1 - WELCOME TO MY DIARY

They say my father killed himself. I don't think so. He would never do that to us. I just know it, and I'll prove it, too, even if I lose everything in the process.

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My Father Didn’t Kill Himself is an epistolary YA murder-mystery novel told all in blog posts. It deals with suicidal ideation, suicide, depression, grief, and the loss of innocence. If you like The Fault in Our Stars, All the Bright Place, and The Midnight Library, you might like this, too. You can find more of my work on my website.

They say my father killed himself. I don't think so. He was my best friend. He was my rock. He would never take his own life.

No. Somebody killed him. I'm sure of it. I just have to prove it. If I don't, we can't collect on his life insurance. We're already in too much debt. Without that money, we'll lose everything.

He would never do that to us. I just know it, and I'll prove it, too, even if I lose everything in the process.

Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.

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WELCOME TO MY DIARY

Posted by Delilah Clark × August 25 at 6:30 pm.

I have Mr. Willis for fifth period English.

Ole Willy forces his students to record their thoughts, hopes, and dreams in a stupid diary for the whole school year. Worse, it counts for over 50 percent of our grade!

Everybody hates it, but it’s sort of like a write (ha! get it?) of passage since he’s been there for seventy thousand years. Even my mom and dad had to do it and they graduated during the Taft administration.

Well, he’s in for a news flash: I don’t hate this assignment one iota. In fact, I LOVE it!

I squealed a bit when the school mailed my schedule and I found Mr. Willis’s name. I figured he would’ve retired by now or maybe even died. Worse than that, I could have been assigned to Mrs. Gropple's class, enduring her tedium is a fate worse than death.

I’ve been gleefully anticipating his class all summer, plotting how I will make it more exciting for me, him, and our entire class. While Alex, my best friend, was passed out at the foot of my bed during an all-night brainstorming session, I finalized my plot. She was, in fact, a great snoring springboard to bounce ideas off.

Here’s what I came up with: I’m going to drag Ole Willy into the nineteenth century kicking and screaming. I know it’s the twenty-first century, but I’ll take bringing him into the 1800s. I seriously don’t even think he knows about the cotton gin. From his lopsided pants to his ill-fitting shirts, I suspect his wife still knits all his clothes by hand.

But not anymore! Willy’s gettin' with the times ′cuz I’m moving my diary online, people.

That’s right.

Every thought in my head is going to be out there for digital consumption. Every opinion, picture, bad poem, good recipe—everything is going to be immortalized forever on the Internet. Since my life is already an open book, I don’t even care if six billion Chinese kids read every word I have to say. I am slightly worried about getting egged by some of my classmates when I unveil my true feelings about them, but that’s the price you pay for being an innovator.

Mr. Willis only has one rule for this project: we’ve got to be honest about what it’s like to be a kid growing up in contemporary America.

That shouldn’t be too hard for me. I don’t ever lie.

Alex says it’s my most annoying quality. She, better than anyone, would know; we’ve known each other since kindergarten.

I HATE THIS

Posted by Alex Dewitt × August 27 at 9:18 pm.

All summer I crossed my fingers and prayed for anything but your English class. Every year you make your students write this stupid journal that counts for over 50% percent of their grade. Fifty percent! That’s crazy sauce! If I do a bad job on it, I could end up with 50 percent—that’s an F! It’s unfair and I don’t care who knows it. 

So, of course, my schedule came and I have you for English. Delilah flipped her lid in excitement. She planned literally all summer for the possibility and convinced (see: forced) me to do this stupid online journal with her.

Think anybody else in class has to do a stupid online diary? No. Just me, because I picked Delilah as a best friend in kindergarten.

Which is why I’m on this stupid computer. She's a steamroller and I’m the concrete. It’s better to let it flatten you rather than fight against it; eventually, it will just flatten you anyway.

So here I am, Mr. Willis.  You swore up and down that we just had to be honest in this thing.

Heck, it’s the only rule you gave us.

You’re lucky you’re the dance committee advisor and I want to be head of it this year, or I’d let you have it.

I better get an A on this stupid thing.

DADDY’S GIRL

Posted by Delilah Clark × August 28 at 6:29 pm.

I’m probably too old for this, but I don’t care. I’m a total daddy’s girl. I love my father more than anything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of my mom, my friends, school, and a butt-load of other things too, but my dad’s got a special place in my heart. In fact, I spend most Friday nights with him. We play video games on his old school Nintendo system. Donkey Kong is a personal favorite of mine.

Yes, I know I'm a bit weird. I like being a nerd, thank you very much!

