News of what happened on the Brooklyn Bridge travels fast. Yuey, Mikael, and I keep quiet about the events that occurred, but the incident is on every major news channel. Because Natalie was a student at Two Bridges, many reporters saw the school name and immediately wrote headlines about the scandal.
"Korean Student at Prestigious Private School Suffers Mental Breakdown" becomes the student body's favorite article on the matter. It details two students trying to get Natalie to climb down from the bridge, embellishing many of the details of what actually happened. My peers love the sensationalism and the guessing game of who tried to save her. It's all they can talk about as Two Bridges faculty do damage control from the incident.
The freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes are all forced to sit through mental health seminars. The school hires three new counselors to support students' well-being. We're given a deluge of anti-suicide pamphlets and constant reminders to call the mental health crisis line 988. In class, we learn about the different categories of mental illness and how to spot symptoms so that we can help our peers. These efforts are conveniently documented by local news outlets as a way to polish the school's image. Some students like the attention, preening for the cameras. I sit in class awkwardly, wanting to forget what happened on the Brooklyn Bridge.
At least no one was talking about me anymore. There was no mention of the scholarship students and their poor backgrounds. No one cared that I relied on financial aid to stay in the academy, not when there was so much attention around what Natalie had done.
A pretty girl who fell from grace and attempted suicide was the stuff of movies. There were just as many students who pitied her as there were who envied the attention she received from the news. They speculated which hospital she was staying at and stalked the apartment her family lived in to no avail. Her absence from student body life elevated her status from outsider to school legend.
Mikael and I have gotten closer in the aftermath of the incident. There was something about the way we failed to save her that made me feel like we were accomplices in the same crime. We held hands often and ignored Yuey's teasing about what we were. Friend, boyfriend, girlfriend – we were simply together.
As much as I try to forget Natalie, one thing bothered me the most. Her identity as her own online bully didn't make much sense to me. Her self-hatred alone wasn't enough to convince me that she would have enough vitriol against herself to set up an anonymous account and write hateful things. Even though she was the one who texted me through the bully's account, I had a hard time believing that she was the mastermind who set up the whole thing.
"Who else could it be? You saw how she acted on the bridge," Yuey says when I voice my concerns to her.
"You were pretty convinced that it was Mikael," I point out. "I listened to that whole speech about boys being monsters."
"But you didn't agree with anything I said. And I was wrong in the end anyway. It wasn't him."
"I agree that there was a boy involved. Just not Mikael. Someone else." I relayed the conversation I had with Natalie to her, focusing on how I believed she never had any feelings for the boy I liked.
"Do you think she was forced to say that she liked him? Maybe she did pretend, but she hated you. She probably arranged the whole thing to hurt you."
"But why would she do that when she already exposed me? Taking Mikael away would have been excessive."
"Nothing she did that day was logical. Forget about it. Aren't you happy that she's gone?"
Truthfully, I was devastated to be the last person she talked to before she jumped off the bridge. Even though she never succeeded, the fact that she was willing to take that risk scared me. The girl whom I befriended in my freshman year was gone. The creature that replaced her was unrecognizable beyond her desperation for love.
Nonetheless, Yuey was right. I should stop thinking about it.
But as luck would have it, the universe didn't allow me to forget. Maia came up to me during lunch and asked about her. After a week of silence, I didn't feel inclined to speak with her. She and Ainsley made it clear what they thought about me when they left me. Any hope that I had about our friendship was dashed when neither of them defended me from the antics of the other students.
"I don't want to talk about it," I tell her. Had she asked how I was, maybe I would have felt obligated to repay the simple kindness. But I wasn't even spared those manners.
"Please? I'm worried about her. Well, Ainsley is more worried than me."
I scoff at the false emotion in her voice. "Aren't you embarrassed to be seen with me?"
Her cheeks reddened slightly. "It's not about us. This is bigger than you and me."
"You told the whole school that she was a scholarship student. Ainsley took every opportunity to ruin her life, and you played along. I don't think either of you cared about her."
"We did," she insists. "You aren't innocent either. Ainsley told me what happened at the soup kitchen. She knows what was in Natalie's head."
She was lying to me. To what end, I wasn't sure. It was easy to chalk it up to Maia and Ainsley being bored rich girls, so comfortable in their lives that they ruined other people for entertainment. Natalie was their worst casualty. They no doubt wanted to make sure there were no traces of themselves on the corpse of her public reputation.
"Ainsley wrote some of the comments on Natalie's page. You were right about that. I won't tell anyone if you leave me alone."
She shakes her head. "It wasn't all her. Look, I'm sorry for being a terrible friend. If I had known about your family situation, I wouldn't have pressured you to come on all of those shopping trips. I wouldn't have said all those thoughtless things in front of you. You didn't deserve any of it."
It was as if she delivered a punch that knocked the air out of my lungs. The last thing I expected from her was a heartfelt apology. But I wasn't obligated to accept it.
"Would you have still been my friend if you knew who I was?"
I knew the answer to this question, but still, I patiently waited for her to find the words, watching her lips twist and her brows furrow to say something that wouldn't offend me.
"I don't have a time machine, so I can't go back and find out. But I haven't regretted a single second of our friendship."
It was a nice sentiment. "Ainsley wouldn't think the same thing." If she did, she wouldn't have sent Maia to do her bidding.
"I'm more than my best friend." She gave me a meaningful look that suggested I would know the feeling.
"There's not much I can tell you. Just know that I tried to save her." It was half the truth. I intended to get revenge, but Mikael's presence forced me to do the right thing.
She nodded. "I figured you were on the bridge with her. You couldn't have done more, not when she was chasing after the boy she liked."
"Natalie was blackmailing Mikael. I wouldn't call that 'chasing' as much as 'coercion' given what she did."
"I'm not talking about Mikael. Natalie likes a different boy. She only involved him to make you jealous."
My spine straightens. "She likes another boy," I echoed.
"You didn't know? I've said too much."
Before I could press for more information, she walked away from the lunch table. I nearly went after her, but the period ended.
Throughout the day, I weighed her words against what I knew. She could have been lying to me to get more information about what happened. It would have been a good way to bait me to meet with her alone and confess all that had happened on the bridge. I expect that this would have been orchestrated by Ainsley, who would have made sure to be close enough to overhear everything.
It made me wonder if everything she said was real or fake. What did both of them really think of our friendship?
I remember thinking that it was a stroke of good fortune when they approached me in the lunchroom. But maybe I had been deliberately targeted because of my friendship with Natalie. Maia and Ainsley always had each other. Why would they ever want a third person involved in their personal life? Had I been the person to approach them, I would have understood their need to briefly tolerate me out of politeness.
They sought me out. In that same fashion, they discarded me when I was no longer of use. It was no different than what Natalie did and a stark reminder of who the students at the school were.
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