¶ … stood with neck craning like everyone else around me. The tips of his white sneakers were showing, just past the lip of the building's roof. Although the twelve stories between us blurred his facial features, I knew what Jeff looked like because I saw him every day in class. He had sad brown eyes, pimples on his left cheek, and unkempt hair. I don't think he cared much about what other people thought, but when I saw him up there threatening to jump, I considered the fact that he felt his life was worth nothing because he had no one to live for. I heard someone next to me saying, "I feel like I'm watching a movie," and although it annoyed me to hear them depersonalizing Jeff's attempted suicide, the same thought had passed through my head already. Every time the wind blew, at least one person in the audience on the street gasped. The gusts were strong, and Jeff was a skinny kid. We were an audience, gazing up in wonder and awe, wondering if Jeff would jump. No one moved. People kept showing up to see what was going on, and I guess we assumed that someone older with more power and experience would be heading up to the roof right now to talk him down. The story of Jeff shows how weak people can be, not people like Jeff, but people like me and everyone else standing on the ground looking up as if they were watching a free show. We were responsible for Jeff being up there, but none of us took any responsibility. We all expected someone else to be good, to take a stand. Instead, we stood, half of us pointing phones in the air.
Jeff never let anyone know that he was considering killing himself. At least, he never told any of us. People who get depressed to this level,...
I think they have been hurt too much to have
faith that anything was going to change, either. I can't say I was close to Jeff, but I don't think Jeff was close to anyone, even his
parents because we really never saw them even at school events. We teased him. He wore the same jeans to school every day in the winter, these baggy faded jeans that probably belonged to his big brother. When Jeff wore black sweatpants, it must have been laundry day at home. His brother was older, 21 or 22, already off to
college. Jeff never had a girlfriend. My girlfriend Maxine once dared her best friend Tina to kiss Jeff. Tina wouldn't do it for less than $10. After she did the dirty deed, Tina ran down the hallway spitting emotively and shouting "Ewwww!" so loudly, the janitor ran down the hall towards Jeff with the mop, expecting to see a cockroach. I felt bad for Jeff that day, but I laughed anyway. Tina was funny. Several boys were mean to Jeff, and once Andy Downer picked a fight with him but Jeff just turtled. Standing on the roof today, Jeff looked much more a bird than a turtle. He seemed more powerful up there on the roof than he ever did in school, and look, he had power over us. Jeff was commanding the scene, for not one of us could stop looking at him. What Jeff did mattered to us.
This spectacle on the roof, this…
