AN: So, I'm going to bore you with my author's note in order to tell you from where the inspiration to write this came.

One of my friends overdosed.

Honestly, I don't know the whole story, but I went to school and during lunch everyone was talking about how she had overdosed and that it was an attempt at suicide. She comes from a terrible family, or so I've heard, and my heart goes out to her. Even though we're not the best of friends, I have to say I'm pretty angry about her doing this. I'm angry, but sympathetic. So, I dedicate this to her, and I hope she gets out of the hospital soon.

It’s like… trying to eat ice cream with chop-sticks. It works at first, and you’re sure it’ll work all the way through without any problems, but as everything begins melting, it’s harder and harder to work with.

Eventually, you’re left with nothing but a mess at the bottom of the bowl.

A big, wet, nasty mess.

“I’m going to do it this time. I’m going to, I swear it.”

She’s breathing into the phone, her tears dropping onto the receiver in tiny “plip”-noises. She’s probably curled up against her wall with her wispy form, her eyeliner running like black tears down her freckled and pale cheeks, pills spilled over her carpet, some rolled under the bed, some in her nail-bitten fingers, being caressed and considered to be swallowed.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I just wish she would.

Do it.

End it.

It’s not as though you’re really going to do it.

This is all just a waste of my time, because in the end, she’ll give up, and that’ll be the end of it.

Everything will be fine; it’s like a freezer in here, and nothing’s to melt any time soon.

I keep my voice steady as I murmur into the phone, “Phoebe, we can talk about this. I know things are rough, but you’ll pull through. You always do.”

She was the one who called me, anyway. And when people call to tell you they’re dying, it’s never the real thing. It’s just a scream for attention. If people really want to kill themselves, then they’ll just do it. They’ll just get it over with, maybe with a small note attached to their dangling or bloody or mangled corpse.

Never will the real thing call you up and announce it.

Never will the Reaper ring the bell for his visit.

“I can’t take it anymore!! I just want to die!! I’m really going to do it!!”

An abusive father and a neglectful mother with a cocaine-addiction can do that to an only child. A lustful older brother and a perverted little cousin can drive one to the edge of the cliff to look at the long fall with want.

Time and again I’ve begged her to go to the authorities, but she insists on playing this game—this game that can only lead to more pain instead of a relief from it.

“Phoebe, please, just slow down and think about what you’re doing. People would miss you. People love you, and we don’t want--”

“You don’t get it!! I’m not joking! I’m--”

And then things start to melt, and things are harder to grasp.

“Phoebe, shut up and listen to me,” I mumble to her through grit teeth, my fingers nearly snapping my cell-phone. “I’m going to call the police and I’m going to have them check you into rehab. I’ve had enough of this game.”

Drip, drip, back into the bowl…

She’s quiet on the other end, perhaps contemplating how best to get me to her house so she can sob… sob.. sob… until she’s feeling better, It’s not as though I mind her feeling bad, it’s just that the whole “abuse-card” is getting old.

Drip…

“Fine. Call them. Just you wait. When they get here, they’ll be too late.”

Ha. Funny of her to think of some drama-esque line to make me feel partially bad.

I can see her sulking as she presses “end” and stands from her curled-up position to sashay into the bathroom to spread more pills around the counter and fill the bath with water, to make more obvious her desperate cry for help, and I shut and re-open my phone. I can see her slip out of her gown and into the scalding water as I dial 9-1-1. I can picture her spreading out the razorblades on the tub-edge and lighting up a cigarette to dangle loosely from her thin lips as I tell the police where she is and what the Hell is wrong with her.

And then I see the grime at the bottom of the bowl, the sticky wet goo that had once been a solid thing.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to eat ice cream with chop-sticks. Many times, you manage to finish in enough time and everything’s okay.

But sometimes… you just don’t finish fast enough, and you end up scraping the remnants out with a spoon.

“She’s dead. She… died of an overdose. We couldn’t make it in time.”

I close my eyes and see thin Phoebe, sprawled out over her kitchen counter, a pill-bottle in one hand and half a bottle of vodka in the other, which drops from her skeleton-like fingers and rolls under her bed.

I barely have enough strength to scrape out what’s left.