When my eyes finally opened my mind was immediately assaulted by light and noise. Compared to the dark atmosphere of outer orbit, the lights of Emily’s basement were blinding. Normally my sight would have cleared up as my eyes slowly adjusted. But as it was, Melanie was sitting right by me when I woke up.

“Oh my God!” she cried out just as I was trying to stand up. “Peter! Everyone! Peter’s awake!”

“AAAAH!” I screamed as her voice hit me like a hammer. It was so overwhelmed that it stumbled off of the cushion-like surface I had been laying on and fell onto a more wooden type of floor.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry Peter,” she said as she covered her mouth with her hand.

I groaned a bit as I tried to pick myself up, my whole body felt sore. Just as I finally forced myself to my feet I saw that I had been resting on a pillow on top of the coffee table. I took an experimental step forward and faltered. “Gah! What the hell happened to me?” I asked aloud.

When I looked back to Melanie I saw that she had been joined by everyone else at the slumber party. Everyone that is except Emily. The girls exchanged looks between themselves.

“Are you ok?” Ashley asked slowly. “How much do you remember?”

“How much do I-” Like a spark everything suddenly flashed right through my head. The fight, breaking down, jumping, and then waking up only to have my mind blown to smithereens by my pet ant. It gave me a headache just thinking about it. When I took a closer look at the girls I saw for the first time how bloodshot their eyes were. They had been crying while I was asleep, or maybe they didn’t think I was simply asleep. I groaned again as I sat down on the table, my back against the pillow and my arms resting on my knees. “I remember too much. Where’s Emily?”

Tara sighed. “We’ve been trying to get her to come out of her room for half an hour. She wouldn’t stop crying.”

Knife, stab, twist. I rubbed at my temples as my headache grew worse. “What the hell have I done?” I muttered.

“You tell us,” Jess said. New tears looked to be on the edge of her vision. “Why the hell would you just . . . just . . .” She sniffed.

I held up a hand to forestall her. “I know I have a lot to apologize for, but not until Emily’s here.”

Jess nodded as she whipped her eyes. Tara stood up. “Ashley and I will get her down.”

It took a good fifteen minutes but eventually we heard the soft thuds of feet coming down the stairs. The sounds continued until you could see the girls standing at the top of the basement staircase. When Emily came down I was a little surprised. Her hair was in a mess and her eyes were puffy and red. As a matter of fact her whole face was flushed red. I’d never seen her a mess like this before. She walked over in complete silence, knelt down in front of the coffee table where I sat, stared at me for a few moments, and then broke down crying.

She didn’t spontaneously burst into tears and wails. They just flowed naturally from her eyes as she sniffled and sobbed. The girls immediately rushed to comfort her and I averted my eyes. I felt like a coward but I couldn’t bare to look at her. I had brought her to a point of sadness and despair I had never seen on someone like her before. It actually hurt me just hearing her cry like that.

She tried to force sentences out in between her gasps. “You just . . . just . . .you . . .YOU DON’T JUST DO THAT!” she finally yelled. “ You don’t just! . . .JUST JUMP LIKE THAT! WHAT THE HELL PETER! YOU DON’T JUST-” she had to stop as the sobs became too much for her. That last part she said in a whisper. “You don’t just do that to yourself.”

I looked up at all of them, and every face was gazing at me, wanting an explanation. I lowered my head as I sighed. Then I took a deep breath and faced them again. They deserved to know.

“I live with depression,” I explained. “And this is actually the fourth time I’ve almost killed myself.”

Just like that, I said it. Something I’ve never fully confessed to anyone before in my life. And they just looked right back at me as it set in. Very slowly hands lifted to cover mouths left hanging open in shock. Not a sound was uttered by anyone. I looked at Nicole, Melanie, and Laura, the youngest girls here. Tears were sliding freely from their eyes like rain. Jess, Ashley and Tara all tried to speak but couldn’t muster any sounds, let alone words. And Emily . . .

Emily just looked numb.

I went on explaining. “When I was twelve I went to that surprise party for Dave Harrison. Tara and Emily should remember, I told them that story already. Well it all started when we were at Applebee’s.” I smiled a little as I remembered the party. “Man, that party was the best I’d ever experienced in my whole childhood. When they brought out Dave’s cake and everyone cheered, man, whether it was their birthday or not everyone was happy.” Then I frowned. “Except me. It wasn’t that I was jealous of Dave, I really wanted to be happy for him. But the whole time I couldn’t make myself feel happy. Instead I remember feeling worse.” I paused for a bit as I recalled what I thought that day. “I remember . . . I remember wondering if there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t feeling jealous for Dave, I wasn’t angry, but I wasn’t happy. I didn’t understand it.”

“A few years later I’d still be experiencing the same sensations. Always feeling sad even when everything in my life was going right. I wasn’t a star on the wrestling team, I was good but not great. But I was friends with everyone on the team, we were like brothers to each other. My grades were a little above average, I’ve performed at open mic night at school a few times. But it would never leave me alone. The fact that I couldn’t say I was happy about anything, and I’d always ask what was wrong with me.”

