A quick breath in. The water below roared.
Loud breath out. The wind grew restless.
My eyelids shut. The cliff moaned with excitement.
The small envelope in my hand drifted down, until it reached the ground next to my right foot. I took a step forwards. Again. The canyon floor seemed to reach out of the shadows and wrap its cold hands around my ankles. I turned back to face the desert road. A red car was moving fast. I heaved one last heavy sigh and leaned backwards. I close my eyes and the world roared around me.


“To whom it may concern:
Hello. Thank you for picking up my letter. If you’re reading this, it probably means I’m gone by now. Death has caught me at the bottom of the canyon and has carried me off to my new home with his rock soft hands. I know you don’t know me, or what I do, or why I did what I did. I’ll get to that. But first I want you to take out your phone. Call this number: (REDACTED) and read this to them.

Hello. I’m sorry. I hope you know that my actions do not reflect upon your relation to me. I made decisions I know are bad, and I know that you are confused. I love you so much. I will miss you. But I want you to stay there with the living. Don’t go and try to come join me. I wont be able to look at you. I want you to stay in your little periwinkle room and wait for another guy to come around. The right guy. I know, I may have seemed the part, but I want you to know that I was not the one. I couldn’t be. I hope you forgive me.

Mason

Thank you, friend. That was only a little thing I wanted someone to know. I want to start at the beginning of the story. It started in around fifth grade. I always hung out with the girls. I was just more comfortable with them. All the other boys though I was weird. Not a single day went by when I was embarrassed to even go anywhere near the bathroom. They were always there, with insults and wet toilet paper that would pierce me like a knife. Not even all of the girls would play with me.

In seventh grade, I had this friend. I won’t tell you her name but she was amazing. She was so funny and we had so much in common. By that time, I had established myself as the first homosexual in the entire class. Everyone was accepting. But this girl, she was so amazing in every way. I wanted to be like her. My aunt had always said she wanted another niece. So I started to mentally identify myself as a woman. I wasn’t walking into the girl’s bathroom or anything, but I was thinking about that. (I never did, by the way.)

Flash foreword to freshman year: I’m taller and a little thinner. This girl is still in the school, everyone is still accepting. But I felt different. Something was missing from me. I didn’t have any one who loved me. It was kind of lonely, you know? Not having a crush on somebody, and the only thing crushing about it is the how they are 100% straight. I was lonely. And there was this one boy, who was quiet and skinny. He had an older sister who overshadowed him by so much. He was cute, and I liked him, but it was doomed to be separated. Now, since we’re all freshman now, and are slightly more comfortable with everyone, two more people come out. I talk to both of them, but we’re only friends. One night, on a class trip bus ride coming back in from Michigan or whatever, I was sitting next to the cute boy. One of my friends sat across from me and smiled and raised his eyebrows at me the entire ride. He knew. Everyone knew. Well, the boy and I sat together, and It may have been that he was drunk, or high or something, but he rested his head on my shoulders. I rested my head on his.

After that, surprisingly, things escalated. He talked to me, and I talked to him. We ate lunch together, sat together, worked together. One day we went out for lunch together. It wasn’t much, just Chipotle. And he reached over for a chip from my bag, then kissed me. It was a shock really. He pulled the chip out and dipped it in the guacamole that sat in front of us. He reached for his soda and after he sipped from the straw, I kissed him back.

Somehow, his sister found out one day, and she walked up to me in the hallway and threw my laptop to the ground. It shattered with a loud slam and small pieces of glass slid out, making a halo around the smashed device. She left without a single word.

After that, the boy never spoke to me. And I guess he never will. A couple days ago, I talked to that girl, the pretty one, and I asked her what to do. She didn’t know. Nobody really knew, I was the only one to deal with this.

The sister hit me a few more times. Physically. When they do my autopsy don’t be surprised if you find a concussion or something. I did jump off a cliff. But the sister hit me really hard. I never cried so hard In my life. Inbetween hits from her feet, I could see the boy, tears in his eyes as he looked away.

I’m going to stop writing now, It’s getting late. Tomorrow Is a big day. Take this number, (REDACTED). It’s my parents. Give this to them. They didn’t know anything about this.

Never, ever, give up friend. Stay strong and pull through. With my weak arms, there’s no way in Hell I could have made it through.

Mason.”