Page 7 of Pierce Me

“Look, the song was obviously a trigger for you, and that was a mistake. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” he’d interrupted me. “No. You should have. I mean, the fact that you felt this way about me… me leaving, the fact that I’m important to someone…”

“Someone!?” I’d suddenly screamed and a little spit came out, but I didn’t care. Suddenly, I was raging mad that this brilliant, gorgeous boy would think that no one would care… The words scratched my throat coming out, my vision blurred by angry, vicious tears. “Important tosomeone, Teddy? I know of at least a dozen people who would be utterly shattered if we lost you. Who would be completely destroyed. Forever. And I’m the at the very top of the list.” I couldn’t breathe. “I can’t even think of you thinking about yourself that way, I… Theo, Teddy, I can’t…”

“I won’t do it,” he started screaming back at me over the phone. He kept repeating it, screaming himself hoarse. “I won’t do it. I won’t do it. Not to you, Isaiah. Do you hear me? I won’t.”

I couldn’t speak any more, I just kept nodding next to the phone. Worst part was, I knew he was talking more to himself than me. Promising himself he wouldn’t do it. That broke me worse than the day I’d pulled him from the ledge.

“I’ll get help,” he kept going on. And Teddy never goes on. We all always beg him to talk, to open up, and he never does. He did that day, though. “I’m doing this stint over here, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll go to a different therapist, to a different place, I’ll go to Mars. I’ll do whatever it takes. It’s just my brain, you know? It… It lies to me.”

“I don’t,” I told him. “I love you.”

And when you hate yourself

So much more

than you can ever like something else

Remember

I love you

I love you

I love you enough for yourself as well.

The lyrics slide off my tongue like thick honey, but they scrape across my heart like razors.

I hold Theo’s gaze as I repeat the bridge over and over again, and his eyes never waver from mine, not even once. I am reliving that day, the day he called me crying and promised not to die.

I guess he is too.

We didn’t say anything else that day. We just stayed on the phone for three hours, alternating between silence and crying. I played a few songs on the piano and the guitar for him, and he quietly worked on his designs. Theo is an artist, other than a genius. He’s almost done with Harvard, but he had to take a year off, on account of wanting to die.

And on account of nobody, other than me and his friends, being there for him. His family is one of the oldest and richest in New York–and the world–and they all suck big time.

We’ve never spoken again until tonight, Teddy and I. I keep sending him texts: ‘You ok?’ which translates to: ‘You still alive?’ and in a minute it says ‘read’ and that’s how I know he’s still here and he’s still ok. But he hasn’t answered me with words; he can’t. And I don’t want to put additional pressure on him.

Fireworks, his song, went viral once more during the summer while I was on my sold-out stadium tour. At some point, I added it to the set list and started singing it live, and by now it’s reached almostHeartbreakerheights of popularity in the charts.

The idea of so many people listening to it on repeat breaks my heart.

It is half a year between this moment and Teddy’s almost-dive from the fiftieth floor, and here we are, Teddy and me, at the stadium. Me, on the stage, singing my heart out to him, and he, expressionless in the front row, his chin wet with tears.

Music, man. That’s what it does.

It saves lives. And, even more importantly, it makes them worth living.

And when you hate yourself

So much more

than you can ever like something else

Remember

Someone holds up a huge sign that says‘We lost my uncle to suicide a week ago’in capital, hand-written letters, and my heart rips open.

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