Saving Seth

Two weeks ago, Seth Rivera hung himself in the girl’s restroom. Why the girl’s, if he’s a guy? I don’t know. Seth was that guy. The one who everyone avoids. I was his best friend. To be honest, his only friend. I always hung out with him. I thought he was cool. I didn’t understand everyone’s hatred of him. My name is Kailen Sommers. Seth never struck me as depressed. He seemed fine with everyone’s aversion. Apparently, he wasn’t. Maybe I should have done better. Maybe I should have known something was wrong when he wore long sleeves every day of summer break. I should have done a lot of things. But he’s gone. And everyone except for me seems to have moved on. Oh, sure, there’s a new hotline set up by someone’s parents for kids to chat on, there’s a gravestone with a few sets of wilted roses, there was an assembly, all that. But people seem to have continued. Not me. I have a giant poster in my room that I made with a photo booth picture that we took together. Every time I look at it, tears come to my eyes. Why did Seth do it? Did he think I didn’t care?

“Hey, you’re Kailen Sommers, right?” says a gruff voice behind me. I turn around, expecting a student from school, but instead, I see Mr. Avian, the math teacher. His head is balding and covered in patches of grey hair.

“Y… yeah, that would be me… why are you asking, Mr. Avian?”

“I have a proposition.”

“Um… what?”

“I can help you save Seth.”

“He’s dead, Mr. Avian,” I say, turning to walk away. “You can’t bring back the dead.”

“Actually, I can,” says a new voice. “Kind of. I can take you back to a week before Seth killed himself. Time enough to save him.” Slowly, I turn around. The person who spoke is a young woman with short, messy black hair, a black sweatshirt, and black sweatpants. I look at her before looking at the sky.

“Do you realize it’s 70 degrees?” I ask her. Despite it being November, it was a rare hot day. “What are you, insane?”

“Some may say,” the woman says, “but that’s up to you to decide. Do you want to save your friend?”

“Well- yeah,” I say. “But- time travel? You really think I’m stupid enough to believe that crap? Time travel isn’t real.”

“Well, you can continue in your life believing that, or you can save your friend. Your choice.”

“I- I want to save Seth.”

“Then that’s that,” says Mr. Avian. “He agreed.”

“That he did,” says the woman. “That was faster than I expected.”

“Before I go,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“Some call me Death, some call me the Grim Reaper. My friends call me Thanatos.” With that ambiguous information, the world in front of me swirls. I wake up in my bed. I must have been dreaming. What a weird, vivid dream. I look at my clock. Six in the morning. Thirty minutes before the start of school. I walk downstairs. Something doesn’t feel right. I walk over to the family calendar and choke on air.

Thanatos was real. I just traveled back in time.

Oh my gosh. This is crazy. This cannot be happening. I look out the window. The sun is shining.

I’m in the past. Wow. How is this possible?

I’ve been sent into the past by Death herself, and I’m going to save my depressed friend from committing suicide a week before he actually does. My life can not get any weirder.

I hear my alarm turn on from upstairs. I rush up to turn it off. It silences right after I hear them announce the date. October 20th. The calendar, that could have been edited. But the radio? Not so much. I strip out of my pajamas and shrug on a t-shirt for some obscure eighties band. My mom got it for me last year. I’m ninety percent sure I’ve never heard any of their music. Oh well. I like the shirt. I shrug on a pair of jeans with holes ripped in the sides. I didn’t buy them like that, they ripped when I tripped down the stairwell at an amusement park. I still have a scar on my leg from it. I’m pretty sure my mom got rid of them last week - which is actually two weeks in the future from now. This is just too weird. I choke down a grilled cheese sandwich for breakfast and walk out the door. It’s now seven. Time for me to start walking to school. I step outside and freeze.

For the past seven years, since second grade, me and Seth walked to school together. I never thought much of it, until the day he killed himself. He never showed up that day. I was an hour late to school and found him sitting in second period. When I asked him where he’d been, he shrugged me off. Three hours later, he was dead. Today, he was here. He was in front of me.

