couldn’t take any of it. I was gasping for air as I was crying and couldn’t breathe anymore. I grasped my chair and leaned over it, trying to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. This was it. I was really doing this one way or another.
I walked over to my bed and opened my laptop to one of my online profiles. There were countless new inboxes and comments on my photos or posts, calling me all kinds of things. People were cruel in this world.
My computer beeped with another comment on a post and I slammed it down.
“SHUT UP!” I yelled as I slung the laptop off my bed. It hit the floor with a crash and I could have sworn it was broken, but I didn’t care. Let it be broken. I glanced over at my phone, resting on my nightstand and picked that up as well. I threw it against the wall and laughed as it shattered leaving harassing texts unread.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I wouldn’t need either once I was finally gone. In death, I would be whatever I wanted or nothing at all, it all depended. It all depended on whether I was reborn into another life, waiting for someone else to find me.
Those two words made me begin to wonder who would find me. Would it be my mother or my father? Would it be Cheyenne? Would anyone notice me gone until my body decomposed and started to smell? Would someone look for me before then? I had no friends who would come looking for me and I wasn’t entirely sure that my family would either. I’m invisible and I have been for awhile. Nothing ever works out for me, can’t you tell?
There were cliques even in the ninth grade. There were the jocks, the geeks, the nerds, the populars, and even the bullies. Out of all of those, there were two groups I feared the most; the populars and the bullies. The populars are just as bad as the bullies, bringing other people down to allow others to feel better about themselves and that’s just what they did to me. I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I wanted to stay home. I even asked my parents if I could be homeschooled, but they said no. They wouldn’t listen to me anymore, not like they ever did.
You make it to high school and people always say to tell an adult if you’re being attacked whether it’s physical or emotional, but no one listened to me. No one even cared anymore. I was invisible and no one was going to find me. No one would be finding Hope.
I was angry. I walked over to a shelf of books my dad put up and slid them all off, watching as they hit the floor with a thud. Picking up the mug that was holding my pens and pencils I used on my homework, I threw it against the wall, cringing as it shattered. I could hear a knock on the door, but when I peered out my window all I saw was the UPS man leaving a package on the doorstep. My mom would be thankful that her coffee got here more than she would be to see me. I give up.
I give up on my friends. I give up on my family. I give up on this messed up world. I was a freak. I was strange and unusual. I was a slut. I was someone no one wanted to be around. I was the person people threw food at in the cafeteria. I was the person people pushed out of their way.
I needed to get out of this room. I needed to get out of this house. I put on my red, purple and white stripped hat and scarf to keep warm on this fall day and left my long sleeved, purple shirt on as well as my blue jeans, but I didn’t go far.
I walked out of the house and down the small path behind our house that led to the lake. I just wanted to clear my mind, but it did nothing but confirm what I wanted to do. The bright sky and colorful leaves did nothing to cheer me up. Not expecting anyone home for a few more hours, I thought I would waste time, thinking on if this was really what I wanted, but everything I saw, did or thought all pointed towards yes. Yes, I wanted everything to end. The tormenting had to stop. My parent’s comments had to stop. Everything just had to stop.
“Please,” I begged in vain, but no one was around. “Please save me.”
There was no answer.
“Please show me a sign if I’m not meant to do this?”
I waited, but no one came and there was no sign. There was no one telling me I shouldn’t do this, which is what I needed. I needed one person to tell me they needed me. I needed one person to tell me that I was a reason they were here, but no one did. Silence was all that met me.
Silence was something I was accustomed to in the past two months while everything took off. Silence was now my best friend. After death, I could stay there forever, with nothing but silence surrounding me. There was nothing out here for me and only death waited inside. I went inside and sat at the counter in the kitchen. I heard my stomach growl because I was hungry, but I didn’t want to eat something if all I was going to do was die.
I jumped when I heard the house phone ring, so I picked it up, muttering a quiet “hello?”
“Hope? Is that you?” I heard Cheyenne’s voice come throug
h the phone. I rolled my eyes. Of course she would call right about now.
“Yeah,” I told her. “What’s up?”
“I was just calling to let mom and dad know that I’m going to be at Justin’s until late. Did you do your chores? Can you do mine please?”
“Why can’t you do your own? I’m not doing yours just so you can spend time with Justin. It’s not fair,” I told her. Of course she would call and get under my skin right now.
“Damnit, Hope. You really aren’t good for anything,” she spat out as she slammed the phone down.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t good for anything. Maybe I really did just need to complete the task I saw before. Maybe I just really did need to end everything. Everyone seems like they would be much better off. They had to be. Cheyenne could do her own chores and mine. She usually goes behind me to do mine anyway because I don’t do them the right way as according to everyone.
I looked at the sink full of dishes and turned away. They wouldn’t be done. I glanced in the direction of the clothes that needed to be folded, but they wouldn’t be done either. It would be impressive if my family actually did them without me, but I knew they would figure something out. They would be okay. They hardly acted like I existed anyway.
The world around me was bleak and without meaning. I wonder if anyone knew the meaning of life. Was it to grow old and have a family? Was it to go to classes and get an education? Was it to find love or even a reason worth living? Right now I had none. Maybe, just maybe, my family would miss me, but I didn’t believe that it would be for long. They would move on without me. I couldn’t take this anymore.
With that on my mind, I ran back into my bedroom and closed the door. I slammed my way back through the mess in my bedroom to get to my bathroom. As soon as I was in there, I leaned over my sink and looked into the mirror. I saw nothing other than my gray eyes staring back at my straight, blonde hair. This wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth the stress when I could feel nothing at all.
Taking yet another deep breath, I sat on the floor and looked at my three options. This was it. This was the end. All I had to decide was how I was going to go. I didn’t see a point in talking, thinking or even breathing anymore. I just wanted the pain to go away. I couldn’t take the torturing anymore. I couldn’t stand it!
Tears rushed down my face as there was a pain in my chest. I wanted it to stop. I needed it to stop. Looking at my three options again, I picked up the knife. I spun it around in my hands, twisting it slowly. It would be a mess to clean up. Death would come slowly. Death would be painful. I carefully sat it back onto the floor and picked up the small container of pills. Enough of these would send my body into shock and eventually death, but it too would be slow and painful. I didn’t want things to be painful. I wanted a quick death. That left one option.
I picked up the gun and checked the rounds. I had exactly one. That was all I needed. I blinked the tears away and held the gun to my temple. One shot would kill me, right? I needed this. Others needed this. Things would be so much better with me gone. Just then, I pulled the trigger. I never even heard it go off.
All around the world there are countless number of teens facing bullying of all kinds. It could be in person or online. What matters is that we let people know that we are here for them, no matter what. There needs to be more people around who voice that they are there for people. Let’s put an end to bullying so we can save lives of those who think life isn’t worth living