Everything felt cold to Hannah, in these last few minutes of her life. The wind up on the roof blew sharply, swirling and gusting in a way that whipped her long blonde hair into her face and cut right through her thin dress like she wasn't even wearing it. She wished she didn't feel the cold; she had imagined the pain inside her was so enormous that it would shut out things like physical discomfort, but it didn't. Her skin had pebbled into goosebumps all over, and she shivered as another gust of icy wind blasted across her face. Oh, well. It wouldn't matter for long.
A thicker dress would have helped, but she wanted to wear the one she'd worn to the park on that day when they'd first kissed. Not that anyone would know that except for her and Gia. It was probably cruel to wear it, but Hannah didn't care--Gia had hurt her so bad she couldn't live with the pain anymore, so maybe Gia deserved a little sliver of guilt pricking her conscience.
She put her hands on the raised lip of concrete at the edge of the roof, and felt the stone sap away even more of her warmth. Set against her petite form, the concrete came up to her thighs; there'd be no question that this wasn't an accident, even if they somehow managed to miss the broken lock on the door leading up to the roof. She hadn't bothered leaving a note. This wasn't a cry for help or a plea for attention; this was just a way out of endless pain and misery. Besides, Hannah couldn't imagine anyone being confused about why she'd done it.
Her muscles tensed as she prepared to haul herself up and over the edge. She looked down, trying to figure out whether she really had the guts to do this. Would it hurt? Would she even feel the impact, or would there just be a long, slow, endless fall and then nothing? She didn't doubt for a moment that she'd die on impact. Fifteen stories, straight down onto solid concrete...she'd be dead instantly. It'll probably be painless, she told herself. And more certain than pills. She hadn't wanted to take a chance on someone finding her, pumping her stomach, self-righteously "saving" her. No, this way was best. Nobody could stop her. Nobody would even know until after she'd died.
"So...wanna talk about it?"
Hannah spun around. There was an Asian woman standing there in the open door of the roof access stairwell, smoking a cigarette and watching Hannah with an unreadable expression on her face. She was older than Hannah, but Hannah wasn't sure how much older--maybe thirty, maybe more. She had bright green hair, spiked up in sharp points by who knew how much styling gel, and her outfit cemented her punk-rock look. It was all torn fishnet stockings and ripped t-shirt and fingerless gloves and honestly, it was so over the top it would have seemed kind of dumb, except the girl wore it with such conviction. You could tell just by looking at her that she didn't wear it to make a statement, or to look cool. She wore it because that was who she was. Hannah suddenly hated her for that freedom. "Who the hell are you?" she snapped.
"My name's Natalie," the girl responded. "I'm your guardian angel. I came here because God said, 'Nat, there's a girl up on the roof, and she's about to jump. Now, I don't know her name, but I'm pretty sure she's got a lot to live for, so do me a favor and--'"
"Shut up!" Hannah shouted. Tears stung the corners of her eyes. This was her death, dammit, the most important moment of her life! The least this woman could do was not make fun of it.
Natalie sighed. "Not buying it, huh? It's the outfit, isn't it? Guardian angels probably wear something more ethereal." She saw the expression on Hannah's face, and the humor faded from her voice. "I was in the stairwell, looking for a quiet place to sneak a cig, and I heard the racket you made with the door. I wondered what was up, so I came to take a look. That's all." She shrugged. "Like I said...wanna talk about it?"
"No," Hannah said sharply. "And don't try to stop me, either. I can be over the edge before you can get anywhere near me."
Natalie looked speculatively across the roof, judging the distance between her and Hannah. "Probably, yeah." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Look, I don't want to--"
"Then don't," Hannah said. "Don't try to stop me, don't try to talk me out of this, just go back down the stairs and forget you ever saw me."
Natalie shrugged. "Fair enough." She started to turn away, and Hannah felt a strange mixture of sorrow and vindication. Maybe this was a plea for attention, she thought, at least a little. But if nobody else cared either, if the only person who knew she was going to kill herself just shrugged and walked away instead of stopping her, well, then that just made it an even more obvious thing to do, right?
Suddenly, Natalie stopped and turned back to face her. "Look," she said. "I'm going to be the last person who saw you alive, right?" Hannah nodded. "Then could you do me a favor? Just tell me your name, why you did it...just something I can tell the cops, so they don't hassle me all night long. I won't keep you, I promise."
"Hannah," she said hesitantly. "Hannah Berkshire. And I'm doing it because...because..." She tried to think of a way to put all the pain, all the shame and humiliation and anguish and everything into a single sentence. "Because she said she was straight."
Natalie raised an eyebrow. "Not to tell you how to run your life," she said, leaning up against the wall, "but if I threw myself off a roof every time a girl told me she was straight, I'd be dead a hundred and fifty-seven times over. Depending on which roof I used, that is."
"She wasn't just any girl!" Hannah shouted. "She was..." And the pain was back, and now Hannah really couldn't feel the cold anymore. She remembered the smell of Gia's hair, remembered looking at her in the showers in gym class and trying so hard not to let anyone know she was looking, least of all Gia, remembered the day when she looked at Gia and realized Gia was looking back at her, remembered weeks of tongue-tied confusion and misery and then that day in the park when they finally looked at each other and saw the same thing in each other's eyes, and they'd kissed, and it was, she was... "She was magical. I loved--I love her. I would have done anything for her. I'd have walked through fire for her."
Natalie nodded. "Did she love you back?" she asked softly. All the mockery was gone from her voice, now, replaced by understanding.
Hannah nodded. "I remember the first time she said it. We were sledding, us and a bunch of other girls, and we fell off our sled and went end over end all the way down the hill, just holding onto each other, and at the bottom, she whispered it in my ear. I felt warm the whole rest of the day." And now all she felt was cold.
Natalie took another drag on her cigarette. "But you didn't just want her to whisper," she said. "You wanted her to shout."
Hannah flinched. "I didn't want to hide it! Is that so fucking wrong? I wanted to be able to hold hands with her, to be able to kiss her in a movie theater, to be able to pass notes in class and flirt at restaurants and all the other things that everyone gets to do with their girlfriends! I wanted to be in love. Just like everybody else."
The tiniest fraction of a smile quirked the corner of Natalie's mouth. "You forgot you were in Detroit, kiddo," she said. The smile faded. "So what happened? She decide it was better to fit in?"
Hannah felt the wind even more harshly now, as it blew over the tracks that her tears had left down her cheeks. "She...she said she would. She said I was right, that it was time, that we needed to be honest with everyone. We were eighteen, we were both grown-ups, even if we were still in high school. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and she said..." She broke the sentence off. It hurt too much even to think it, now.
"So I came out." The words felt too small to describe the enormity of the act. "I told Mom and Dad, I told my friends, it got all over school in less than a day. I told them I was gay, and that Gia and I were...were lovers."
Natalie's mouth tightened into a sharp frown. "And she chickened out."
