TW: Suicide, harassment of a minor, drug use.
I met Brandy three years ago in a Supernatural sub online. Since the first time I saw her username [REDACTED] that so mirrored my own, we had been inseparable. Sure, we had our arguments but it was always over petty stuff like whether or not Sam or Dean was the real hero of the show or if the show should have gone on for another year or so. I said yes because I feel like their journey wasn’t over. She said no because she thought that they were getting old and needed to retire. We didn’t speak for two whole weeks after that one, minus the times we sent each other memes.
We had bonded so much over so many different things, like parents (both of ours were divorced), school (she was on the debate team, I was in drama club) and gosh, everything else we could think of. Even if we weren’t identical in our interests, we were similar enough that by our second year of being friends, I would say she was my best friend and I would assume that she felt the same.
My mom was never an overbearing parent. No, that was my dad. It used to be, when I would visit him on the weekends, I would have to leave my laptop at home with my mom, otherwise he would go through it and read all of my messages, insinuating things from between the lines. If I had told Brandy that I would “brb need bathroom”, he would jump all over me and ask what the hell I was doing in the bathroom, why did she need to know what I was doing, was it drugs, etc. When I told my mom about this, she gave him a stern talking-to but behind his back, did reiterate to be cautious about being online. She didn’t give me repeated lectures about people who would love to kidnap me and how naive I was, though and for that I was grateful.
All of these irritations that I had: complaints about my father, my mother not taking me seriously, her relaxed attitude going too far…I always voiced these to Brandy. We may not have been IRL friends but I loved her just the same. I had plans to meet her as soon as I turned 18 and could go on my own without the need for parental oversight but that all changed.
Something was wrong. She started to withdraw and leave me alone for hours when she had promised to binge a new show with me or video call so that I could rehearse a monologue with her as my audience. Senior year had been plenty busy for both of us but I didn’t really think that would mean that we would drift so far apart so quickly. My mom just nodded when I voiced my concerns to her over dinner and reassured me that this happens, especially when the person is online and I don’t see her everyday.
It wasn’t until a week of silence that I finally heard from her. She video called me, looking the most tired I have ever seen her. I immediately bombarded her with questions, asking where she had been, what was wrong, did she need anything before she just shook her head sadly and ended the call. I frantically tried to call her back, begging her to talk to me. I apologized for overwhelming her and promised to behave if she would just please call me back. I was just worried for her.
She responded in the negative, sending me a message that chilled me to the bone and had my finger hovering over the call button on discord.
“Can’t talk. He’s watching. He knows he can use you to get to me. Don’t talk to Kevin. I’m okay for now.”
Kevin? Her step-brother, Kevin? Why would I talk to him? I have seen him before in the background of her room when she would be on call with me, walking through and picking things up before leaving. Sometimes it would seem like he was eavesdropping and she was always quick to rebuff him and scowl at him until he would leave. Kevin didn’t seem particularly harmful but I would honor my friend’s wishes if it meant she could talk to me soon. The rest of the message filled me with fear for her, though. Use me against her? Why/how would he do that? What would happen to her if he managed to get to me? I went to respond but I was blocked. My best friend had just ended our main form of contact. I could text her but I didn’t want to upset her more than I already had.
The school week passed by like I was moving through syrup. I went to classes, then my club then home. Everyday I checked my discord, hoping I could get through to her and nothing. I talked to my other friends but it didn’t feel good enough to tell any of them. I debated telling my mom but I was scared that she would just shrug her shoulders again and tell me that this was a sign that Brandy didn’t wanna be my friend anymore. “Know when to leave a party, honey.” she would say.
Telling my dad was an even worse idea. He had moved across the country last year, hence why the weekend visits stopped but I wouldn’t put it past him to zoom his way over here if he thought that the evil internet had gotten its claws into me. I hoped that it hadn’t.
Despite her nonchalant, go-with-the-flow nature, my mom had been sure to give me all of the stranger danger talks, among others. I was aware this could be a darker issue than it first seemed but I still felt reluctant to tell an adult. What if it was just sibling BS and I told someone and Brandy hated me forever? “But what if she’s hurt?” whispered my brain, “What if she’s dead in a ditch somewhere and you’re just sitting here, refusing to help?”
