Nowhere but Up by Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory

hopscotch. A few strides farther, and I catapulted off the curb directly into the truck’s path. Midair, I could make out the face of the driver, who was turning white as a ghost.
    I closed my eyes and expected to be pummeled to the ground by the moving weight of this massive vehicle. But nothing happened. The driver slammed on his brakes and adeptly maneuvered the skidding truck onto a side street right in front of my house. He missed. He was probably thanking God in that moment. I was cursing Him.
    The screeching brakes pierced my ears. I was alive, with skinned knees and a few bruises to boot. I felt devastated and humiliated that I couldn’t even end my own life. I saw the truck driver run toward me, sweat pouring down the sides of his face. Poor guy. I had given him the scare of his life.
    “Are you all right?” he panted, out of breath and showing genuine concern.
    I was speechless. Numb. I merely nodded in a dumbfounded haze and turned toward my house. My eyes were met by a fuming neighbor who had watched me attempt to kill myself. Even from a few yards away, I could see her glare at me as if I had just killed her best friend. I certainly didn’t expect what came next.
    She screamed obscenities at me from her porch and then came barreling in my direction, her eyes bulging with poison. When she got an arm’s length away, she grabbed me, dragged me, and whipped me up onto my porch. As she cursed with indignation and called me terrible names, she spat with anger, “How could you do this? What were you thinking? How could you be so selfish?”
    As I floated in and out of my thoughts, my neighbor continued her berating rant. Frankly, I didn’t see the point. I had condemned myself enough. In fact, I was quite the expert at calling me names and putting me down. There was no need for extra reinforcements. No need for her to gut my heart like a fish. I did a fantastic job on my own, thank you very much. What I really needed in that moment was compassion.
    The sting of shame and the suffocating grip of condemnation seared my heart. As I curled up in a fetal position, drowning out the neighbor’s voice with my own thoughts, she finally threw her hands up in surrender. My stepbrother showed up on the porch, his eyes wide in shock, and my neighbor handed me off to him. Apparently, she had reached the point of hopeless frustration with me and pawned me off so Chuck could . . . what? Yell at me more?
    Chuck led me inside the house and asked, “What happened? What made you do this?”
    I had nothing to say. I didn’t have an answer. The living room spun out of control and my mind was far away, far from the table in the corner, the old-fashioned couches, my stepbrother’s face close to mine as he played detective to uncover the details of the last twenty minutes. He called my mom at some point. As we waited for her arrival, Chuck continued to hurl questions my way.
    “Talk to me, Pattie. What got you to this point?” he asked again, determined to rouse an explanation out of my dazed stupor.
    I couldn’t respond. I was frozen. Trapped. I just sat at the kitchen table, stuffing my anger inside, and numbly stared out into space. I knew my mom would be home soon. What on earth would I say to her? As I sat on the cold, hard chair, I couldn’t escape the gnawing feeling of wanting to die. It was all I could think about. The beckoning wasn’t loud or intrusive, though. It didn’t attack me with hysteria. It was hypnotic, softly whispering in my ear, Die, Pattie. Just die. The soothing lullaby consumed my thoughts until they became one with my spirit.
    When my mom came home and sat at the table with me, her hands shaky as she tried to compose herself as much as possible, I opened up. I unleashed the truth of all I had suffered and told her about how I had been repeatedly abused for five years by those we both knew. I told her how I had agonized in shame and in secret for years. How Jeremy had threatened to tell. I told her