We also go fishing, play football, and listen to awesome music. I mean seriously awesome 70s rock and 80s rap music, before it went all gangster. They just don't make music like that anymore.

I hang out with dad almost as much as Alex. It pisses her off royally since she can’t get into trouble without me.

PUZZLES

Posted by Delilah Clark × August 29 at 11:34 pm.

Did I mention I love my dad? Pretty sure I did. I love him, and he LOVES riddles. He might love them more than a good banana split, and his cherry classic car combined.

He tries to stump me, but he can’t.  What's crazy is the fact that I've heard them all before. He only knows a few and he always says them in the same order.

I know them by heart at this point. Well, in all fairness, I knew them by heart when I was eight, but he's never stopped bombarding me with them. Plus, he's never bothered to learn any new ones, so I've had LOTS of practice.

If you ever meet my dad, you can make him think you're a genius by following this guide. Here are the only riddles he knows:

Q: A man was born in 1955. He’s alive and well today at age 33. How is this possible?

A: He was born in room 1955.

Q: A word I know, six letters it contains, subtract just one, and twelve is what remains.

A: Dozens.

Q: It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening. What is it?

A: Man.  He crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses two legs and a cane when old.

Q: Two in a corner, one in a room, zero in a house, but one in a shelter. What am I?”

A: The letter r.

Q: One would cost a quarter. Twelve would cost fifty cents. One hundred twenty-two would cost seventy-five cents. When I left the store, I had spent seventy-five cents. What did I buy?

A: House numbers! Stupid, old house numbers.

Q: Two as a whole and four in a pair. And six in a trio, you see. And eight’s a quartet, but what you must get is the name that fits just one of me?

A: Half.

If you ever meet my dad, without fail, he will ask you those stupid riddles. He’ll ask my prom date, my fiancé, every one of my friends, and every human being on the planet until the day he dies.

DINNER

Posted by Delilah Clark × August 30 at 9:21 pm.

There’s this place in the middle of town that Dad and I end up at about three times a week. It’s small and cramped, but it’s kind of kitschy and cool.

The servers wear roller skates. They slide and skid on the marble floor. It’s a very poor design.

The new servers always fall on their faces, hurling tons and tons of food all over themselves and everyone else. It's glorious. The food is kind of good as well. The place is perfect, well, almost perfect. I seriously dislike the teenage jag-weeds that overrun it after school. Otherwise, it’s perfect.

Especially the banana split. Now you might’ve had a banana split before, but nothing like this. This one’s gargantuan. I think ten people could eat it and some would still be left over.

My dad and I aren’t normal. We’ll eat the whole thing without so much as a second thought and then order dinner as a chaser. Well, I guess dinner would be the dessert, because we always order the split first. Honestly, sometimes we don’t even eat the meal. The only person I’ve ever seen who loves sweets as much as us is this bearded guy named James Nohelty. He would always come in and say, “I want…PIE!” Just like that, with the break and everything. Too bad he moved to Ithaca to start an alpaca farm or something.

No matter how we’re feeling, there’s got to be french fries. There's something about the combination of salty and sweet that just hits the spot after a long week. My mom’s stomach churns when she watches us dip our fries deep into the ice cream, which is fine by me. I don't like sharing anyway.

They hate us too. I mean like vitriolic hate. If we didn’t spend enough to single-handedly keep the place in business, they’d ship us out for sure.

But we do, so they don’t.

Instead, they let us do things like stacking championships. That’s when we pick a random number. Something reasonable like 5 or 10. Nothing crazy like the square root of 17 million.

Then, we run through the restaurant picking things that can stack into a skyscraper. The first one that can build a structure, with that number of objects (that lasts without crashing for more than 30 seconds), wins.

They’re completely unstable and never last more than a minute. But it’s super fun.

Not so much for the staff who have to clean it up, but fun for us. 

Those are the days that Dad leaves a 200% tip. Money makes everything easier. I could punch the President if I donated enough to his campaign. 

GYMNASTICS

Posted by Alex Dewitt × September 2 at 11:13 pm.

There are many things in the world I love: eating, watching movies, talking crap about celebrity dresses, and going out with friends. Classic basic bitch things. That’s what I am. A basic bitch. There was a time when basic bitches were the queen bees. Britney. Christina. Mariah. What happened to them? When did liking simple things become so horrible? 

I love one basic bitch thing more than any other. Like really love. Like really, really, really love.

Gymnastics.

Every boring, suburban white bitch does gymnastics as a kid. Most people grow out of it, height-wise or boob-wise.

