Liv's sneakers slapped pavement as she ran, the note crumpled and re-crumpled in her fist until the ink had started to smear under her thumb.
I can't do this anymore. I never asked for this life. There's nothing here for me. Goodbye.
She hadn't thought much of the bridge thing before tonight. Ethan always got quiet and strange crossing it, staring down at the water with an expression she'd filed under Ethan being Ethan and never examined too closely. He'd asked once, almost dreamily, whether drowning hurt or just went peaceful somewhere near the end. She'd laughed and called him no fun. She replayed that now like a knife she kept accidentally leaning her hand against.
An hour ago it had all still seemed fine. She'd been on the phone with Chloe, recounting the day, breezy and unbothered.
"And honestly, Ethan's been so mopey lately. Like, I just told him I'd hang out with him to kill time when you guys were busy."
Chloe had gone quiet in a way that should have warned her.
"Liv. Did you even hear yourself? Kill time? That's — do you know how that sounds?"
"No, no, you're misreading it. I didn't mean it like that. He's genuinely fun to be around, that's why we're friends—" She'd talked over the discomfort the way she always did, filled the silence before it could ask her anything hard.
Chloe hadn't been convinced. Liv, walking to Ethan's house now with the memory of that call sitting sourly in her chest, wasn't convinced either.
She burst through his front door without knocking, the way she'd done since they were eight.
"Mrs. Aquah! Is Ethan around?"
Sarah Aquah looked up from the stove, warm as ever.
"He's somewhere in the house, dear. David's in the lounge."
Liv walked past David's distracted nod and up to Ethan's door, already half-composing an apology in her head, something breezy enough not to make it a Whole Thing. The door was ajar. She pushed it open into a room that felt wrong before she could say why — the curtains drawn against an evening that hadn't earned dimming yet, the air cold and unnaturally still, like the room itself was holding its breath.
"Ethan?"
Nothing answered. Her eyes found the bed, and the folded paper resting square in the center of the pillow, placed with the kind of care that made her stomach drop before she'd even read a word.
She unfolded it with shaking hands. The words hit her one at a time, each one its own small, precise wound.
I can't do this anymore. I never asked for this life. There's nothing here for me. Goodbye.
The room tilted.
Not Ethan.
Not her Ethan.
The memory crashed over her, sudden and complete — his voice on the bridge, unhurried, almost curious.
Is it peaceful? She'd laughed. She'd called him no fun and walked on ahead of him, not noticing, or not letting herself notice, that he hadn't laughed back.
Her eyes darted to the open window. The curtain shifted in a draft that felt like an accusation. He'd gone out that way. He had to have.
She ran, sandals slapping the wooden floor, and screamed for his parents with a voice that didn't sound like her own.
"Mrs. Aquah! Mr. Aquah! It's Ethan — he's gone! He left this, and his window's open, and he — he always said the bridge, he asked if it was peaceful—"
The sports game died mid-sentence. The spatula hit the kitchen floor. David's hand found his car keys without him seeming to look at them, and the three of them tore out into the evening, abandoning dinner, abandoning everything, chasing a single, desperate hope down the same route Liv had already half-memorized without knowing why.
The Ravenwood Bridge came into view already wrong — police lights strobing blue against the dusk, a crowd pressed to the railing, all of it too loud and too still at once.
"Ethan!"
Liv shoved through elbows and shoulders. David and Sarah were a step behind her, David's face bled white, Sarah sobbing into both hands. An officer's megaphone crackled uselessly at the small, rigid shape balanced on the ledge, unmoved by every reasonable, careful word aimed at him.
"Ethan, please—" Liv's voice cracked around his name, all her careful apology gone, replaced by something rawer.
"I'm so sorry — what I said, I didn't mean it, you're my best friend, you idiot, look at your parents, look at me—"
Something in him seemed, finally, to hear her. His head turned. His eyes found hers, and for one unbearable second there was a person behind them again — tired, and human, and reachable.
He stepped down.
The crowd exhaled as one long, ragged breath. Liv, giddy with relief, fumbled a can of his favorite juice out of her bag — a stupid, desperate peace offering — and set it at her feet, raising her free hand, half-laughing through tears, to smack some sense into him the second he was close enough to reach.
That was when the thief came through the crowd like a cannonball.
He'd snatched a bag somewhere down the block, and the officers chasing him saw only an opening — a knot of civilians to cut straight through. He barreled into their small circle without slowing. His shoulder caught Liv square in the chest.
She staggered. Her foot came down on the can.
Her hands shot out for balance and found Ethan instead — and shoved.
The crack of his skull against the concrete ledge was the worst sound any of them would ever hear. Then he was gone, folding backward into the dark water below, and the splash swallowed everything, including, for a long moment, the sound of Liv's own scream.