Free Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten

long time. So listen, if there’s anything I can do, then . . .”
    And what I am thinking is this: Delia’s best friend was the one person she really talked to. Her best friend was her heart, her secret keeper, her everything. Whatever there is to know, Delia’s best friend is the one who is going to know it.
    “Krista,” I say slowly. “I think maybe there is. . . .”

Chapter 15
    Even sobbing, Ashling is beautiful.
    Underneath the red blotches her skin is porcelain smooth, and, though swollen, her eyes are clear and blue. And here I am, watching the pain pouring out in the form of snot, tears, and muffled wailing. My gut clenches, and I try to keep from floating off the way I always do when things are too much. I hand Ashling tissue after tissue, while Krista leans in and pats her arm. “Oh, honey,” Krista says.
    Finally, the ocean leaving her face slows to a stream, then a trickle. Ashling smiles at me, mouth shut tight, perfect lips quivering. She reaches out and squeezes my hands. “I’m so glad Buzzy gave you my number. It’s nice to get to talk to someone else who loved her.” She shakes her head. “No, screw that. Loves. Present tense.”
    Ashling finishes mopping the tears. There is a feelingpeeking through the numbness now, a tickling deep in my stomach. Mostly, it’s relief that Delia had someone in her life up until the end, a best friend who really truly cared. But under that, way down at the bottom, is the tiniest pinpoint of something else, and I don’t want to admit even to myself what it is—it’s jealousy. Which is disgusting, I realize. But there’s no time for any of this now, because I’m here for a purpose: I need to find out what Ashling knows. And to do that, I need her to know the truth.
    But how do you even tell someone something like that?
    You blurt it out. “Do you think it’s possible . . . that Delia didn’t . . . really kill herself?”
    Ashling opens her big eyes wide. She looks like a doll.
    “You mean like her spirit is still out here?” Ashling says. Her voice is low, slightly Southern sounding. She nods and smiles a bit. “I feel it too.”
    “No,” I start. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is . . . that maybe someone else did. Kill her. Who wasn’t her.”
    There. The words are out. I can’t take them back now. I brace myself.
    Out of the corner of my eye I see Krista lean forward, like, holy shit . Ashling is clenching her jaw.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to say it like that, but I’m not sure how else to do it.”
    “Why would you thinkthat?” She sounds disgusted.
    And so I tell her everything, from that first moment at thememorial when I met Jeremiah and then saw the burned-down shed, to the voice mail she meant to leave me and the voice mail she didn’t but left anyway, and my visit to Tig, and Delia’s need for protection. I tell her everything up until this very moment with the three of us sitting here together in this coffee shop, where Ashling is slowly shaking her head, and Krista is staring at the two of us like she’s watching the very best episode of her very favorite TV show.
    “Delia was no one’s victim,” Ashling says. Her voice is soft. “She lived life by her own terms, and she died by them too.” Ashling’s eyes fill up again, but underneath the sadness there is something else. She seems angry. “And how dare you say otherwise.”
    It would never have occurred to me that someone would want to believe their best friend had killed herself, that somehow that would be preferable to the alternative. But if she cares about Delia as much as she obviously does, I can’t stop here. I have to keep going.
    “I know it’s so completely beyond insane to even imagine that someone could have . . .” I’m trying to make my voice calm, to modulate my tone so she’ll listen. I know the look that’s in her eyes now, I’ve seen it before on my mom—that wild animal look. And you have to be careful to keep them from