Austin tugged down on his unruly brown hair as he sat on the curb. Where on earth is Jack? He definitely left for the bathroom twelve minutes ago. They were missing out on valuable roller coaster time. Austin scanned the horizon. The sun was beginning to set in front of him, making it hard to decipher anything. Out of nowhere, a body shielded the sun from his face. Austin’s eyes scanned from the girls faded jeans to her blue chorus t-shirt and rested on her tanned face, framed by an unbelievably long tangle of sunny blonde hair.
“Hi?” Austin had no idea how to respond to this girl who was so fearlessly invading his personal space.
“So, my friends keep telling me that Sarah broke up with some dude named Austin and I wasn’t sure who he was, but then Katie pointed you out to me and I wanted to meet you. Everyone says you’re really nice, but you’re kind of mysterious, and I felt like you were worth getting to know. Oh, I’m Ella, by the way.” Ella smiled at Austin with her award-winning smile. Something told Austin that she used that smile a lot.
“That’s nice.” Austin paused. “Wait. Ella like Jack’s best friend.” Ella’s face lit up.
“Yeah! Actually, I wanted to get a few rides in with him before the park closed. You seen him?”
“He went to the bathroom about fifteen minutes ago. I don’t know where he went. I’m supposed to ride rides with him.”
“He probably got lost. He sucks at directions.” Ella laughed. “He got lost coming back from the bathroom.”
It was pretty funny. Austin smiled at the sidewalk. Lifting his head, he asked, “How long have you two known each other.”
Ella’s smile turned into a nostalgic giggle. “In 6th grade, I was bigger than him. I would hug him and then squeeze him until he made weird squeaky noises. I guess the friendship just blossomed from there.”
“There you are.” Jack’s deep voice sounded relieved. “Oh wow, you two met!”
“Yeah! Took me long enough! There aren’t many guys with curly hair at school. Don’t know why I couldn’t figure out who you were.” Ella looked at Austin. “However,” Ella added, “In my defense, there are a lot of boys at school who can say they’ve dated Sarah.” Ella’s giggle was a little darker this time. “Wait, was that insensitive? Sorry.”
Ella skipped forward to link arms with Jack. Whirlwind was the only word that came to Austin’s mind as he watched her blonde hair dance about her back.
-------
“This movie kinda sucks.” Austin leaned towards the shadowy profile of Ella’s face. “I mean what’s up with Mr. Anger Management over there?”
“He misses his family,” the smile was audible in Ella’s voice. “He ran away when he was younger. It was all in the prologue.”
“It’s too much work to read during a movie. Really, they just need someone to read it for you.”
“What are you? Seven? The whole plot was handed to you in the first ten minutes. The least the movie can do is challenge you a little in the beginning by making you read the prologue.”
“Sure, but if I wanted to read the story, wouldn’t I have just gotten the book?”
“You two idiots want to keep it down over there?” The shadow of Jack’s head appeared from beside Austin. “SOME OF US want to actually WATCH the movie.”
“Exactly,” the voice of a middle aged sassy black woman hissed from behind the trio. “Why don’t ya’ll shut up?!”
Ella had to clamp her hand across her mouth to keep from puddling in a fit of giggles.
------
“I swear, if my mom packs me a freaking peanut butter sandwich one more time...” Jack threw his half eaten sandwich across the bleachers. It landed on the grass amidst a small flock of pigeons.
“Why don’t you do the big boy thing and pack your own lunch?” Austin mocked.
Jack mumbled something about mornings and time while rummaging through his lunch bag.
Ella extended her unopened bag of potato chips towards Jack. “Here.” She said smiling.
“Sure!”
What was Ella supposed to eat? Austin saw no other food in Ella’s possession, save the bottle of water that danced between her fingertips.
“Students,” The outdoor PA System rang, “Please stay seated for all announcements.”
“Man!” Ella jumped off the top of the bleachers. “Come on you slow bros! We gotta get inside before they realize we’re missing!”
-------
“Ella, are you ok?” Austin detected a pain behind her soft eyes.
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m just tired.”
“I can tell. Why are you tired.”
“It the biological function of being deprived of sleep.”
“Ha ha, you’re so clever. Why didn’t you get sleep last night.”
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t sleep.” Ella was glad Austin couldn’t read her mind as it flashed back to her drunken call last night. Thank heavens Jack had shown up. Ella shuttered at the thought of what might have happened.
-------
“So,” Austin’s voice penetrated the darkness, “Who do you like right now?”
“Um... I think Sylvia McMillan’s kinda hot, you know, but I don’t know man. I don’t really actively like anyone right now.” Jack turned his face towards the direction of Austin’s pillow. “Who do you like?”
“Well, I’ve kinda got this thing for Ella...”
“Dude, like, our Ella?”
“Well, I guess when you put it like that...”
“No, that came out wrong. I mean... ELLA? Really?”
“You think it’s a bad idea?”
“Well...”
“Alright, lay it on me.”
“Ella is your best friend, dude.”
“But isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?”
“Yeah, I guess man, but Ella’s a handful.”
Whirlwind. The word occupied Austin’s thoughts. “She’s just so... beautiful.”
If only she saw it that way, Jack thought, laying back on his pillow. “Just trust me, man. it’s not the best idea.”
-------
“Where’s Jack?” Ella asked as she draped her arms over the bus seat.
“He’s sick. Probably the flu.”
“Ugh. The flu is the worst. Speaking of the worst, I have to tell you this terrible joke I heard last night.”
“All right. Lay it on me.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how racist are you? Wait for it. Wait for it! NEIN!”
“What’s wrong with your arm?”
“It’s the Nazi salute. Get it? Because nein in German is..”
“No, I mean...” Austin yanked back the sleeve on Ella’s sweater. Ella’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at him in silence.
“Ella, what happened?”
Ella’s blue eyes closed as a single tear rolled down her cheek. She remained silent.
Austin ran his fingers over the cuts that criss crossed and zig zagged down her left forearm. some of them had barely healed, yet some of them...
“You did these this morning,” Austin’s voice was barely audible.
Ella yanked her hand out of Austin’s grasp and slumped into her seat.
“Ella. Ella, please talk to me.”
Ella stiffled a sob.
“Ella. I want you to know I’m here.”
“There are 5280 feet in one mile.”
“What?”
“This bus travels at about 65 miles per hour.”
“What’s that got to do with...”
“Shhh. 5,280 multiplied by sixty five comes out to...” Ella shut her eyes tight, her tounge pinched between her teeth. “Three hundred forty-three thousand two hundred. Divide that by sixty and you have... five thousand seven hundred twenty. And when you divide that by sixty again, you get... ninety... ninety-five and one third.” Ella opened her eyes and turned around. “We are traveling at ninety five feet and four inches per second. Every second. That’s incredible. And yet we complain all the time about how slow we’re going. I just want to go slower.”
With that, Ella turned back around, laid her head against the window and fell asleep.
What on earth did she mean by slower?
------
“I’m alright, Jack! I’ll always be alright!”
“Ella, you’re killing yourself!”
“I’m fine!”
“You need help!”

