On The Railing

By Claudia B.

Finally getting enough of the sobbing and cries for mercy from God, I manage to shuffle myself over to the balcony, knowing no one would really notice if I was gone.

Letting my arms rest on the railing, I held myself up with my hands. I wasn’t crying, even though I should have been. And I wasn’t bottling up my emotions to a breaking point or anything, either. I just felt… empty. Empty after that one Monday evening. Empty after I lost my brother forever.

Looking out on the city before me, I took a mental picture. Sirens going on and off, the blinding lights of office buildings, hospitals, skyscrapers. I wonder if he would like the view. Did he see that same view before he–?

“It’s a bit late, huh? Shouldn’t you be inside with everyone else, sobbing?” 

I turn around to look at the person speaking to me even though I’d already know who it was. “Fraiser. good to see you,” I said to the maroon-headed figure stepping out of the shadows, his hands in the very tiny pockets of his black suit.

“Good to see me? You don’t seem super depressed. What, has the thought that he’d never come back not hit you yet?”

I winced. Yep. that hurt. Fraiser just really doesn’t know his limits sometimes.

“Why are you even here? You don’t have some deal with him i need to solve before all hell breaks loose, do you?” I asked, running a hand through my brown-black waves and praying they didn’t bet for 1000 dollars again. That’s one weekend of my life I’ll never be able to get back. 

Fraiser scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Can’t I come to a funeral service for one of my best buddies?” 

I sighed walking back into the room of sobbing without a word to Fraiser. He was just too much to deal with right now. Lucky me, it’s a Saturday, and I don’t have to deal with the sharp glares and whispers of the other teenagers as I walked through the halls. 

“Did you hear? His brother-”

“Yeah, I heard he jumped off a-”

“Nooo! that must be awful to deal with, especially since it’s his twin brother.” 

I can already imagine them whispering, cutting and ripping and tearing apart any ounce of strength I had left and stepping on the pieces left behind. All without knowing, all without trying.

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will always hurt me.

Last night, I dreamt I was him again. I would be leaning on the railing, then my body would start moving without my control. Before I could realize what was happening, I was on the railing, standing for a few seconds before slowly leaning forward to my twin brother’s demise. And right as I was about to hit the ground, I’d wake up. Usually in a cold sweat. And then I’d look to his side of the bedroom, expecting to see him in his bed sleeping until the words “oh, yeah” came to mind and I tried to replay what happened in the nightmare, staring up at the ceiling until morning.

I read somewhere that it’s normal to have dreams like that after a family member had committed suicide, but I still felt like something was seriously wrong with me.

My parents had been asking me repeatedly if I wanted to go to school on Monday, and I just said, “I’m fine.” When they’d ask, hoping that would answer their question. Although, I was just saying that so they wouldn’t worry as much. I obviously wasn’t fine, but if people thought I was, who was I to say they were wrong?

It was Sunday, the day after the funeral, and I hadn’t emerged from my room no matter how much prying my parents did, which wasn’t much because I could tell they were hurting, too. They probably didn’t want me to know, though, because parents are weird about being sad in front of their children for some reason. 

Sitting in our – my – room was a bit painful considering the circumstances. But, when I looked over to his part of the room, messy to the point where Mom wouldn’t bug him about cleaning it, his awards shining brightly on his mantel, it gave me a bit of a better feeling knowing that he was there, even if he wasn’t. I looked to the hole in the wall from last summer when he and Fraiser tried seeing who could punch the wall harder (leading to him getting grounded, and me having to be his only source of human interaction for a month and a half). I looked to the broken ceiling fan with the blue whale sticker on it from when we were eight, and he was convinced that when he was sleeping something was trying to get him, and I told Mom and Dad that he needed something to look at to focus on so he’d be less scared. He smiled at me with his missing two front teeth, and I smiled back, mirroring him. We looked at our parents and they shrugged and said it didn’t do any harm. We found a bag of whale stickers in the back of his dresser, and he picked out the one where two cartoon whales were sitting with their shoulders to each other, smiling. He told me he’d picked that one so if I ever got scared during the night, I’d have a source of comfort to look at, too. And now, after eight years of him sleeping peacefully during the night, he’d be sleeping peacefully forever.