“Kailen? You okay?” I nod and swallow.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m fine. You?”

“Good,” says Seth, tugging at his long sleeve shirt. In October, it was way less weird to see him in long sleeves than summer. But I knew exactly what that tug meant, even if I hadn’t when I was living through this the first time. He wasn’t good, any more than I was fine. This afternoon, if I can remember correctly, me and him hung out at the park. I would tell him then. He wouldn’t believe me, but at least I wouldn’t be lying to him the same way he lied to me. Maybe truth could have saved him.

“So, you ready for Mr. Avian’s test today?” He asks. A shiver goes up my spine at the mention of Mr. Avian’s name.

“Yeah, I think so,” I say. “I dunno, though. I suck at American History.”

“Same, man.”

“Dude, are you kidding? You get straight As. You don’t suck at anything.”

“You think?” Seth asks, looking at me.

“Yeah. I do think. You’re great, Seth.”

“So why does everyone avoid me?”

“Yo. You know that some of the best artists were ignored as kids, right? I mean, really. You’re gonna be great one day.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. I mean, the lead singer of Iron Maiden was rejected from choir.”

“Okay,” says Seth with a laugh. “That’s just hilarious.”

“I know, right? Iron Maiden is amazing!”

“So.. you think my music’ll get big?”

“I know so,” I say. Actually, this was true. Me and Seth had a kind of mini band and we posted a bunch of stuff on YouTube. The night he died, I got a call from No Copyright Sounds asking if we wanted to do a label. I refused. It wasn’t the same without Seth. I couldn’t do it without him. If he had lived, we could have been big.

“Dude, I am so tired right now.”

“Why?”

“I was up ’till four in the morning doing Mrs. Ryderr’s homework. It was awful.”

“I hate math,” I say.

“Yeah, well, just wait until you’re in geometry like me. You’re lucky to have not been moved up.”

“Yeah, I guess. But I don’t feel lucky. Mr. Fischer is evil.”

“I have to agree with you there. That guy is messed up.” It was funny, how in twenty minutes of seeing my best friend again, I was already falling into the comfortable routine of talking with him. Seth was awesome like that.

The school came into view too soon. Looming above me were the words Greenville High - Circa 1999. It was a magnificent brick building. Me and Seth walked side by side into the building. Five minutes till first period. I wanted to just skip school and talk with Seth, but I knew I couldn’t do that. So we sat in first period and I pulled up YouTube and searched up our profile.

“Seth!! Oh my God, look!” He leans over. “We reached 1k likes!” His eyes widen.

“Holy crap-a-mole! For real?”

“For real, man.”

“Look at the comments!” We lean over and look at the comments.

The-Evil-Lantern - HECK YAS SO EDGY!! ILOVEIT! Seth and I look at eachother.

“See?” I say, “I told you we’d get big.”

“Dude, you are so right!” Even though I was from the future and I already knew about this milestone, I felt the joy just as powerfully as I had then. It really was awesome. The-Evil-Lantern was an obscure YouTuber we had followed way back at the beginning. She made awesome tracks but never really got recognized. She’d never commented or liked any of our stuff before. Our song, Lively, was getting recognized by our inspiration!

“Dude!! Comment back!” Seth whispers. “Do it!”

@The-Evil-Lantern you are the inspiration for this song and all our others! So glad you enjoy! I could see on Seth’s face that he wasn’t feigning happiness. He was happy. And so was I. It’s awesome.

During the school day, I start to notice things. People acted differently. It takes me a minute to realize it, but then it hits me. There are way less people wearing long sleeves. I hadn’t even noticed it, but in the future… there were more of the ‘emo’ kids. More kids wearing black and sitting in the back of the room. Could it be that people were pushed over the edge by Seth’s death? Even though they didn’t really know him?

