College

A few months after I first arrived at college, I got an unexpected phone call from my father. I was walking in the snow, already packed down by previous adventurers, to an off-campus party, where I planned to blackout. Where’s mom? I asked. I don’t know where your mother is, my father said. Where are you? I replied. I’m going to hang myself, he said. I want you to be here when I do it. Now? I said. I’m using a belt, he said. I’m placing it around one of the beams in the living room. I heard a faint slip of leather. Which beam? I asked. Third one in, he said, his voice quivering and far away, I’m standing on the couch. I held my breath. I imagined the beam, like all of them, its firm wood bracing the house up, and I knew it would hold him. There he was—locking the belt’s smooth faux-leather braids around his jaw. There—shuffling his feet to the couch’s edge. Wait, I said. Wait. Wait. I stood, outside my destination, a feeble, disheveled house rented by Track & Field’s vaulters. Unrecognizable bass crept from an open window onto the sidewalk below. I’m going to step off, my father said, we don’t have much time left.