May 17, 2008.

Awful day today. Mom and Dad went at it again, making Lills cry. She always gets so upset when they fight, and it depresses me to see her, the happiest kid in the world, crying. All the noise gives me a headache, too.

So we went out for a walk, just me and her. The nice thing about living up here in Julian is having the forest all over the place, just perfect for times like this.

I watched Lills run around after our short little walk, darting in and out through the pines and the clearing we had stopped in. She reminded me of that one character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream… Puck. The little fairy that ran around the whole time, playing tricks on people. I’d smile at her, and off she’d run, playing some sort of game. It was nice. I had a lot of time to think about things, things like life. About how fragile it is, about how one tiny slip can end it. Or begin it, as the case may be. Deep stuff for a high schooler, I know, but that’s the sort of thing I think about sometimes.

It’s funny, because I look at my calendar hanging on the wall across my room, the one with the different flowers for each month my mom gave me for Christmas, and the only thing I see is the big red ‘X’ I put over the little box that says 17. No one ever comes in my room, so I never had to explain it to anyone, that big red ‘X’. At the end of every month since I had put it there in January, I would walk over to flip the page for the next month, look at the bright photograph of the daisy, or the petunia, or the sweet pea, then turn to May to make sure it was still there. May 17, 2008. The flower this month is a single, white lily.

I don’t remember why I had picked a Saturday. Maybe I knew somehow, back in January, that today would be the terrible day it turned out to be. Maybe I wanted my dad to be home for once, to see me lying on my bed, all peaceful and doped up on the painkillers I’ve been sneaking from out of the medicine cabinet downstairs. Maybe I wanted my mom to stop watching her stupid television shows and have something real to cry about. Maybe I wanted Lills to think that I was only sleeping in because I had stayed up past my bedtime the night before.

I don’t know. But today is the day, and the white lily and the big red ‘X’ stare back at me while the sun makes the clouds outside my window orange. Today is the day, and the day is almost over. Today is the day, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel numb.

Ironic, isn’t it?

It makes me upset. I’ve been planning this thing for months, and I can’t do it. But I already promised I’d finish writing what I wanted to say in here, before I finally go.

My mom is crying. I can hear her sobs from up here, because the TV isn’t on. It should be dinnertime soon, but I’m not hungry.

So I stare at that white lily and the big red ‘X’ and everything around me that’s stained orange from the sun, and I wonder how much longer it will be before I look at them for the last time in my life.