“What I NEED is to be left alone.”
“No, Ella. What you WANT is to be left alone. What you NEED is some professional counseling and someone to tell you it’s going to be alright.”
“I don’t want to go back to counseling.”
“Then this has to stop.”
Silence from Ella’s phone.
“Ella?”
Jack heard nothing from Ella’s end. He looked down at his phone. She hadn’t hung up.
“ELLA!”
Nothing.
“That’s it. I’m coming over.”
-------

“Honey!” Austin’s mother sounded panicked. “Austin!”

“Yeah mom, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Jack. He’s in the hospital.”

“What?!”

“He crashed his car about a half hour ago.”

“What? Where? Why? Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but we’re going right now.”
-------

“He crashed his car on Holloway road at approximately 11:45.” Austin refused to look at the doctor. “It appeared as though he was speeding.” Austin looked up.
“Ella. Ella lives up that way.”
“What was that?”

“Ella. Please tell me Ella doesn’t know. This will kill her.”
“Ella Scott?”
Austin’s throat went dry. All he could do was nod.
“Are you friends with Ella Scott?” Austin nodded again. “Ella Scott was taken to surgery about five minutes before you got here. Poor girl sliced to hard into her wrists.”
Austin’s world tunneled into darkness. He was going to loose the two people he loved most. This couldn’t be happening.
-------