After school, we met up at the park. I took a deep breath. Telling him this would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, aside from attending his funeral.

“Seth?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“It’s going to sound crazy. Like, really crazy.”

“After this morning, I don’t think anything will surprise me.”

“This will,” I say, and I take another deep breath.

“I’m listening.”

“Okay, so, first bombshell: I’m from the future.”

“Keep explaining,” says Seth, with the best poker face I’ve ever seen.

“This is the messed up part. You know why I came back from the future?”

“Why? Is it, like, really far in the future? Do we get big?”

“Let me finish. I came back from the future to save you.”

“You what?” His poker face explodes. “What do you mean?”

“Seth… in the future, one week from now… you kill yourself.” His eyes glaze over.

“I knew it.”

“What?” I wasn’t sure which was more of a surprise, his poker face, or this reaction. Nevermind. Definitely this.

“You were acting weird this morning. You looked surprised to see me. And something else. Last night, I had a dream where I killed myself. It felt weird and strangely real. And then it felt like time was moving backwards. And then I woke up. It was so weird. With you acting weird this morning, it had me thinking that maybe the dream was real. And lo and behold, it is. It was real.”

“And I thought you were going to think I was crazy.”

“You believe me, right?”

“Dude, a lady in all black came and told me she was Death and wanted me to go back in time and save you. Mr. Avian was in on it, too.

“That is so cool! And so freaky! So, when you said this morning that you knew I was going to go big, was that true?”

The day you died, I got a call from NCS.”

“NCS? Like, No Copyright Sounds NCS? Oh my God yes! Yes!”

“I said no because it wasn’t the same without you. But, if you lived, we could actually say yes! Like, we could be famous.”

“Dude, I’m too freaking excited to even be weirded out. No Copyright Sounds accepted our music. Which track?”

“Lively, obviously. That’s our best one.”

“This is the best day of my entire life!” yells Seth. A pigeon sitting on a park bench flies into the air.

“Just tell me one thing,” I say. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you kill yourself?”

“Yeah, about that…” Seth says. “There’s something I need to tell you, too.”

“What?”

“My dad, he’s… not good. Hey, I have a question first.”

“What?”

“What did my note say?”

“It had GAY written on it, in all caps.”

“Just as I planned it, weird…”

“Why?”

“My dad was a nasty guy. And, just last week; I mean last week as in, a week before today, he started thinking I was gay. Called me a lot of nasty things. He said I wasn’t manly enough and started calling me a girl.”

“So that’s why it was in the girl’s restroom…”

“Yeah. It really sucked. Sucks.”

“So, promise me you won’t do that now, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll help you deal with your dad. Okay?”

“Deal. And, one other thing.”

“What?”

“This is why you’re my best friend.” He slaps me on the back. “You literally went back in time to save me.”

“Oh yeah, one other thing.”

“What?”

“I just wanted to tell you how different life is. Like, everyone changed. There’s a crisis line and everything. All this stuff is different. And, more people are upset. I think it’s because of guilt.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. James even cried at your funeral.”

“James?” James Fischer was a boy who was (is, since we’re in the past) evil to Seth. I can’t tell you why. I was shocked when he cried at Seth’s funeral.

“Yeah. It was weird, man.”

“I bet.”

“So, let’s get you away from your dad, and then let’s get you into therapy.”

“I don’t need-”

“Don’t even say it.”

“Fine.” We walk down the street to Seth’s house.

“Hey Seth?” I say. “See you tomorrow.” He nods.

“You too.”

When I get home, my mom greets me with a plate of crackers.

“I got you snack,” she says. “How was school?”

“It was great.”

“How’d you do on your test?”

“I dunno,” I say, “I think I did okay.” I thought of the last question. It seemed unrelated to American History, but now that I thought about it, it kind of was.

The last question was “Do you believe time travel is possible?”