I took a second to swallow a lump in my throat that had been forming. I needed to go on, I needed to tell the rest. “The first time I tried to kill myself was when I was fifteen. I was walking by myself up one of those mountain trails not to far from where I live. The same trails that cyclists use for exercise. Just as I was heading down to go home I remember stopping at a curve just to get a good look at everything. As I started think about things eventually I came to remember a recent time when my depression really hit me. At that point I felt like I had dealt with it enough. I put one leg over the safety railing, I told myself I was going to go through with this. Just as I swung my left leg over and both of my feet were on the very edge of the cliff I heard people coming. I panicked and hopped back over to the other side just as some bicyclists road by. They waved to me, I waved back, and then I ran home.”

“The second time I was sitting in my room with a bottle of pills in my hand. I don’t remember what they were for, I just pulled them out of my parents medicine cabinet. I kept telling myself I was going to do it. I was going to open up the bottle and swallow every single pill. Then I’d just pass out and dream forever. I spent twenty minutes just sitting there telling myself things like that over and over again. At some point my little brother knocked on my door, I hid the bottle when he came in. He asked if we were still going to play video games after dinner like I said I would before. Even after he left I still debated with myself for a minute or two. But I knew I couldn’t go through with it. So I put the pills back and that was it.”

“The third time was the same scenario, in my room with a different bottle of pills. This was actually last year. This time I didn’t waste twenty minutes talking to myself. I just thought it over for a few before I opened the bottle and put it too my lips. I poured in a few pills but I was too scared, I panicked and spit them all out. After that I just sat on the floor and cried to myself. My dad came up to tell me it was dinner time when he saw me crying and holding the bottle of pills. The next day I went to a psychiatrist who explained to me what depression was. From then on I took antidepressant meds.” I had to stop to take a deep breath. I think tears might have been in my eyes but I wasn’t focused on that. “One of my biggest struggles while being small was learning to get by without them. I made it two weeks. Maybe I could have made it longer but the near death experiences wore me down fast.”

I took another moment to breath. “I’m uh . . . I’m sorry for . . . for everything I uh . . .”

As I struggled to find the right words to express myself I was interrupted by Emily’s sobs. “You . . . . . are so fucking selfish Peter!”

I looked up at her feeling perplexed. She whipped the tears from her eyes as she continued shouting. “Don’t you ever think about others before doing anything? Don’t you think about us? Have you ever thought what we’d do if you suddenly just! . . . Just! . . .” She broke down crying again. “Why would you do that to us! After everything else you’ve done before!”

I looked around at everyone else, hoping they’d explain. Nicole spoke up first, her tears kept coming down. “You’re the reason I was able to overcome shyness and meet these girls. If it wasn’t for you I don’t know if I’d have any friends in high school.”

Melanie fought down sobs of her own. “You’re the one who helped me after I broke up with Kevin and he kept making me feel like shit for weeks because of it.”

“You always listened to me no matter how many times I spoke about the shit I go through with my parents. And you always had something supportive to say.” Jess said.

Ashley looked up at me. “We spent an entire year helping each other get through spanish in eighth grade.”

Laura was whipping her eyes with a tissue while she spoke. “You’re the reason I got involved in that summer music program and overcame my stage fright. You have no idea how confident that has made me in so many other things.”

I heard Tara sniff and I turned to her, a sad smile was on her lips. “You went out of your way to make me laugh on a daily basis. Even on days that were hard on you.”

To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement. Honestly I had never really thought much of any of those things I had done. I figured I was just doing what a decent friend would do. Did my actions really mean that much to these girls? Some of them I have only known for less than a few years. Have I really made an impact in their lives or were they just saying this for my sake? The rational part of my mind told me that that was the case. But as I looked each one of them in the eyes I couldn’t believe any of them were making this up.

This time I felt it when the tears came to me. It felt good.

Then Emily put her hands on the table which brought my attention back to her. Her gaze was so intense I actually felt her eyes piercing right through my small body. Her voice suggested she was going through great pains to hold back the flood of emotions she was feeling. “Don’t you ever even consider doing anything like that again. You hear me? You have no idea what we’d do if anything like that happened to you. We don’t even know what we’d do without you. Ok?” She sobbed once but kept her voice under control. “If you have a problem we’re always here to help you out. But we need you too Pete! We . . . .” She had to stop to take a deep breath. When she spoke her voice was calm and composed. “Just don’t leave us like that. You’re like family to us.”

I lack the words necessary to describe how I felt about that. Remember when I said I tried to break out of the friend zone with Emily? Turns out the friend zone is just bullshit, I learned that a while ago. Relationships can be great things, but I knew I’d mess up. I’m only nineteen, and I was fifteen when I was crushing on her, of course I was going to screw up. But you can’t do that when you’re friends, that’s the unappreciated beauty of it. You have to actually make an effort to screw up being friends with a girl. But if you’re in a relationship everything is taken much more seriously and one wrong move can mean years of bad blood between the two parties. I came to grips with this a few years ago, and now I want nothing more than to just continue being a close friend to every one of the girls here.

What I’m saying is that hearing Emily say that to me was just about the best thing she could have said.

The tears stopped flowing, only to be replaced by a smile. I took in the sight of my friends watching me and I nodded. “It’s a deal.”