Fingers fly across the keyboard, urgently pressing key after key while the message on the screen looks as if it had taken weeks of deliberation and thought. The typer nods approvingly; it is a short but well thought out goodbye letter, a suicide letter. The question is: Who to send it to? Her parents would find the handwritten letter after the fact, but this is to go out before, a saving grace of sorts. What she needs is a friend. A second passes before it clicks: Katie. A couple clicks and a few key strokes later and the Facebook of Adyson Sweetwater is pulled up. The letter is brought back up and cut from the word processor before being sent in a private message to her friend, labeled only goodbye. A glance at the time shows that school has been in for about fifteen minutes, plenty of time. Katie checks her Facebook as soon as she gets home from school and Adyson didn't plan on doing it right away, she wanted some time to let go before the end. If all went well, she would be shown that there were people that cared about her and would be hurt if she jumped. It was in Fate's hands now.
Adyson walks from school alone; her once cheerful demeanor is gone, replaced by melancholy. After she'd gotten the news that her grandmother had died a few months ago, it had gone downhill. She had quit the Fireside Girls and now no one really talked to her, save Katie who talked to her on Facebook and sat with her during lunch when she wasn't too busy. Katie had been the only one to ask if she alright, getting only a "Yeah, fine." In return. What none of them, not even Katie, knew was that she'd given up. She was tired of the hurt, tired of no one caring, tired of life. She had a letter under her pillow saying goodbye to her mom, no one else would care. She stops a moment to watch a couple of squirrels chase each other around a tree, reminding her of when she was little and her gramma would chase her around her house. She sighs, then walks across the street and to the only apartment complex in Danville. She'd heard that the top was a penthouse owned by a man wearing a scientist's lab coat, but she only lived on the eighteenth floor and had never seen it. She goes up to her mom's apartment, empty because her mom wouldn't get off work until around five, and to her room. Takes the letter from under her pillow and sets it on the dresser where her mom would see it, then walks over to her window and opens it. She looks out it a moment before climbing onto the sill, preparing to fall.
Katie jumps off the bus happily, she'd gotten her homework finished at school, but Isabella had been busy daydreaming about Phineas and hadn't even taken notes so there was nothing Fireside Girls related planned for the evening. She opens the door and heads to her room to put up her book bag and get on the computer for a few minutes. "Hi Mom, I'm home!" She figures her mom's in the back room knitting, something she'd been doing since Mrs. Flynn had taken her to a knitting class. She tosses her bag on her bed before hitting a few keys on the board: It looked as if the screensaver was up but Baljeet had shown her how to make it require a pass word or it wouldn't sign her in automatically and no one knew her Facebook pass. She sees that there's a message from Adyson and clicks on it, maybe she wants to hang out, maybe she wants talk about what's been bothering her for the last few weeks. Katie's heart almost stops when she reads the first few lines, she doesn't even get to the third line before she's running down the stairs. "MomI'mgoingtoAdyson'sloveyoubye!" She barely gets the door open before going through it. Adyson only lived a few blocks away, but Katie was still glad for all the endurance and speed training Isabella put them all through because she wanted to bring home the first place Fireside Troop trophy. In less than five minutes she's standing in the lobby, trying to decide between elevator and stairs. She decides to take the elevator, but as she gets close she sees a boy hit every button in the elevator before getting off. She doesn't have time for that, so she turns and starts running up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
Adyson stands on the edge of the eighteenth story, looking down at the cars driving so far below. A memory of Katie surfaces, blushing furiously when Adyson had given her a handmade bracelet a few weeks after they'd joined the Troop together. Adyson shakes her head to clear it, then takes a deep breath and starts to take that final step. She closes her eyes, not wanting to see everything on the way down. "Adyson, NOOO!" Katie's voice startles her and her eyes fly open as she turns, a mistake, her foot slips off the window sill and she starts to fall. A moment of terror as the air rushes around her, nothing holding her up, then her arm is almost pulled from its socket as warm fingers clamp around her arm. She looks down at the cars, no one has noticed, then up at Katie: one hand on the window frame, the other holding her up. "Katie, I…." She can see fear in Katie's eyes, but more than that are the tears. Katie carefully pulls her friend up and back in. They stand there facing each other for a long moment, then Katie throws herself at Adyson, wrapping her arms tightly around her as she cries. Adyson knows she's talking, but can't make out the words as Katie's face is pressed against her collar bone. She leads the younger girl into the living room and sits her on the couch, she fills two cups with orange juice; running on autopilot, the shock from what she'd almost done makes it hard to think as she takes the juice back and gives one to Katie, who sets it on the table. "Katie. I…I'm sorry." Katie doesn't answer, instead burying her face in Adyson's shirt again. After a few minutes Adyson's eyes start to get heavy as the adrenaline starts to leave her system. "How did you…?" Katie, more than half asleep, just manages to whisper. "Your Facebook message." Before falling asleep. Adyson gets as far as, "But I didn't…" before she is lost to the land of dreams as well. Neither of them can see the boy in the black hoody watching with a laptop under his arm. He turns around. "It's time." And he is engulfed in a pure white light after years of wandering the Earth, redeemed by a single message that had saved a budding life, a message that disappears along with him as if it had never been.