I know for a fact that my answer was a resolute no the first time I took the quiz, but this time… it was a yes. That’s the only one of my answers I changed, because I was scared of changing my grade. It was cheating if I did that, technically, although nobody planned for time travel as a way to cheat. Even if I failed, I wouldn’t cause a rift in the time-space continuum. To be fair, I was doing that anyway. Bringing my friend back to life. Hopefully nothing too major would happen.

I had a week to fix my best friend’s home life. I had a week to save his life. Would it be enough time? The saving his life part, maybe. But, his dad? That was a harder question. Who would listen to us? It wasn’t physical abuse, so how would we prove it?

It’s verbal…

If we got it on video… maybe someone would listen enough to help us… and we could save him.

Now we just had to get a camera, figure out how to get it on video, and… you know what? This idea sounds a lot harder when you think about it. How would we manage to get it on video?

It was nine at night when I decided to call Seth. I’d finalized the last finishing touches on my plan, and I wanted to get his approval as soon as possible.

“Dude, why are you waking me up?”

“You’re already asleep?” I ask incredulously.

“I was. Not anymore.”

“I came up with a plan,” I say.

“For what?”

“For helping you get away from your dad.”

“What is it?”

“We get it on video.”

“How are we going to do that, exactly?”

“Tomorrow, let’s meet up and make some music,” I say.

“Ahh…” says Seth. I can hear his grin over the phone. “How are you not the straight A student?”

“They don’t teach this in school,” I say.

“Okay, that’s true,” he says. “Anyway, thanks for doing this, man. Gotta go.”

“Bye. See ya tomorrow.”

“Indeed.”

I ended up not sleeping much that night, thinking about Seth. Was he safe? Was I an awful friend, because I wasn’t there right now? I wish he knew how much it tore me up when he died. I cried every night for a week, until I ran out of tears. That’s why my eyes were dry at his funeral. I couldn’t cry even if someone had squeezed it out of me.

I spent the school day telling Seth things about the future, whether his crush was still in a relationship (no), who won the Friday football game (not our team) and other random things like that. He tried asking me who won the actual sporting events, but I couldn’t remember.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “We could have gotten rich.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. We met up at his house instantly after school.

“Hello, Mr. Rivera,” I said with a forced smile. He nodded in my direction.

“Okay,” I said, as soon as we were out of earshot. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to record, and if he barges in, great. But if he doesn’t, which is much more likely, I’ll ‘leave’ and then sneak in your window to hide under your bed. I told my mom I was sleeping over, so she won’t worry about me.”

“Great,” says Seth. “We can do this.”

“Six days till I go back to the present,” I say. “Six days to do this.”

“We’ll have five days to spread the word if this works.”

“You ready, man?”

“I’m ready.”

We spent the next hour and a half jamming to our own music. Lively had climbed to 2k likes, and only 80 dislikes, which is pretty awesome. The comments were almost entirely encouraging, too. We started a new track, called Vibrate, and started working on the vocals. Seth was the singer. He was amazing. He had a voice like Brendon Urie. He could also sing higher than almost every girl in the school choir. It was pretty cool. Me, I was in charge of the background tracks. For Vibrate it started out pretty chill, and then the bass dropped and it turned brutal. For lively, currently our most popular, the bass drop was more minor, but the music was super catchy. Obviously, people liked the melody as much as we did.

After all that happened, It was time for the tricky part to come in.

“Bye, Mr. Rivera,” I say, “See you later.”

“Yeah, Kailen, see you soon,” he says. His smile, I can tell, is as equally fake as mine. I walk out the door then make a sharp right towards the window to Seth’s room. I slide it open and he hoists me into his room. I slide under the bed. I pull up my camera on my phone and double check to make sure I have enough space to record. It only takes a few minutes before I hear the door open and I click the record button. I have enough secrecy to record their feet. But it doesn’t matter. The audio is all we really need.

“Hi, Dad…” Seth says, kind of hesitantly.

“What were you doing up here?”

“What do you mean- we were making music… Dad?”

