Aaron is left alone, wondering how on earth his father would have reacted had Aaron been the one to jump.
CHAPTER 2A: APRIL 18
The news finally comes through overnight. When Aaron checks his phone after he wakes up, there it is on the Daily News website.
Private School Girl Jumps from Bridge
An Upper East Side private school girl was pronounced dead after she apparently jumped from the George Washington Bridge on Wednesday afternoon.
The body of the 17-year-old girl was found on Wednesday evening in the Hudson River close to the bridge, authorities said. The injuries were consistent with someone who had jumped from a high distance.
Port Authority police are notifying the family. The teenager’s name has not been disclosed.
In the first four months of this year, there have been eleven suicides at the bridge. Seven of those have been teenagers.
Simultaneously numb and peeved by the lack of information, Aaron tries Heavy.com, because they tend to sometimes go further than the traditional news sites in terms of publishing information, and he needs her name. There’s been nothing in the last twenty-four hours about a jumper. He tries Twitter, typing in the names of various private schools and the word suicide. Once he types Spence, a post comes up from fifteen minutes earlier.
LYT @lyt_tenor
It was a Spence girl who committed suicide. omg I didn’t know her! Tillie something?
And then a response:
MoseDuBose @mosedubose
@lyt_tenor That’s seriously fukked up. Don’t know her
Aaron types in Tillie Spence suicide, and a bunch of tweets come up.
SammiLovesLemons @SammiQ10028
Omg Spence people. Tillie Stanley suicide. Poor Molly This is gonna kill her I can’t even
And then there’s this response:
Natasha Out! @mikedropnatNYC
@SammiQ10028 did you really just gloss over the fact that Tillie is dead and worry about fucking Molly Tobin, aka the reason why? You are literally the worst person.
Followed by this:
SammiLovesLemons @SammiQ10028
@mikedropnatNYC First off RIP Tillie Stanley. Second no one is talking to you. Ever. Remember that.
Followed by this:
Natasha Out! @mikedropnatNYC
@SammiQ10028 This. This is a lovely example of just the kind of online bullying that killed Tillie, so … congratulations on that. #worldsworstperson
SammiLovesLemons @SammiQ10028
@mikedropnatNYC so you calling me the world’s worst person isn’t online bullying but what I said is? Because I have friends and you don’t? #wrongpersonjumped
Aaron closes his eyes. Tillie Stanley. He didn’t see her up close, but she didn’t look like a Tillie Stanley. Could it have been another jumper? He types Tillie’s full name into Google Images and one of the photos that comes up is of three teenage girls at a formal dance or a gala of some sort. One is Black and has a large smile. Another is white, short, and skinny with pale blond hair. The third is Asian, short and wide, and she looks like she’s been caught mid-sentence, because her mouth is half-open. Aaron’s heart crashes into his stomach as he realizes it’s the third girl. He stares into her eyes and mouths, Sorry, Tillie Stanley, rest in peace. Why why why didn’t he just—say something? Go over to her? Stop being so damn selfish all the time. He’s so selfish, so useless.
His father knocks on the door with his usual knock-pause-knock-knock-pause-knock-knock-knock rhythm.
“How’s Aaron?”
Aaron groans. It’s like he’s on autopilot. This is the role he plays. Tired, lazy teenager. But his heart isn’t in it today.
“You almost ready for school?”
“Yes,” Aaron says, remembering he did zero homework yesterday, because, well. “Coming.”
It’s silent on the other side of the door, and he doesn’t hear footsteps walking away.
Aaron gets up, lunges into his open closet, and puts on a tattered gray robe he sometimes wears. He opens the door.
“Morning, Father dearest,” he says.
His dad wrinkles his nose and lunges his face forward to sniff. “Aaron. You gotta wash that. Immediately. Or burn it. I think I need to get another Magda, don’t I?”
“I can do laundry, Dad.”
“You can, yes. But you don’t. And I’m sorry. Not the way to greet a day. I apologize. Good morning, dearest son.”
Aaron bows respectfully. Inside his rib cage is the remnant of what he just read, but he pushes it down, caches it in his gut, along with all the other stuff from yesterday.
His dad is regarding him with much the same expression he had last night. “I swear that something’s not right. Are you depressed, bud? You know you can tell me, right? That I would do anything, anytime, anyhow, to help you? That I’d stop the world for you?”
“Yeah,” Aaron says. “You’d stop the world. I know.”
It’s the word. Depression. He gets it, that less than twenty-four hours ago he nearly died. But the word doesn’t feel … apt. Insofar as depression means sad, it’s kind of like, yeah. He has sadness. But also he has happiness, at random moments, and silliness, most of the time, and weirdness, just about always. His feelings are his. They don’t fit in a box and have a tidy label. A lot of things could happen and he’d feel better. Like if people commented on his songs, or laughed when he said things. He’s experienced it. One laugh, and then the rib crush? It’s like it never existed. That’s not depressed; that’s Aaron-esque, he guesses. Anyway, depression is interior. He knows that from his dad. This thing is just—his life is broken. Not his brain.
His dad is studying him like he’s a science project, perhaps something he’s grown in a petri dish.
“I got my eye on you, mister,” he says.
Aaron closes his left eye and squints his right. “And I got my eye on you, madame.”
His dad smirks and rolls his eyes. “Breakfast?”
“Cinnamon toast up. Orange juice, two small ice cubes. The round kind.”
His dad bows, which Aaron knows is a tribute to one of Aaron’s signature moves. “Showerup. And burn that robe, okay? I love you?”
Aaron laughs. If there’s one thing in the world that’s not in question, it’s his dad’s love.
“And you I love?” he says back, à la Yoda, and his dad smirks again and leaves him alone with his thoughts and his odiferous robe.
In the shower his brain does its Aaron thing, skipping from one random thought to another, which is why he’ll never be a scientist or a doctor or a lawyer or anyone who needs to have cogent, normal, focused thoughts. He thinks about Tillie Stanley, and a shiver runs through him despite the piping hot water running down his back, so his brain switches over to Mr. O’Mahoney from middle school, who still is and will always be his go-to, and his butt in gray coach’s shorts, and Avenue Q, and today is a new day, and he’s gonna push all the awful down, and no one will ever, ever know about yesterday, and thank god he didn’t succeed, and simultaneously he wishes he did, because he didn’t do his creative writing assignment and Ms. Hooper will give disappointed face, which is his least favorite Hooper expression, and Mr. O’Mahoney, bending down to pick up a soccer ball, and good god, man, they should sculpt that thing out of marble and make a monument, and is he ever going to have actual sex, and soap! He’s standing there, wet-but-soapless. How is it he sometimes forgets the soap, that might be a slight issue if he ever does want to have actual sex, and is it possible that Evan Hanson is gay? Not Evan Hansen from the show. Real Evan Hanson from school. Can you imagine having a name and then suddenly your name is a show and the rest of your life, every time you meet someone, it’s like, Are you Evan Hansen from the show? He would change it. He would totally, totally change it, and but so anyhow Evan Hanson, senior, sometimes theater-doer, and that taxi ride to the west side from Cecil’s party together and it was so awkward and so delicious and maybe touched by a little sexual tension? Hard to know, hard to know. But Tillie, Tillie Stanley falling, what’s next, what happens after? His mother—what would she have thought if he had—would she have thought it was her fault? His dad definitely should know it wasn’t—