I never did.

I’ve been doing it since I was five. I still pretty much have the body of a five-year-old, so I’m very good at it. I come in early, leave late, and practice on the weekends. I even dream in floor routines.

I can fly through the air with the greatest of ease. I’m a legend on the uneven bars. Despite all that, our coach never puts me in for competitions. I haven’t competed in three months. Instead, our roster is full of boring, lame routines that get boring, lame scores.

Yeah, I fell off the balance beam last time I competed, but I was trying to do a one-legged crane flip. I tripped on the landing, but it would’ve been awesome.

Did the stupid coach warn me not to do it? Yeah. Did she tell me I had to quit using the bad ass tricks I invented myself? Yeah.  Did she say I wouldn’t compete if I did it? Yeah.

But it was soooo cool.

I landed it so many times in practice. I was so confident. And we were behind in points. The coach’s lame routine would’ve gotten us third place at best, and third place is the second loser.

But this is a new year. And next competition, I’m gonna blow their minds.

HARVARD

Posted by Delilah Clark × September 3 at 7:18 am.

I have a confession. It’s something I’ve only told a few people in my life: Alex, Mom, Dad, and my guidance counselor, Mr. Aldo. Some nosy teachers and a very astute gardener figured it out too, but I’ve personally only told four people. Now, I’m telling the whole blog-o-sphere. Here it goes.

I want to go to Harvard. I want to go to Harvard more than I want to do anything, even breathe. Although, if I stopped breathing, I couldn’t go to Harvard. Hmmm…so I guess I really do care about breathing, but only in so much as it helps me go to Harvard.

I’ve been planning for it since before preschool.

I’ve only gotten one B in my entire life, and that was in stupid, sixth grade Home Economics. I highly doubt Harvard will look too poorly on someone who burned cookies and couldn't sew buttons back onto a sweater. At least that’s what I hope.

Some nights I lay awake tossing and turning just thinking about it.

It has motivated me to work harder and push myself to higher, loftier goals. I’m already taking six AP classes this year, a record for a sophomore. It helps that I placed out of freshman English and Algebra.

I know this is going to come with a lot of ridicule at school. After all, people already see me as a bit of a brownnoser, so this won't do anything to stem my classmates’ negative opinions of me. It certainly won't stop the rumors that I'm an Adderall junkie or a speed freak.

For the record though, I’ve only tried Adderall twice and I didn't like it either time. While my mind didn't wander at all while I was on it—and I was able to focus more intently than ever—being “high” in any respect didn't feel fair. I'm a pretty honest person and it felt like I was cheating the system. And I like the system.

On top of that, during my second “trip”, I watched the episode of “Saved by the Bell” where Jessie downs caffeine pills and goes crazy. I know this is going to sound nuts, but it really affected me. I don’t know if it was the abnormal concentration I was able to give to it, or the fact that I didn't want to become like her, but I never took another pill again.

Besides, I didn’t really need them. Even with AP classes, school isn’t much of a challenge for me.

Let me walk you through a normal test day in one of my classes. Math, Science, English, History, it doesn’t really matter. They all play out the same.

The classroom is chock full of thirty or so bleary-eyed, frustrated students hung over from a late night of binge drinking.

One kid has a nervous breakdown. Three more stare out the window hoping they can soak in the answers from the sun. They can’t.  

Every few seconds, the sound of pencils scratching on answer sheets or scribbling on test papers can be heard.

Number 2 pencils of course.

You bring a Number 3 pencil into a test day and you’ll be shot out of a cannon into the sun. I always kind of felt bad for the guy who invented a Number 3 pencil. He was so close!

Meanwhile, the teacher paces around looking for cheaters. Of course, the moment she turns her back, students reach into their pockets for a cell phone. It’s an ancient game of cat and mouse, older than time itself.

Every time, the teacher gets a little savvier, but so does the cheater.

I see them—slackers, huddled in corners trying to find the best way to abuse the system. I wonder if teachers do the same. The funny thing is, if students would just put half the effort into studying for their tests that they put into getting out of them, they could get an honest B or better. Half of these cheaters will grow up to be thieves, the other half titans of industry. They’ll all be criminals.

I sit above the fray in the front of the class, my character unimpeachable. Every teacher loves me. Several personally asked me if they could write my recommendation letter for the Harvard Early Admissions Program—when they found out of course, because I didn’t tell them. It was my guidance counselor Mr. Aldo who let it slip. Teachers are notoriously gossipy after all.