“I will not have a gay son! You’re disgusting!”

“Dad! I’m not gay! How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Then why do you have that boy over all the time!”

“Dad, he’s my best friend! Why do you even care?”

“You!” Mr. Rivera says. “I will not have such an insolent girl as my kid! I raised you to be a man!”

“Dad, come on-” I couldn’t see what happened, but Seth’s comment suddenly petered off into silence. I could only guess, and my guess was he’d threatened to hit Seth. That guess filled me with rage, so I had to swallow and refocus on the camera.

“Stay in your room,” he says. “I don’t even want to look at you.” Seth sat down on the bed with a creak that sent dust into my face. I bit back a cough. We were almost there. So close…

The door slammed. Perfect. We were home free. I rolled out from under the bed, plugging my nose. Seth opened the window and motioned me out. I tumbled out and hit the ground. Both my elbows stung with the impact. But I was good. I had the phone, I had the recording, all I had to do now was get the proof.

“Hi, Ma,” I say as I walk into the house. “Seth’s dad canceled the sleepover.” She looked at me.

“That’s alright,” she said. “Get ready for dinner. He called me when you left.” My blood froze.

How was I going to explain the extra 15 minutes? Luckily, she didn’t mention it. I supposed she would, at dinner. Maybe I would show her the video. Would she believe me?

Probably not. I washed my hands and sat back at the kitchen table. There were always four seats, even though there was no one else in our house. Apparently, before I was born, my mom and dad had a messy divorce and Dad got my older sister, Abby. I’ve never met either of them. After the divorce, my mom found out she was pregnant with me, and so I stayed in her custody.

The next morning, I ticked off another day on my mental tally. Five days left. I made the decision to wake up early, to show my mom the video.

“Mom?” I ask, as I head downstairs. “I have to show you this video.” She sat down and watched the screen. I sat in anxious silence as it replayed. There wasn’t anything I could say. She turned to me afterwards and laughed.

“Wow,” she said. “Is that a music video for one of your songs? It’s really good acting. Who is that? Seth’s dad?”

“Mom,” I say. “It’s not acting. This is real.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Seth,” she said. “I know Mr. Rivera. He’s a great guy.”

“Mom, you don’t understand-”

“Kailen, please,” she says. “Stop with the stories. You’re always making up these things. I blame it on that YouTuber you listen to, The-Dork-Whatever.”

“Mom! The-Dark-Lantern isn’t bad! She’s amazing!”

“She has all those dark and disturbing lyrics. I don’t think you should be listening to them.”

“Mom, I can’t believe you! This is Seth we’re talking about! He’s in trouble!” She rolled her eyes.

“Go eat your breakfast.” I sigh. There was no convincing her. And, with my awful grades, I doubted my teachers would, either. Maybe Mr. Avian? He might believe me. He’s the one who sent me back here, after all. Maybe he knew I could fix things.

I ate my meal in silence, then walked out to meet Seth.

“Did she believe you?” he asked, with a tired look in his eyes.

“No,” I say with a huge sigh. “I’m going to try Mr. Avian. He sent me back, so maybe he’ll believe us.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Yeah.”

Mr. Avian was my fourth period. I waited until then to show the video to anyone. I waited silently beside him like I had for my mom. When I finished, he looked at me solemnly.

“Kailen, I need you to hear something.”

“Yes?” I ask, my heart lifting in my chest.

“Sometimes, parents overreact. They say things they don’t mean.”

“Seth says it happens all the time! And it’s ridiculous.”

“Well, is it?” I look at him, confused.

“Are you two…” I look at him in shock and annoyance.

“No! Why does that even matter? His dad is still not handling it right! You have to do something!”

“Leave it be, Kailen.” I sigh and walk out of the room with my shoulders slumped. If Mr. Avian doesn’t believe us, then no one will. We are doomed. Doomed with a capital D.

“Let me guess,” Seth says as I walk out. “He didn’t believe you.”

