I hadn’t seen Emily Green in months. My father refused to let me go knock on her front door, and she never came outside. My seventh birthday had come and passed, resulting in nothing except bike rides around town, feeling on top of the world. I felt so powerful any time I rode by a kid that was still stuck on a scooter.

    My friend Jacob had gotten a bike for his birthday as well, so we spent a lot of time racing and seeing who could make the biggest black mark on the pavement. Weeks passed by this way, until Jacob moved without any warning. I was left to ride alone. I eventually started riding off-road; on dirt, gravel, mud. Anything that would make things more interesting.

    I was testing the mud by the river. I had succeeded in falling over many times. I was so distracted by my front tire stuck in the mud that I almost didn’t see her.

    Emily Green’s back was to me, and she showed no sign of knowing I was there. Her hair had grown. In fact, all of her had grown. It bothered me that she grew faster than I did. I was the boy, wasn’t I supposed to be big and strong?

    I approached her, albeit very quietly. I reached my hand out to touch her when she turned around. Her face was red and stained with tears.

    She began furiously scrubbing her face clean of tears, her muffled voice only uttering two words: “Scram, kid!”

    I did what I had seen people on TV do; I reached out and patted her on the shoulder. Well, I was aiming for her shoulder, but the height difference meant that I could only reach her back.

    She blinked her confused gaze toward me. “The hell did you do that for?”

    I gasped as if I had just witnessed a Hollywood scandal. “You said a bad word!”

    I had expected her to start apologizing or asking for me to not tell her parents. But she laughed. It was a sharp, cold laugh that was accompanied by a pained look.

    “Kid, you’re going to hear a lot worse things in life than that. Trust me. High school is one hell of a doozy.”

    As she was speaking, she slipped off her jacket and tied it around her waist. Her arms became visible, and my eyes were drawn to the red marks like moths to a light.

    “How’d you get hurt?” I asked. I was a kid, I wanted answers. I craved to learn new things. Emily barely glanced at her arm before I began speaking again. “I got a scrape on my knee! I fell off my bike. It bleeded a lot. My daddy says it makes me look tough!”

    Emily didn’t get the chance to respond. I remember the moment happening in slow motion. Emily glanced down at her leg, I stabbed a stick into the mud. The next thing I knew, Emily was on her feet, frantically brushing off every single part of her body. Thinking she had seen something dangerous, I stood, too, checking myself.

    When Emily let out a sigh of relief, she simply said, “Thought I saw a ladybug.”

    That statement brought a frown to my face. A ladybug? Really? Later on I learned that she had confused ladybugs with Asian lady beetles, but I can understand her concern. While they don’t spread disease, they do bite. Hard. I ended up experiencing this myself about three years afterward.

    I tilted my head up to look at her. “You’re really weird.”

    That brought a smile to her face. “Says the one wearing Batman socks with a Superman shirt.”

    I glanced down at myself. I crossed my arms over my chest. “I like how I look. My daddy says I’m getting really tall!”

    She sighed, patting my head in the process. “You’re gonna need that confidence by the time you’re my age.”

    I didn’t understand what that meant, of course. So, instead of questioning her, I asked, “Why were you crying?”

    She shook her head at me. “I don’t have the time or the crayons to explain that to you.” Looking at the watch on her wrist, she began to walk off. “It’s getting late. Go home, kid.”

    I ran to catch up. “I can’t! My bike is stuck!”

    She stopped for a moment, then looked up to the sky as if to ask the clouds Why me?

    It took her less than thirty seconds to get up the hill and pull my bike out of its bug infested prison. When she walked away again, I rode my bike next to her. The street lights began turning on. She didn’t comment about the dark that I was so terrified of a few months ago. It didn’t matter this time, I had Emily with me. We reached my house, and, just like last time, she walked me to the front door.

    “Can we play tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.

    Her neutral look turned uncomfortable. “Uh… probably not. You might not see me for a while.”

    “Why?”

    She exhaled sharply. “I’m… going away.”

    My eyes lit up. “You’re going on vacation?!”

    She smile softly. “Yeah. Something like that.”

    My dad called my name from inside the house. I opened the door to tell him I’d be there in a minute. When I turned back to Emily, she was already halfway across the street.

    She called back to me. “See ya, kid.”

    I was sad that she left so soon, but a yawn from my mouth revealed my tiredness, and I went inside. My dinner was cold, but I didn’t care. I finally got to see Emily Green again.

    If I had known then the amount of time it would be before I finally saw her again, I would’ve asked more important questions.

     Being twelve was one of the worst things that happened to me. For some reason, my body began changing before most of my classmates, which meant acne, voice breaking, and body odor. All of these things combined were the equivalent of the devil.

I was spending most of my time inside doing homework or watching television. Video games weren’t really my thing. Any time I played against my friends, I lost. I was bad. Really bad.

One day, though, my dad had gotten fed up with my couch potato attitude and kicked me out of the house. He told me kids “need their fair share of sunlight.” A kid getting their electronics taken away is probably one of the worst things in their minds.

Instead of walking, I pulled out my bike (I had gotten a new one for my eleventh birthday) and rode around for a while. Eventually, I came upon a familiar path way near the woods. Without any hesitation, I rode down the rocky path to the river. I don’t know why I thought I’d find her there, but I did.

There was Emily Green. Taller, bigger, and sitting on a fallen tree. It had been almost six years since I had seen her. Back then, it never occurred to me that she should have been in college. That’s what normal twenty year olds do. But her age didn’t even cross my mind.

