Free Our First Love by Anthony Lamarr Page A

coordinator.
    Life went on as usual outside 207 Circle Drive. But inside—behind its suppressive doors, windows, and walls—Caleb was realizing a frightening truth: Death was the absence of a life and not the end of all life.
    Two seconds earlier, Caleb stepped off the armrest of his dad’s black recliner. A minute before that, he took his shoes off, stood on the recliner, and tied the loose end of a twisted bed sheet around his neck. Thirty seconds before that he dragged the recliner from its post by the window to the middle of the floor. It took twenty-two minutes to disconnect the ceiling fan from the beam, then attach the sheet to the beam. About a minute and a half to compose a note to Nigel stating, I love you Nigel. Live. And six minutes to build up the courage to go through with the decision he’d contemplated for nearly two months. So it had been nearly a half hour since Caleb decided he could no longer live inside a coffin.
    It was two hours before noon.
    Caleb did not die a physical death that morning, but he finally lay to rest the hope that he would one day disremember the malignant taste of fear. Ironically, it was his fear that saved him that morning. Two seconds after stepping off the armrest, when he saw his life flash before him, a grotesquely rendered picture emerged of an eternity spent outside these walls. Of never-ending freezing and breathing water. Of an end to his story. Of the look on Nigel’s face when he opened the front door. Of Nigel alone. Until that moment, Caleb saw death as his way out—his ticket to a life without fear. But trying to die showed him that death was merely a conclusion and the only thing afterward was a future without him…at least in this world. He would cease to exist, but life andtime would not. So he decided to keep living. He grabbed the noose and fought desperately to get his legs around the backrest of the recliner. The noose, anticipating his change of mind, tightened around his neck. His lungs were about to implode. He used his legs to pull himself on top of the backrest and loosen the tension on the bedspread. He fell off the recliner during his rush to untie the noose. Then he struggled to fill his deprived lungs. He clung to the floor for nearly a minute, trying to erase the picture inside his head. It took fifteen seconds to push the recliner back over by the window. Forty minutes to untie the sheet and reattach the ceiling fan to the beam. Thirty-two seconds to burn his note to Nigel in the kitchen sink. Less than a second to resolve that Nigel never needed to know about the hanging man. Another five minutes to put the navy blue and white sheet back on his bed, then make the bed. And the rest of his life to live with the morning, he tried to exorcise his fear.
    It was still an hour before noon.
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    Caleb spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in his dad’s black recliner staring out the window. He wasn’t sure whether he or the world outside had changed but something was different. Everything looked the same. People frolicked about at the park. Cars barely missed each other as they jostled on Circle Drive. Professor Childers, wearing a gray tweed jacket and matching cap, waved at passing motorists as he strolled to his mailbox. The world out there was still the same. Caleb held his hand in front of his face. The burrowed lifelines in his palms were still shaped like a W. Both hands still had the small nubs of sixth fingers that were cut off at birth. He pressed his hands against the window and realized how fear can exaggerate—turn inches into miles. The distancebetween his hands and the other side of the window had become immeasurable.
    Caleb decided right then to forget everything that transpired that morning. He felt he was entitled to purposefully erase this attempt at dying since God fixed it so he didn’t have to remember his first death. He began to tell himself all the things he would no longer remember. As he