Trigger Warning: Read ahead for full impact, check the bottom for specific warnings.
Star wasn't the role model for empathy by anyone's standards. She valued her social status, her looks, and her money above feelings of any sort.
So it came as a surprise when she found her thoughts constantly flooded with concern for someone other than herself.
Jake was her favorite cousin. He was three years older than her and lived an hour away. Their parents would meet up at least twice a month so while the adults talked, the two of them would go on adventures.
Or, well, they used to.
Now it seemed that she was being avoided. Not that it was just her - he was avoiding everyone. But the fact that everyone included her; that was a problem.
He had mentioned the year before that he wasn't very popular. It had become apparent by the end of the year that he was being bullied. Star didn't know how to take this. Sure, she'd seen name calling between some of her classmates and Paulina hated that Manson girl but, bullying? Like they show in movies? She'd never seen anything like that.
After several minutes of knocking on his bedroom door resulted in nothing, Star pushed her ear against his door. She could make out muffled music being blasted too loud on headphones and narrowed her eyes in annoyance. He was ignoring her!
Well, that wouldn't be tolerated. Taking a bobby pin out of her bangs, she jimmied his lock and forced her way in.
Jake was propped up with a pillow in the far corner of his room; headphones blasting some indecipherable rock and reading a collection of Garfield comics. "Jake!" She yelled.
Ignored.
"JAKE!"
He glanced up, put down the book, and moved his headphones around his shoulders. "Star, why are you in my room?"
She glared. "You're ignoring me. I know you've been sad, but now you're ignoring me! It's not ok!"
He stared past her shoulder for a moment that lasted entirely longer than it should have before telling her, "Close the door."
After watching him for a few seconds, she relented. Maybe he would finally tell her something.
Sitting across from him, she waited.
"They call me a faggot." He's so straight forward and his inflection is so flat, she almost misses his silent flinch. It's just a small pull at the corner of his lips but, he's not as unaffected as he tries to sound. "I'm not gay. And even if I were, what kind of basis is that for judging someone? You don't hate someone for not liking the same movies as you."
His fists are clenched. The soft blaring of his music sounds unwelcome - like it's a taboo to not have silence at a moment like this.
He talks a little more that day about things they say but mostly, Star sits with him and wonders why they don't like Jake.
Visits take a new turn after that.
Star's routine is to break into his room, listen to everything going wrong in his life, sit with him, try to give a suggestion, listen to his strange 'metal' music, and leave feeling upset and worried.
It changes just after Valentine's day. She doesn't understand what it is, but something is different about Jake. The room smells different. Mustier. And he seems more relaxed in a wrong way. It's like he has no energy to be worried.
The talk that day is dark; exceptionally so. He speaks of death – for himself and others. He speaks of how it must somehow be his fault because it's too frustrating for it to have no cause. He speaks about higher powers who must hate him and past lives that must have sinned. He speaks of pain and suffering that he's received and that he wants to inflict on others.
And Star says nothing; frozen in the panic that she'll say the wrong thing and make it worse.
What would worse even look like? She doesn't ever want to know.
She still goes to his room, but there's fear. She doesn't want to hear all his hatred and pain, but she doesn't stop because she doesn't know if anyone else is listening. His appearance deteriorates until he's a shallow imitation of his former self. Star doesn't like looking at him. It's as if his pain has leeched onto his skin and his life is draining from the inside out.
It's in late March that Jake gives her a plastic bag. He looks her in the eye and she's scared.
"If middle school doesn't go well for you, this can help you forget." His eyes are both desperate and dead as they burrow into her soul. She doesn't want to take it. That broken look, both inside and out, makes her want to run away. But she can't because she knows (in the pit of her heart, she knows) that this is an act of desperation and if she runs now, it will be the end of him.
She takes it and wants so badly to throw it away. Throw away everything it represents. She doesn't understand what it is or why he needs it to forget. And somehow, accepting feels like something final. Something she doesn't understand but is sure is a bad thing.
They're back again the very next weekend and Star drags her feet all the way to his room. She picks the lock but hesitates to open the door. She feels wooden and wants nothing more than to run away. After last week, what did 'worse' look like? Star couldn't see it getting better.
'Worse' should have been 'worst'. What did the 'worst' look like?
Jake was tinged purple with a trail of blood dried underneath his nose. How long had he been lying there knowing no one would come find him? Not that it mattered. Star knew what had happened: he had tried his hardest to forget.
She hoped he had.
The next few months were tense. Her parents didn't see her aunt and uncle as often anymore and Star never had to go with them. In fact, she was told to stay home or was shipped off to Paulina's. She was forced into seeing a psychologist since she 'found the body' but she refused to talk about it the entire hour and instead struck up a (mostly one-sided) conversation about shoes.
She hid the plastic bag in the very back of her vanity drawer in an old tin box.
Next year she would start middle school: the place that killed her cousin.
Being popular was no longer her preference or her right.
It was necessary for survival.
.
.
.
Triggers: Depression, Drugs, Giving drugs to children, Suicide