I politely declined all but those with the best pedigree. You see, Harvard RARELY accepts sophomores into their summer program. But if you get into their summer program, you’re nearly a lock to get into Harvard as a senior. And I definitely plan on getting into Harvard as a senior. So, I’ve got to work even harder than the other fools.

More than halfway through class I put my pencil down and smile. “Done!”

Grumbles and sneers come from all corners of the room. Sometimes there’s a chorus of boos. Other times a wad of paper flings past my face. I don’t care though. I have goals, and they don’t involve any of my peers.

And you have to have goals in this world.

MARCO POLO

Posted by Delilah Clark × September 4 at 6:47 pm.

Alex and I have a really weird thing we do. Well we have a lot of weird things, but only one super weird thing.

We know it’s weird, but we don’t care. All the coolest people from history are weird.

We play Marco Polo in school, between classes. Well, honestly, we play it all the time, but it’s mostly utilized in school.

I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Most kids learn it in the community pool when they can barely swim. Seriously, my mother taught me how to doggie paddle, then how to play Marco Polo, then how to swim for real.

I’ve searched around the Internet several times trying to figure out why it’s called Marco Polo and not Christopher Columbus or Magellan. I found three possible explanations:

1.       Marco Polo is easy and fun to say. Seriously, try it now and tell me it’s not more fun to say that Cortez. The only explorer’s name more fun to say than Marco Polo is Vasco De Gama.

2.       Legend has it that Marco Polo didn’t know where he was going when he set out on his travels. The name of the game, therefore, is an homage to him, since “Marco” has no idea where he is going in the game either.

3.       At seventeen, Marco Polo traveled to China to visit the Khan with his family. Marco, exhausted from travel, fell asleep on his horse. Sensing this, the horse fell back from the pack. When he awoke, Marco didn’t know where he was, but he heard his father and uncle shouting “Marco” and he began shouting back “Polo.”

Now the first two explanations are very logical. In fact, these explanations go in order from what makes the most sense to the least sense. The third explanation is clearly the most convoluted. It’s impossible to believe in all honesty. I mean seriously, who would shout back their last name when somebody was shouting out their first name? Especially when lost.

If I were lost and I heard somebody shouting out “Delilah!” I would shout back “Get over here. Hurry up and bring some potato chips!”

And it’s in the spirit of that third explanation that Alex and I developed our own game of Marco Polo. It’s really not so much a game, per se, but more of a homing beacon. Whenever one of us can’t find the other, it’s tradition for us to shout “Marco” until we hear the other one scream out, “Polo.”

I used it when Alex ducked into a store at the mall and I couldn’t find her.  She used it when I got on the wrong bus and nearly took the midnight express to Atlantic City with a bunch of senior citizens.

But usually we use it in school. Whether we’re walking past each other’s classes or trying to find each other in a crowded hallway, we use it multiple times daily.

So, if you’ve ever heard a high pitched “Marco”, or a higher pitched “Polo”, now you know why.

GYMNASTICS

Posted by Delilah Clark × September 10 at 9:35 pm.

OH MY GOD!

Alex was amaze-balls tonight. Seriously, I wish I was half as coordinated walking as she is flying through the air.

Alex is a gymnast. A rad, awesome, super fantabulous gymnast at that, for anybody paying attention. And tonight, she had a match. Or game. Or, you know I’ve been going to those things for years and I still don’t know what they’re called. A meet maybe, or is that swimming?

Anyway.

I was seated in the gymnasium, waiting for her to compete. Who am I kidding? I was jumping up and down, screaming bloody murder, slapping my homemade thunder sticks together and hollering like I was being murdered by Freddy Krueger.

All the other gymnasts, from all the other schools, had already competed in the event. Alex was the last to go. The little Asian girl from across town was the winner in the clubhouse with a 9.3. She was really good, but she was nothing compared to Alex. Alex is a master of that pummel horsey thing.

Vault. It’s called a vault.

I wore my favorite shirt—a bright-pink one with “ALEX IS #1” embossed on the front. I was a one-woman cheering section, shouting out every cheesy cliché in the book from “Let’s go!” to “Be Aggressive. B - E - AGGRESSIVE” … and so on. Even though there were only twenty people in the gymnasium, I screamed so loud it sounded and felt like an Olympics gold medal match. 

An old man, clearly the oldest person on the face of the planet, turned and glared at me several times. A woman and her child begged me to be quiet. But they were out of luck. Alex hadn’t competed in a long time, and I gave every ounce of energy to support her.

