Vacant seat · 11:54pm Sep 28th, 2019
Human beings are wonderfully terrible things.
That is a truth Harley Laurel stands by.
For a self-described cynic who smiles with eyes that have long lost their light, the oxymoron is rather fitting. Perhaps that is exactly what she is – an oxymoron – contradiction after callous contradiction, lie after carefully crafted lie.
That’s right, that’s Harley Laurel, a deceivingly cheerful nihilist. By nature faithless, drifting, searching for a sliver of hope to have in her peers but remaining doubtlessly, faultlessly disappointed.
The empty desk beside her is just that.
Disappointment.
Another girl used to sit there. Quiet. Demure. Or the concept of a girl, anyway. She always carried herself as though she were barely existent.
Natalie Raeglan was her name.
Harley still sees her there sometimes, remembers the bespectacled student ever quiet and ever withdrawn, who spoke in words nobody truly understood – about something- panpa, or was it something- ronba, or ponpa-nonpa, she doesn’t really care – and the girl who would exchange the smallest smile with Harley whenever she caught her staring.
That girl would read countless stories while everyone else was eating lunch, would smile just the right amount when talked to by a teacher, would take the backseat in class discussion, and loved to write, write, write. She always had this little notebook, plain and blue and unassuming, and she’d write in it whenever she could.
It’s strange that only after Natalie vanishes does Harley even notice how odd it feels without her there.
Natalie Raeglan wasn’t her friend. Barely an acquaintance, even. She was simply someone that had always been sitting there, someone who’d see worlds in people’s eyes and say nothing.
She doesn’t sit there anymore.
She was ordinary. Boring. Airheaded. A little bit of a strange girl, too – for she always spoke to Harley as though they were in on a secret together, and she had this habit of looking up at Harley from behind her glasses and her eyes would gleam and she would seem happy.
For a time, Harley even believed it.
Somehow, in this believable happiness, her sweet, shining teal-gray gaze was almost magnetizing. Almost. It was as if she was not quite of this world. Rather, something magical, ethereal, fantastical. Almost interesting. But not quite.
These looks would never linger.
They’d go back to dull and lifeless the moment Harley opened her mouth, and Harley would turn away, because she just didn’t care for something so mundane.
Natalie has been absent from school for 3 weeks now.
Harley hates that she’s the only one who’s seemed to notice.
Her memory of Natalie is a lot nicer than it should be, even though it isn’t nice at all.
Natalie, in actuality, was a bit of a downer.
She was pessimistic and nitpicky and condescending. She called people ‘normies’ and she never had a solid opinion about anything except for that bonba-ronba show she liked so much, and she knew so many things about everyone that that she’d seem almost too dangerous to disturb, and she spaced out whenever she didn’t want to listen to people, and it goes on and on.
Still, when someone tells you a girl killed herself, you don’t think about the bad parts of her, Harley muses. That would make you a terrible person.
Then Harley remembers that, in a world full of terrible people, what’s one more? What’s one more?
She scribbles on Natalie’s desk. Not bad things. Just. Scribbles. Things she should have said. Conversations they should have had.
I don’t miss you. She writes. It’s the truth.
She kicks the desk. Her shoes scuff against the metal, but she doesn’t care. She kicks it until it falls over and clatters frightfully against the floor.
The worst part is that nobody tries to stop her.
Turn away. They all turn away.
The flowers on the empty desk come laughably late.
They’re not even from anyone. Just the school. Just the acknowledgment that a student tossed herself off the fucking roof and they were supposed to care.
The flowers, Harley laments bitterly, receive more attention that Natalie herself ever did.
Nobody mourns.
Why would they?
Not until there’s gain in mourning.
Gratification in grieving.
Then, the lies begin to take shape.
And they keep forming.
“I always wanted to be her friend,” a classmate utters, all somber and doleful. “She was always so nice to everyone, I wish I knew she needed someone. I could have helped her. I could have been that someone.”
“Me too,” her friend agrees. “It’s so horrible. I’m so sad she’s gone. Nothing will ever be the same without her.”
Harley rolls her eyes.
They didn’t even look at Natalie’s desk once.
It was pathetic.
The same pair of girls from their class volunteer to speak at the next school assembly, to cry and express their sorrows for Natalie’s passing. All an act manufactured for sympathy.
They’re good at it, too. People that can cry on command are cunning.
Harley despises them as soon as they start to weave their tale.
“Natalie was such a wonderful girl. She was the type of girl that would brighten up the room when she spoke, and she always had something incredible to say.”
Who are you even talking about? Harley ponders. Did you know Natalie at all? Did anyone?
“Losing her is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. She was one of my closest friends, and… she was always there for me. She was always there for anybody who wanted a shoulder to cry on. I… guess that’s why she thought there was nobody there for her. But I was there. She just didn’t realize. I was always there for her.”
It was sickening how far they were willing to go.