Austin woke up with the doctor beside him. He was sitting in a green chair, his legs laid across another. He was still in the waiting room. Austin looked at the faces of his parents before hanging his head and beginning to cry.
“Can they save either of them?” Austin looked up.
“Son,” Austin’s dad’s eyes were red with pain and tears. “Jack’s gone.”
“WHAT!?” Austin jumped out of his seat and ran down the hall, pushing over anything and anyone in his way. “Jack! JACK!” He screamed until he found the room with Jack’s parents.
“No.”
-------
Austin crawled into the hospital bed next to Ella.
“I don’t think you understand how badly I need you to wake up Ella. It’s been a week. I can’t keep coming going to school and seeing happy people. I can’t sit in math class without you and Jack. I just can’t do it any more. I need you Ella. I need you to wake up. I know you hated the world, but I need you to come back to it. For me. I need that.”
“Jack?” Ella’s voice was confused and sleepy. She wrapped her bandaged arms around Austin’s middle. Austin squeezed his eyes shut. She doesn’t know.
-------
“NO! YOU’RE LYING! SHUT UP! IT’S NOT FUNNY!” Austin heard screaming as he approached Ella’s hospital room.
“Austin! Go get Jack and prove to these idiots that he is alive. How else would I be here if he hadn’t found me?”
Austin’s stomach dropped along with the flowers in his hand. “Ella.” He said softly.
“Oh God.” Realization dawned over Ella’s face. “ He was coming to stop me. He was going to... oh God.”
“Ella,”
“It’s my fault. He wouldn’t have been driving if I had just freaking listened to him.”
“It’s not...”
“I killed him. He told me he was coming over. I heard him. And then I hung up. I didn’t answer him. I should have told him to stay! I just took more pills.”
Ella didn’t look sad, she looked angry, like Jack needed to be avenged. She ripped her IV out of her arm swung her feet out of the bed and began to run. The doctors in the room barely caught her as she puddled to the floor.
“JACK! GOD I’M SORRY JACK!”
“Ella.” Austin gathered the courage to speak. “Ella, look at me.”
Ella complied, tears running from her blue eyes to the collar of her hospital gown.
“Ella, it’s not your fault. You did not make Jack come get you. Jack wanted to come because he cared about you. He couldn’t stand to see you hurt yourself. He was racing to see you when a deer ran in front of his car. He didn’t die until he got to the hospital, where he was surrounded by his family. He died to save your life. Please, Ella, let that mean something.”
-------
“Jack was the best friend anyone could ever ask for. It’s the worst cliche in the book, but maybe it’s a cliche because it rings true. Jack died trying to save my life. In middle school, I developed a reliance on painkillers and an addiction to cutting. Jack was the first person to ever find out. He would stay up until three in the morning, trying to get my mind off the painful things in my life. My parents had divorced, my mom was dating awful guys, I barely even saw my dad. I put up a huge wall, only letting Jack through. He knew all of my tells, all of my triggers. He would call me every night to make sure I wasn’t hurting myself. I could call him in the middle of the night and he would never fail to pick up the phone. Jack was my big brother.
“He got me clean for months at a time. In those months, I was happiest. It was then when I met Austin. My relationship with Austin was fun and easy. I could just pretend to be happy and he’d believe me. Sometimes, I didn’t even have to pretend. Sarah, Austin’s ex-girlfriend thought I liked him, so she started messaging me things like, ‘fat whore’ or ‘miserable ugly witch’. I stopped eating. I knew Jack noticed. I think that maybe even Austin noticed. I got drunk one night and called Sarah. I told her that she was the fat whore and the miserable ugly witch. I made it very clear that Austin liked me way more than he had ever liked her. I even threw in the ‘he is a great kisser isn’t he.’ I don’t know how Jack knew, but he showed up at my house that night and calmed me down, held me until I feel asleep. I felt like life around me was a daily whirlwind of pain and hatred of myself and I wanted it to stop. At least slow down. Then Austin found out. It just about destroyed me. My fake relationship, the one that made me the most happy, was shattered. Now that Austin knew, it was real. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I refused to eat anything. I was cutting every night. But oddly, Austin didn’t say anything else about it. I think maybe Jack told him how to help me. How destructive I was.
“The night Jack died, I had been on Sarah’s Facebook page. It was probably my biggest trigger. Other girls who were prettier than me, I mean. I would stumble across a pretty picture and like it, then I’d look at another, then another. Suddenly, I was five hundred pictures in and there were cuts all over my wrist. Well with Sarah, it was worse. Sarah was gorgeous. She’s a stick and her eyes are so big and she’s perfectly flawless. I was drunk when Jack called. The last thing Jack said to me was that I should get professional help. I told him I didn’t want it. Why didn’t I tell him I loved him? Why didn’t I tell him that he was the most important person in my life? I feel so selfish. He died because of me. No matter what Austin says, it still feels like my fault.”

“Miss Scott, what made you finally agree to get professional help?” The therapist looked at Ella over her blue crescent moon glasses.

“It was his last request. I can’t bring him back, but I can honor his wishes. I can make his death mean something.”