They thought it was a suicide.

They thought the pretty blonde girl,

With all her makeup

And money

And friends

And popularity,

Was just another suicide case.

She’d fallen from the top of her perfect mansion,

Her perfect castle on top of the world.

They whispered in the streets

“Why would she do that?”

“She had everything, why did she give it up?”

“Did she know how much _we_ suffered? She was so lucky!”

No one bothered to look into it.

No one bothered to learn _why_.

They thought she was so arrogant,

So selfish,

So unsatisfied.

They said

“She thought she had it bad?

She had _everything_,

How dare she think she had problems?”

They took bets on why she did it,

Made jokes about what drew her there.

“I bet her daddy didn’t buy her the right type of car.”

“I bet her mommy didn’t like the 98 on her test.”

“I bet her perfect little friends forgot to tell her how beautiful she was.”

And I listened to their whispered insults,

Their shared laughs.

I listened,

Just like I listened to her.

I listened to everything she told me.

How her dad didn’t buy her a car at all,

Because he knew she would try to escape.

How her mom hit her for not getting a perfect grade,

Because she always had to be perfect.

How her friends constantly pointed out her flaws,

Because they were jealous of her kindness.

I listened to it all.

And when they dismissed her death as suicide,

I knew the truth.

It was murder.

Cold blooded murder.

The culprit?

Every person who told her she wasn’t enough,

Wasn’t pretty enough,

Wasn’t smart enough,

Wasn’t good enough.

It wasn’t a suicide,

Not at all.

She had killers,

People who took her life

Long before she fell from that roof.