Oh My!

ugh.  i just have not been feeling too awesome lately, and so i haven’t been posting anything.

at the end of the school year, three months ago, i had a friend who almost committed suicide because of problems with his roommate.  he called the suicide hotline and made it through.  he is doing better now, but that was incredibly scary.

now, three months later, the end of summer, another friend of mine has been considering to attempt suicide.  she looked up how to do it but told our mutual friend that she was not brave enough.

i don’t understand why she considered doing that, or why she still wants to.  she does not care about a lot of things in life.  i think she is seriously depressed, and still suicidal despite not doing anything yet.

i don’t know what i can do for her.  for a long time i’ve supported her and tried to be there for her, but this goes beyond what i can do.  i feel helpless.

i know if i go to the school psychologist, she will tell me she can suggest my friend come in, but cannot make anything happen until she actually makes an attempt.

i need help.  i don’t know what to do, but i want my friend to be safe.

                That summer was marked by a gray sky.  So hot and dry that fire was burning up everything.  The sky was gray with smoke and soot.  Everything smelt like burnt wood.  It got into your hair, your skin.  It was in the water too, so you couldn’t even wash it off.

                In my dream, my friend and roommate told me he was moving out, going to find a new apartment.  I thought maybe it was because of the nearby fire that had been threatening the town for a good month.  Maybe he didn’t want to push his luck.  All I knew was that he wasn’t leaving because of me.

                I was at the pool.  Everything was gray, colored with soot.  I was with a new roommate, someone I was going to live with, but we were going to move to a new place and we needed one more person.  The pool water looked peculiar in its fluidity and clearness.

                The person I was with knelt at the pool edge.  There was only one person in the pool.  My friend got his attention and talked to him.  The next day, the three of us went out to look at apartments.

                The first one we went to was large.  I walked in, split from the other two, and enetered a large room.  Only a queen sized, four poster bed with a canopy was inside.  The walls were white and the floor oak.  A breeze ruffled the gauze hanging from the bed’s canopy.

                I looked out the window.  We must have been three or four stories up, and I could clearly see the archway entrance to the complex, and red dirt courtyard.  The building was white, Spanish stucco style.  I saw a person exit a doorway next to the arch.  The person seemed very small.

                I walked into the adjacent room.  It was all covered in tile.  There was a shower head but no distinct shower.  The whole room was the shower.

                I was marveling at it when the two boys came in.  They had decided to get the apartment.  I thought that was a little strange because they hadn’t seen the whole place.  It seemed like the bedroom I’d walked into first was to be mine.

                When I woke up I realized that I knew the people in my dream; Key had been leaving, Minho and Taemin moving in with me.  Taemin was the one swimming laps in the pool.

                Jonghyun sat on his bunk, head in hands.  He made a low groaning noise.  Rubbed at his eyes.

                He’d thought the concert went really well, that he and Taemin had performed well for their fans.  That was until he saw some of the reactions after the show.

                Venomous, scathing, it seemed like there were a lot of people who didn’t like what they did.  At first he felt resentful—they always needed to come up with something new, something even more sensational each time—what did they expect?  And of course there were those fans that became even more adamant in their support.  But eventually, a dragging sadness won out.  Their disappointment in him became his own.

                To make things worse, Taemin had been avoiding him ever since.

                Lo and behold, Taemin the floor creaked.  Taemin had been sneaking in.  He sat next to Jonghyun and rubbed his hyung’s back soothingly.

                “Are you okay?  It has been a couple days.”

                “Yeah.”  It was obvious from the tone of Jonghyun’s voice that the assent really held no meaning.  “Are you mad?”

                Taemin’s hand came to a stop.

                “No, I’m not.  I was surprised, but of course some of the fans would react this way.”

                “I meant, mad at me.”

                Taemin snorted.  “Of course not!  We didn’t get the reaction we were expecting, but that isn’t your fault.”

                “You weren’t avoiding me?”

                “Only because I didn’t want to bother you.  Everything is fine, hyung, as long as you’re okay.”

                Jonghyun snuggled into Taemin’s side for a moment, then hopped off the bed.  He looked more upbeat.

                “At least you got to do that with me.  Who knows how it would have gone with Minho!”  Jonghyun stuck his tongue out in mock disgust.  Taemin did a fake shiver, and they both burst out laughing.

oppa, touch me like one of your hyungs.

                Something had gone wrong with the hotel reservations, double booked or something like that.  Jonghyun’s Japanese was not quite good enough yet to catch everything.  To compensate, the hotel gave them two suites.

                The boys soon found out that the suites were not next to each other like they usually were.  The hotel was a giant U-shape, with a pool in the middle.  They had one suite on each end of the U, and could see each other fairly easily through the giant windows.

                Jonghyun waved at Onew and Taemin excitedly.  He texted Taemin that he wished they could somehow make a paper cup and string telephone work.  It would be epic.  Key read over his shoulder, rolled his eyes and said that is what cell phones are for.

                They all hung out in Taemin’s and Onew’s room that evening, deciding an hour before the pool closed that they wanted to go swimming.  They rushed down and got to watch the sunset while floating in the water.  Bright lights came on twenty minutes later, and the last lifeguard on duty asked them if they could please exit the pool, as it was now closing.

                They all headed to the little tiki-bar and ordered pina coladas, the non-alcoholic kind.  Jonghyun went upstairs first.  He wanted a shower.

                When he got out, neither Key nor Minho was back yet.  He went to the window to see if Taemin and Onew were in their rooms.  He saw something that shocked him, and that he would never forget.

                They were both still in their bathing suits, hair wet.  The lights were on and they were clearly visible.  They were in each other’s arms, kissing.

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                Early afternoon.  Taemin had just finished his university entrance exam, and when Minho had picked him up, he said he felt like he’d done well on it.  He’d been studying every evening for an hour for months now.  It was a huge relief to finally be done with it.

                He’d called Minho to pick him up early.  All that studying had paid off, apparently; and though it wasn’t yet time even for an early dinner, Minho said he’d treat Taemin to whatever he wanted.

                “Um, I don’t really know what’s around here.  Can we just, like, drive through town to see?”

                It didn’t take long.  Taemin spotted a Marie Calendar’s within the first few blocks.  It looked like a plain little rundown place.  Waiters were smoking outside the front door.  As far as Minho knew, they served desert, cake or pie or something.

                “Yeah, I think they have pie.  I’ve never been to one either but it sounds really good right now.”

                They parked, walked through the invisible haze of smoke.  Inside was dark for this time in the afternoon.  A tall, naturally skinny girl greeted them quietly from behind the cash register.  Next to her, rows of pie were lined up in a case.  They looked like plastic, not something you could eat.  Or should eat.

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