Fame - Short story

Trigger warning: Suicide

He always wanted to make a good impression on people around him. Was it really him who caused all this upheaval? He didn’t think he was. And yet it seemed that way. This side of the street had been cordoned off seventy feet below, and there were three or four police cars flashing red and blue on each side.

There was someone talking next to him, but he wasn’t really listening. He was trying to figure out whether the police officers were really interested in him or just wanted to do their jobs. And whether the people gathering on the opposite side of the street were interested in him or just had nothing better to do. For he did want (he had to admit to himself, as a cold breeze dishevelled his hair), he did want someone to listen, but not because it was their job. He wanted someone to be interested in him because of him. For the past three months, he’d thought that person was James.

The man next to him (he wore plain clothes, he observed, which was strange as he was sure to be a policeman) wanted to know if he could sit next to him on the ledge. Of course he couldn’t. Now it was he who was in control.

He shouldn’t have left that note at his mother’s after all. The negotiator they sent was unsympathetic and expected one to tell all about his intimate secrets and troubles when asked just one over-courteous question. Was it her mother who’d found the note? He didn’t want it to be her. She was one of the few whom he trusted enough to share his – (Did he want to talk? No he didn’t think he did, he replied. He did, of course, but not to one who resembled his father so much. Then the negotiator disappeared.) …her mother and the boys at the restaurant. He wanted his parents to be proud of him. That’s why he was working in that damned restaurant each day after school. To get into college. But he felt he could either get through the exams or save enough money. Both—no way.

How his father would’ve been impressed if he’d announced that he was going to college on one of their weekend meetings! But those half-days had become more and more strained, until, last week, he phoned his father and told him that he had something else to do. His mother didn’t know. That was the last time he and James were together. It was then, after they came, that James told him he was looking for someone more mature. He knew what James meant. That he was looking for someone less “troubled.”

He wouldn’t have taken it to heart the way he did if he hadn’t tried so hard to please James. If there had been a God in the darkening sky, he would’ve known how hard he tried to act “natural.” Just like in school. Or at home. In front of his father. He tried to be nice. He tried to look straight. He tried to do his homework. And for the most part, he hadn’t been bad at trying.

“Don’t listen to them,” a female voice said next to him. It was another police officer. In uniform. He looked up and the first thing he saw were the deep dark circles under her eyes. And for the first time in the past two hours or so, he shivered and started to feel the cold humid air getting under his t-shirt. He looked at the woman’s long blond hair waving in the wind, and almost felt crying.

“Don’t listen to them.” Listen to whom? Some of the people were shouting below. There were quite many of them now. A couple had their arms stretched upwards. They weren’t pointing. They had their mobiles in their hands.

“What are they doing?” he asked, although it was more than obvious.

“They’re taking photos of you. You’ve become something of a celebrity here.”

A celebrity. He forgot to smile at the intended joke. He’d never dreamt of becoming one. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it, to be liked by people whom you haven’t even met. Or at least to be interested in. His mother, she’d had a new partner for about a month. He didn’t see his father but once a week. And now James – (The new negotiator asked something. He nearly asked back automatically, “I’m sorry?” when he reminded himself that all this was supposed to be about him. He would do as he pleased. So he remained silent.) He met James on one of those nights when he let himself dragged down to Soho by the other staff at the restaurant. All they wanted was to get drunk and then laid, preferably in that order. Especially if the other one-nighter wasn’t particularly pleasing to the eye. But James was different. He seemed to go clubbing to actually meet people. And so it started. They left and walked and talked all the way down to the Thames. They kissed standing on the exact middle of Millennium Bridge. And then James walked him home. That was three months ago.

“What’s wrong with me?” he asked, only half aware of the fact that he was saying it aloud.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” the woman said, which, considering that he was sitting on the edge of a roof with a crowd gathering below, was something almost impossible to believe.

“You want a coat?” No, he didn’t want one, despite the fact that he was now shivering constantly. Having a coat would thwart the very purpose with which he had come here. He wondered if his mother had come. And if they’d let her near him, or would tell her that her presence would probably upset him. Then he wondered if they’d be right.

The whole world seemed to be waiting. From up there, where the noise of the traffic was abated to a distant hum, everything seemed calm and happy. Everything was as it should be. Everything made sense. He felt as if he could oversee this happiness. Guard it. Contribute to it. He felt to be in control, to be at peace with –

“Come on, get on with it!”

The voice from down below was just too clear not to be heard. “Don’t listen to them,” the officer said, and hurried back to the centre of the roof to radio her colleagues. But it was too late. He felt cold creeping down his spine. He knew that kind of shouting, that which started off bravely but faded away at the end expecting support from like-minded morons. He’d had enough taunting and bullying at school. So this was it. The moment that was supposed to be about him. The moment, which had passed as the sun disappeared, leaving a crushing mass of blackness above him. The mobiles did sense the change, and now automatic flashes fired as newcomers tried to save the moment for eternity and Facebook.

The officer came back, and started to talk much louder than necessary with the obvious intent of taking his mind off the crowd. He had a sinking feeling of failure. The whole thing turned out to be something totally different from what he’d imagined. There were hisses and shouts in the crowd. He shrank before what was glaring him in the face: no one was interested in him. None of the police, and none of those down below. What they saw was a surprisingly 3D footage from the nine o’clock news, with someone up some roof for some reason. And that was all.

“Why don’t you tell me what you wrote in your note?” It was a lame attempt at re-igniting a conversation that had never started. He just shook his head. She’s not really interested, he said to himself. She’s not really interested. He saw the woman rubbing her hands together to warm them up. And then he started to feel guilty for being the reason of her having to stand out in the cold for hours. “You must be cold,” he said, but his own voice rang hollow and distant. She might be there, but only because it was her job. He was another case to be handled, another file back at the station. She wasn’t interested—and he tried to look in the opposite direction, toward Millennium Bridge. Tomorrow would’ve been their three-month –

“Jump!”

And another: “Come on, jump!”

And laughter.

So these were the so-called people he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with. He knew his chosen method wasn’t the most dignified way of leaving all this behind, but at least he wanted to be missed. At least he wanted it to be him who died, not just some troubled kid. But all he’d become was some gruesome sort of entertainment. Not even a pitiable kind of celebrity, but a nobody. It was as if he’d already been gone.

He failed. He failed to make an impression. On his family. On James. On the crowd down below. On those whom he wanted to tell so much… The whole world indeed seemed to be waiting. Waiting for him. The crowd and the police. While he was there, life couldn’t go on. He was a surplus. An obstacle.

“How far can you bounce?”

And then, suddenly, he realized what he could do to make almost a hundred people happy at once. During those seventy feet, he passed from real life into the realm of Saturday television. People were bustling forward and jumping over the cordon to meet him and shake his hand and ask for his autograph, but most of all to take photos with their mobiles. He would’ve smiled if his facial muscles hadn’t lain in shreds on his shattered cheekbones and fractured skull.

In memory of Shaun Dykes, who took his own life on the 27th of September, 2008, by jumping from top of a building urged and filmed by a group of onlookers. Officers had been trying for hours to bring him to safety.