“Ding ding ding,” I say with no enthusiasm. “Correct. So what do we do?”

“We can’t do anything. I’m just stuck with this guy for the rest of my life.”

“I won’t let that happen!”

“Kailen, let’s face it. We’re screwed. No one’s going to help us.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh really?”

“Seth, listen-”

“No, you listen. I’m really glad you came back in time to save me. That’s cool. But you can’t change anything. That’s just how time travel works.”

“That’s not true! Why would Mr. Avian-”

“Well, Mr. Avian wasn’t much help today, was he? Kailen, we’re just kids. No one pays any attention to us.”

“We should-”

“Goodnight, Kailen.”

****

It’s only three days left now. I’ve never felt so hopeless. Seth still won’t talk to me. We sit together at lunch, but he ignores me. I don’t know what to do. I only have three days to save my friend, and the way things are going, well… it doesn’t seem like I will. It seems like he’s going to die - again - and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I barely eat dinner. My bed feels hard and accusing against my back. I’m three hours away from the third day gone. What can I do in two days? I keep thinking about the last thing Seth said. “No one pays any attention to us.” If only that weren’t true. I mean, no one seems to care about kids. If only we were, like, anonymous- that’s it!

On YouTube, no one knows we are kids. We’re kind of well known, not really, but still, maybe someone would listen to us. I have to call Seth. I have to. I need to give him hope.

“What is it, Kailen? I thought I said not to call me.”

“Seth, I have an idea, please, just hear me out.”

“We’re kids. No one cares.”

“But that’s just it! What if no one knows we’re kids?”

“How…”

“YouTube. We get big, remember?”

“Oh my God.”

“I told you to listen! I’m going to get you out, even if it kills me.”

“Try not to die,” Seth says. “Or else I’ll have to come back in time and save you.”

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

“It’s true.”

“So, do you want me to post it?”

“Yes, but don’t get your hopes up. It won’t work.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist.” He hangs up and I log on to YouTube to upload the video. It uploads and I wait for several long minutes before tagging every subscriber - The-Dark-Lantern included - and sitting it on my nightstand. There’s nothing left to do but wait.

Two days left, and it is most definitely a good morning. It’s gotten likes from all our followers, (A little over two hundred). The only one who hasn’t liked is The-Dark-Lantern. I’m going to give that some more time, though. She probably gets tons of likes. I’m hoping some people repost it (in my tag I told them all to share the message everywhere. I’m monitoring their profiles to see if anyone does). So far, one person made a video about it. Their video has 20 likes. 21 if you count mine. I showed this to Seth and I saw him straighten up. Some light came back into his eyes.

“You really think this will work?”

“I do,” I say. “This will work. I swear it.” He smiles weakly.

“Thanks for everything, man.”

“No problemo.”

I am so excited right now I can’t even breathe. It’s midnight, so it’s the last day, and that would alarm me if it weren’t for one thing. The-Dark-Lantern replied to our video! She said that she can relate and that she would share it all across the web to help us. I looked, and one of the likers was Mr. Avian’s profile. He believed us now. For the first time in the past two days, I was filled with a sense of hope. Seth was talking to me, our video was getting noticed, and Seth hadn’t cut in a while. I knew this because he was wearing short sleeves. I could still see the faint scars, but still. Was he cured? No. Depression isn’t something that just goes away. It takes work. Hopefully, some of that work has just been done.

*Back in the present day*

I’m back. My mission has been accomplished. Seth is still alive. He’s currently in foster care. I’m not sure how that will all work out, but I know that he’s going to stay in this town, which is good. So much has changed. I didn’t really notice it before. I thought everyone had moved on. But that’s not true. All the teachers are happier, even the ones who Seth hated. The kids are happier, the whole school feels so much less depressing. And I’m sure it’s not just me.

I’m glad Seth is safe, and I learned an important lesson along the way myself.

Mental illness affects everyone. Not just your friends. Not just your family. Everyone.