Ride or Die

2. You Only Live Once

~ WILLA's POV ~

“Ms. White, your brother was rescued after a 911 call claiming that a man had jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge,” 

“He what?” I gaped.

The doctor gave me sympathetic smile. She was an older lady, maybe around her forties. She took a deep breath before stepping closer to me.

“Eye witnesses said that he didn’t die on impact. He resurfaced. He was lucky that the Coast Guard was nearby,” she paused for a moment before continuing, “But unfortunately, he suffered a severe concussion from the impact. We’re still running more tests to determine the extremity of his brain injury…”

“I don’t understand,” I shook my head frantically. “Why would he jump off a bridge?”

“According to police reports, Mr. White’s actions are consistent with that of… suicide,”

“That’s impossible!” I spat.

Wes was a lot of things, but suicidal? That was outrageous!

“Willa!” I heard my mom’s voice and I turned around to see her standing at the door. Her jacket was disheveled and she was still wearing her nurse uniform underneath.

“Mom!” I ran to her and gave her a hug.

“Wes, what happened to Wes?” her eyes were as wide as saucers when she saw Wes lying on that hospital bed. She walked over to him, took his hand in hers, and squeezed it tight.

“What happened to my son?” she asked the doctor.

“Mrs. White… Your son suffered extensive brain injuries. We’re still running more tests to—“

“Brain injuries? How?” mom cut her off.

“He…” the doctor looked at me for a moment before saying, “Fell off the Brooklyn Bridge, ma’am,”

“He fell off the bridge?” mom gaped.

“Mom…” I spoke as I stepped behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “They think Wes tried to commit suicide. But, that’s insane, right?”

“No!” mom yelped and buried her face to Wes’ chest. “My son! Not my son! No…” she wailed.

“I know, mom, I know. I’m sorry,” I hugged her again as tears trickled down my face, “I’m so sorry,”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It had been two days and Wes was still not waking up.

The doctors couldn’t tell when he would wake up, and the police reports were inconclusive. But I knew one thing for sure. Wes could not have committed suicide. This was not Wes. He was going to meet me at the diner that night. If he had contemplated suicide, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet me. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t right.

Meanwhile, my mom was living like a zombie. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, and she refused to leave the hospital. She wanted to be there when Wes open his eyes. But if she kept this up, she might end up in a hospital bed right next to him.

On the third day, the police came by and delivered Wes’ backpack to us. It was found abandoned at the bridge. They said they were still investigating the event, but I knew, from the way they talked, they had made up their minds that this was a suicide case. They weren’t really gonna waste their precious time looking into a case like this.

I kept telling them and everyone that this wasn’t a suicide, but these adults, they only looked at me with pity. They thought I was in denial. No, they were the ones who were in denial. The clues were all there! If they would only look…

Mom and the police were talking outside the room and I was sitting there next to Wes’ backpack. I reached for his backpack mindlessly and started going through it.

Maybe there are clues hidden here…?

There was nothing out of the ordinary in his backpack. His phone was inside, but it was out of battery. I’d have to charge it first before I could do some more snooping. Other than that, he had a bunch of textbooks and papers, but that was about it. The one weird thing I found was this black masquerade mask on the bottom of the bag. 

Odd. I never knew Wes was a fan of the phantom of the opera?

I studied the mask in my hand, but it was just a mask. It wasn’t gonna speak or tell me anything. Putting the mask to the side, my eyes darted to another thing that was intriguing inside the bag. I glanced over it before because it looked like a normal old book, but on second glance, I realized it was a journal. It was a leather bound journal, to be exact. On the bottom was an engraving: WDW – RODS.

WDW is Wes’ initials, but what is RODS?

I opened the journal and read the first page.

Property of Wes Daniel White. 

John Jay Hall Room 313, 

Columbia University,

519 W 114th St, New York, 10027.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Flipping it to the second page, it read:

I am number three.

I shall exist to bring meaning to this number.

I will not let you down.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

That was intriguing. I started flipping through the pages furiously, but the more I flipped, the more confused I got. There were a bunch of drawings and doodles and weird nonsense words. A lot of the things inside this journal didn’t make much sense. It was like he was drunk or high or something when he was writing it. But after a few more flips, I found an entry that was pretty interesting.

September 9th,2018,

Happy birthday to me.

After a while, birthdays don’t matter as much anymore. 

But the guys insisted on celebrating, so celebrate we shall.

I miss the good old days.

The days where I still want to celebrate birthdays.

PS. Happy birthday to you too Will, don’t think I’d forget about you. Hope you enjoy them croissants. I miss you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Reading that page made me well up a little. It was dated on our birthday a year ago. Smiling a sad smile, I flopped it to the next page, and I found something that looked like a poem.

This world is full of secrets.

And these secrets make the world go around.

They can’t live without each other.

It’s just the way it is.

And when you have to be the one carrying the secrets, 

you’re gonna feel like carrying the weight of the world. 

Because ultimately they’re the same thing. 

A little piece of advice? 

Don’t have secrets.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Secrets? What kind of secrets was he talking about? I was growing more and more curious with each page. But the next page turned out kind of horrific. It was filled with one word: “HELP” written over and over again until it filled the entire page. 

Wes is asking for help? From what?

The page after that had another poem-like thing written by him.

When I see the water under the bridge, I can’t help but think… Am I too much? I feel like I'm too much. There's so much of me and I'm spilling everywhere. Seriously, look at us, we're so all over the place.  Sometimes I wonder...  why can't I just be a plant?  I'll know exactly where to stand. I mean, look at this place.  These cars have somewhere to go to, but do we?  This place is home for some people, but is it for me? I come here every day looking for answers and I know these lights are beautiful, but I'm just tired. I've been spilled everywhere and I just wanna go home. Guess, I’m too much of a romantic, aren’t I? I need to have meaning and reasons.

Well, if you’re looking for a reason, I’ll give you a reason. The Ride or Die Society. They are the reason.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“The Ride or Die Society…?” I squinted my eyes at the words. “What even is that? Some kind of weird club that Wes is a part of?”

That poem was the last entry in the journal. All the pages after that were blank. On the very last page, there was a piece of paper tucked inside and it was filled with a series of zeroes and ones that looked like this:

01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01010010 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01000100 01101001 01100101 00100000 01000001 01101110 01101110 01110101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01000111 01100001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110 00100000 00001010 01001101 01100101 01100101 01110100 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 01100001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01110011 01101111 01101110 00101110 00100000 00110111 01110000 01101101 00101110 00100000 00001010 01010011 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100100 01100001 01111001 00101100 00100000 01010011 01100101 01110000 01110100 01100101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110001 00110101 01110100 01101000 00100000 00110010 00110000 00110001 00111000 00101110 00001010 01001101 01100001 01110011 01101011 00100000 01001111 01101110 00101110

I realized this must be some kind of a code. Using my handy-dandy Google skills, I learned that it was a binary code. There was a tool online that could translate these numbers into words. It took me a whole ten minutes to type it all in and hit the translate button. Seconds later, the result popped up:

The Ride or Die Annual Gathering.  

Meet at the Garrison. 7 pm.  

Saturday, September 15th,2018. 

Mask On.

Suddenly, it was starting to make sense to me. Wes was part of a secret club at school. And they were holding a gathering this Saturday. I was desperate to find out more about his life, and all the clues seemed to be pointing in this direction.

I picked up the mask next to me and tilted my head to the side. 

“Mask on, huh…?”

- - - - - To Be Continued - - - - -