I dropped my bike in the grass, not bothering to prop it up against a tree. I nearly tripped many times while running down that hill.

I called her name. When she turned around, I literally stopped in my tracks. She was nothing like I remembered. While her face still had a juvenile look to it, she somehow looked more like a woman. Well, she was, but she didn’t resemble the college girls I had seen before. Her cheeks were hollow-looking, and the purple circles under her eyes had me worried. I could’ve held a piece of printer paper up next to her, and you wouldn’t have been able to tell a difference in color. She was also thin. Very thin. Thinner than anyone I had seen in my classes.

Her eyes weren’t tear stained, but the emotion that they held was enough to make me continue moving toward her.

When I reached her, her eyes were sort of squinting at me. She stared at me for a few seconds. Then she gasped. “Oh my god!”

    Before I could blink, she had me wrapped in her arms. She smelled like peppermint mixed with alcohol. At the time it hadn’t registered that she was extremely drunk. All I recognized was the smell.

    As she held me in her arms, I didn’t move, nor did I attempt to hug her back. I wasn’t quite sure how to react. I hadn’t had much physical contact with females and, to be fair, I was still in shock that Emily had returned.

    When she pulled back, there were tears in her eyes. I couldn’t tell if they were from sadness, joy, or something else entirely. She didn’t say anything to me. She just looked at me, taking in everything.

    Then she finally spoke:

    “I wish you hadn’t shown up today.”

    I was quite taken aback by that statement. There was no bitterness in her voice. It was a simple, monotone statement that cut me to the core. My previous joy at seeing an old childhood friend had deflated like a balloon forced into a freezer, shriveled and cold.

    I couldn’t think of anything to say. I couldn’t even look at her face. I instead focused on the orange and brown leaves that surrounded us, evidence of the quick approaching Autumn.

    Then she sat back down. She just turned her back to me and sat back down on the tree. This was the most distant I had seen her. Her younger self still had some light left in her, but seeing her as a grown woman showed that she truly drained of energy, motivation, and hope.

    I wish I could have said something more, but the only thing I could think to say was, “Things will get better.”

    As I was turning to leave, I heard a very quiet, “Goodbye, Michael.”

With a dejected look, I was off. The ride back to my house seemed to take twice as long as it did when I was younger, and skidding to a sudden stop on the pavement didn’t seem as fun.

    I decided right then and there that Emily Green was no longer going to be a part of my life. If she didn’t want me around, then I wouldn’t stick around. Looking back, I wish I would’ve.

That was the first time she had called me by my name. I only wish I could have said something, anything more to her. Maybe then it wouldn’t have also been the last time.

     I didn’t go to Emily Green’s funeral. To be honest, I don’t think anyone in her family knew that I existed. I read about her death in the paper. It didn’t list the cause of death, but I still knew. And I never really knew much about her condition to begin with.

    It took me a few years to realize it, but I shouldn’t have been as emotionally torn about Emily Green’s death as I was. I met her only three times, only about two hours in total. So why did it have such a big impact on my life? I suppose it has something to do with children and their sentimental attachment to things and people.

    I feel a bit possessive of Emily Green and her story. My family didn’t know about her, and I never mentioned her to my friends. Any time someone brought it up in school, I had to walk away. I wanted her story to be my secret.  I was angry. Why did she have to die? Was there really something in her life that was that big of a burden? I look back and still can’t understand. I was angry with myself for a while, as well. I couldn’t stop thinking, if I had done something differently, if I had said something or acted a certain way, would Emily still be around today? Would the girl at the river still be able to watch the seasons change from her bedroom window? Or would it have made any difference? Would it have mattered? Could I have said just one word and changed her mind? When I finally voiced my dated guilt, my husband reassured me kindly that there was no way I could’ve known, and that when people like that are too far gone, there are very few things to pull them away from their stupor.

    I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I have never known the hardships of someone who has gone through mental health struggles such as the late Emily Green. She was experiencing something that I could never fathom even in my wildest dreams. I have never had reason to think so badly of my life that I would consider ending it. To me, the thought is absurd. I can’t imagine why anyone would be so selfish, to remove themselves from other people’s lives when there are so many people who love and care about them. I’m lucky because I don’t ever have to imagine what being in such a low place feels like. But I’m not downplaying any of those things.

     They taught us about these things in school. But everyone was always too scared to say the word. They would beat around the bush, calling it “taking their own life” or “is no longer with us.” They’re afraid to say the word because it’s too straight forward. I suppose I have been doing the same during the duration of almost this entire entry, but suicide is a serious thing that should never be taken lightly. Suicide is something that ends lives of real people that are just trying their hardest to get ahead in this crazy, messed up world we live in. If they die, you will never see that person walking down the hallway to class, or getting a cup of coffee at your local Starbucks ever again. Once someone is gone, they are gone for good. There’s nothing you can do to change that. Suicide changes more lives than your own, and effects multiple people and how they decide to live.

    And Emily Green changed mine. Emily Green taught me that you don’t have to know someone to talk to them. She taught me that you don’t have to be best friends with someone in order to want to spend more time with them. You don’t have to have a romantic attraction to someone to want to know everything about a person because their life is different than yours, and even though you have never seen them before, you know that they’re hurting, and you care. Emily Green taught me that you can care deeply for a person, regardless of relation. If you think someone is hurting, just one goddamn smile can change the outcome of so many things. So if you see someone hurting, smile. Talk to them. Make them feel like they matter. You never know when you might miss a chance to save a life.

The End.