Pretending to be a lonely girl’s friend post-mortem – a terribly sad and lonely and death-seeking girl like Natalie Raeglan, who they call “lovely and kind” (she was not), “sweet and caring and a joy to be around” (she was not), who killed herself because she couldn’t take it anymore (the one truth they ever spoke, but even that was a ‘maybe’ at best) – was the worst, the worst, the worst.
How could someone play the victim of another girl’s suicide? Was it not enough that she was dead?
“We tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn’t listen,” the speaker sobs into the microphone. “I tried so hard for her. I just wanted her to be okay. To talk to me. To trust me.”
Lies, lies, lies.
(But everyone believes them, because it makes them feel better about what happened.)
“She looked fine at school. She was always so happy in class. She was surrounded by people who loved her.”
Fucking hell – everyone is lying.
(Nobody wants to admit that they might have been any part of what pushed Natalie closer and closer to the edge.)
“I saw the signs, I did. I tried to help her. I wish I could have saved her. It was my fault.”
The girl on stage is crying. Streams of crocodile tears running down her face. It’s a bitter sight.
At a bright white flash, Harley’s gaze strays, and sure enough, a camera crew is on the sidelines, taking in every single word.
Spreading the lies.
Oh, the media is loving this. Why, these girls might become heroes, might become the new faces of suicide awareness in this ugly old town, and nobody will even remember Natalie ever existed!
“I’m so sorry, Natalie. I’m sorry I didn’t save you.”
The girls on stage sob into each other’s arms. Harley smiles delicately to diffuse the flicker of anger that burns inside of her. It leaves as quickly as it came.
“You did everything you could.” A teacher reassures them, reclaiming the podium with a remorseful, practiced grace. “It wasn’t your fault. Nobody could have stopped her. Nobody could have known.”
Disappointing.
“I tried to be her friend but she always pushed me away,” someone is saying in the halls after the assembly. The air is heavy with falsified grief. “I should have tried harder. Maybe I would have been able to stop her.”
“It’s not your fault,” A friend chimes, clapping them morosely on the shoulder. “She always seemed so on top of everything. Kind of perfect, you know? Untouchable. She wouldn’t have let you close no matter how hard you tried.”
Harley’s fists clench as she walks past.
“She really hated everyone. You don’t need to blame yourself for what she did.”
“I still miss her. It’s really hard.”
“I know. I miss her too.”
As if, Harley sneers. Did you even know who she was before she died?
But the lies keep spreading.
And Harley is left disgusted.
When she’s alone, she reflects on the decisions Natalie made.
Dying is one thing. Dying at school is another. She wonders if there is any correlation.
Say, if it was something at school that pushed her off the edge, or if it was something at home that was so unspeakable that she couldn’t ever return, or if it was just that she saw how unfixable this world was and wanted to vanish to a life beyond.
Or if she had been just like Harley Laurel is, and wouldn’t have cared if the entirety of the earth ceased to exist tomorrow.
If, perhaps, she thought that anything would be better than here.
Harley, left behind, thinks about those inevitable things. The ones people tell themselves to feel better. Not the lies. The what-ifs and the if-onlys.
The world is a fucking disgrace.
What’s the point in living a life that’s not going to be spectacular? What’s the point in being a normal person, when normal is so dry and boring and monotonous and everyone’s words are so damn hollow all the time?
Maybe she would have understood Natalie the most out of everyone, she thinks.
Though, even so, even if it was in the realm of possibility that they were to become friends, she knows there is nothing she could have done.
She’s not that good of a person.
And she has no intention of getting any better.
“Were there any signs? Did you know? Was she depressed, maybe, or was she struggling with something? You sat next to her, did she ever exhibit distressing behavior of any kind?” Teachers ask her, the very picture of polite concern. “You know, if this incident affects you in any way, you can always come to us for help, right?”
Harley thinks it’s rich that they pretend to care.
An anonymous source posts Natalie Raeglan’s suicide note online.
It makes headlines for a day, then everyone moves on. In a flash, she is forgotten. It’s as if she was never even there.
Maybe it’s what Natalie wanted.
Life just isn’t worth living. Every time I say that, people think they’re entitled to list out everything that makes life worth living for. But I don’t care at all.
I don’t care about anything in this world. I tried to. I’ve been trying since I was born. I’m tired of uninteresting.
It’s not like anybody would care if I disappeared.
Goodbye, to this boring world. I’m going to a better place now.
Don’t say you miss me, because I know nobody will.
Until we play again,
Natalie Raeglan
Harley knows it’s illogical to reply to a suicide note. She does, anyway.
I still don’t miss you. She adds to the desk. You were right, nobody does. I’m the only damn person who will tell the truth.
The flowers wilt as the days roll forward.
Natalie never answers.
You know, I know I don't say it, and I know I don't make it seem that way. But I do worry about you. I don't know whether this was meant to make me feel this way, or make anyone feel this way, but I just thought I should let you know.