She’d mostly slunk down in her chair until this moment, hidden behind her equally mortified teammates. I could tell she was embarrassed, ashamed, and even a little angry at how much a fool I was making of myself. I didn’t care.

Alex’s body is really muscular, even though she doesn’t stand higher than five feet tall. Maybe even shorter than that. I’m about 5′9″ and she barely comes up to my clavicle. I have a big head, too, so that adds a lot to my height.

Alex is strong and compact, like a pit bull or a bulldog. Pound for pound she has the most muscle on the team. I’d put her up in an arm wrestling match against some of the football players, even. Maybe not the linebackers, but she’d certainly beat the punter half to death. That’s why she's so awesome on the vault.  She can push off with so much force that her tiny frame catapults hundreds of feet into the air.

It’s weird though, when she’s not in the gym you wouldn’t know she’s packing those guns. She kind of comes across as a dainty priss. Now, I love her, so I can say that; if anybody else said that, I’d sock them in the gut. But it’s true.

The only things Alex and I have in common are our unnatural love of pink and our natural blond hair.

That's right, I'm a natural blond.

Alex is much lither than me. Is lithe the right word? I think part of being lithe is grace, and I definitely don’t have that. I’m constantly tripping over my own feet. That’s probably why I don’t do gymnastics. I tried it once and almost got myself killed. Now, I stay away from sports entirely.

I'm tall and slender. I tower over Alex.

And unlike Alex, I’ve got no muscle mass. Seriously, even carrying my book bag is tough going, especially with all the AP classes I take. I like to think I’m kind of pretty. Well, today I think that. I’ll probably hate my hair, or my eyes, or my feet again tomorrow. But right now, I feel okay with myself. Wow, this is super off-topic. Back to the match!

Alex’s blond hair, usually down to her shoulders and curly, was pulled up in a tight bun as she stepped up to the vault line….

Oh crap, I forgot something else. Alex is the best gymnast in our school. And I say that objectively, not just because I love her.

It doesn’t matter that she’s seventh on the team right now, or that she's only in the lineup because of sucky Jenny Dwyer having an injury. I hope Jenny stays in the wheelchair forever.

But even with Jenny at full strength, Alex really is the best, both objectively and subjectively. Not her fault she won’t play the politic game.

Anyway, back to the story. As Alex stepped up to the vault line, she looked over at me, let out a deep sigh, and rolled her eyes. If my eyesight wasn’t so amaze-balls, I wouldn’t have seen the sly grin that crept across her face.

No matter how much she says she hates it, I know my enthusiasm is appreciated. It’s not like anybody else shows it for her.

Alex was in position at the end of the mat and she closed her eyes, something she always does before a vault. I could see her lips move. She was performing an eight count, just like a dancer. Some people say the vault isn’t graceful, but they’ve never seen the way Alex does it. She does, however, take forever to get going.

“Come on, Alex,” I shouted, “while we’re young!”

I'm always busting her balls like that. Well, she doesn’t have balls. I mean those leotards leave nothing to the imagination and she DEFINITELY doesn’t have balls. I guess I bust her ovaries, or her labia. Her cervix? Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. I’m always busting her cervix.

No, that doesn’t work either. Sounds like I took her virginity.

After an eternity, Alex opened her eyes. She was ready. Her eyes locked forward in laser-like focus. She is always like that when it comes to competition. And boys. Mostly boys. But mostly gymnastics. Once her eyes opened, I knew it was on.

Alex sprinted down the length of the floor really, really fast. Then she sprang onto the board and into the air. She leaped onto the vault, pressed off, and rose into the air, flipping and turning at least three hundred twenty-four times before she landed perfectly on the mat, shining her perfectly white teeth at the judges and winking right at me.

The crowd went wild. And by crowd, I mean me. I went wild. I hopped over the old man and the woman with her kid, right onto the floor.

Alex met me at the end of the mat, grinning from ear to ear, and hugged me. “You had to wear this stupid shirt again, huh?”

Alex turned. She watched the three stone-faced judges hold up her scores: 9.2, 9.4, 9.8.

“Is that enough for first place?” she asked.

I nodded. Tears started streaming down her face. She leapt into my arms. She hadn’t won a gold medal in a long time.

I wish her parents could’ve been there to see it. Unfortunately, they’re vacationing in Bora Bora for the winter. The whole winter. The WHOLE winter. It doesn’t matter, though. I work super hard to be enough family for her.

“Hey, morons!” Jenny Dwyer shouted from her wheelchair. “There are still ten events left.”

I told you she's awful.

I’m not going to cheer for her when she gets back from medical leave. See how she likes it.