Feeling uneasy and what I told myself was an unnecessary sense of fear, I kept hoping she would reach out and tell me everything was okay and she was simply stressed from school. I hoped that she would be back to sending the usual messages in our private and public discords.
I waffled on what to do before checking my chats again on Saturday morning. As I sat down to wake up my computer from its sleep, the tell-tale ba-doop of discord chimed. I jumped and wiggled my mouse, heaving a huge sigh of relief when I saw that it was Brandy.
“Haha, hey girl, sorry I haven’t been available. Kevin has been SOOOOO annoying LOL”
I tilted my head to the side, confused. Brandy didn’t talk like this and I looked around before hesitantly replying, pretending that I didn’t notice anything different about “her”.
“Oh yeah? Lol what’s he been doing?”
The “Brandy is typing” line popped up and disappeared a few times before finally another out-of-character message popped up.
“The usual, just being a pain, BTW I can’t remember my phone passcode LOL do you happen to know my mom’s birthday? I just can’t remember it for the life of me.”
BINGO. This was NOT Brandy. Brandy loves her mom more than anything and in her case, it was her dad who got custody as her mom is a flight attendant and never home. She constantly talks about how much she misses her and how much she wants to get a hummingbird tattoo with her mother’s birth date on it. She would sooner forget her own birthday before her mom’s.
This time I was filled with righteous indignation (and a healthy dose of fear) and my keyboard cracked like a whip as I drummed out a message back to whoever this was. Though I was pretty sure it was Kevin, trying to get into her phone. If he managed her PC, what did he need on her cell?
“Haha sorry bud, I don’t remember. Maybe call her? Play it off like you’re trying a Buzzfeed quiz or something and maybe she won’t flay you too much for forgetting LOL”
A minute passes, then five before it shows “she” is typing again. The message this time is much more aggressive.
“Wow, really? You’re such a bitch, you don’t know my mom’s birthday? What kind of lazy ass friend are you? Well if you’re too lazy to know, maybe I’ll find one of my REAL friends to tell me.”
I am now blocked again and I feel like I have made a mistake while also helping the real Brandy the best that I could.
With the messages, I can now tell my mom and be more insistent that this is NOT just drama, this is REAL. This is someone who is keeping Brandy away from her things and trying to break further into them and with her other messages, I think that it has to be Kevin. Not to perpetuate any kinda stereotypes about my generation but Brandy is fairly attached to her electronics. She is always just a message or video call away and I have the scary thought that wherever she is, she is being forcefully kept from both of them. She would never hand over her stuff for inspection, certainly not to someone like Kevin who isn’t even one of her parents. Something is bad and now I have to say something. I can’t let this go on much longer.
When I show my mom the messages the next day, already disheartened with the belief that she is just going to shrug me off again, she puts her glasses on and reads them silently. She goes through the other messages when I insist this is not Brandy and she reads Brandy’s other message that instructed me not to talk to Kevin. She sighs before beginning to say, “Honey, friends don’t always last and-”
“No!” I yelled, trying to make her see what I was saying, “If I am wrong and she doesn’t wanna be friends anymore, fine! But I am telling you that something is wrong! This is not her and I don’t think this is just ‘boys being boys’! We have to help her!”
My mom started shaking her head before I launched into another tirade, “If we don’t do something and she’s being hurt, I will never forgive you. I’ll live with dad forever, I don’t care.”
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. She knows the internet is my life and that I would sooner die than go live where all of my activity is monitored like I’m in prison. She finally agrees to call in and do a wellness check and we go to work.
I feel like we are part of the FBI, scouring old messages, looking in our shared discords for a possible address. I tell her Brandy’s school name and she is finally able to use a student directory we find online to find her father’s name and from that, his number. She tries to call Brandy’s father first before calling the police for the wellness check. It goes straight to voicemail, just like Brandy’s when I try to call her number from my own phone. My mother also tries Brandy but gets the voicemail as well. I am now officially THIS close to a meltdown. Where the hell is my friend?
When my mother gets ahold of the local PD, she explains in that long-suffering way mothers have that yes, she knows it sounds silly but her daughter’s friend is not answering and her father isn’t either and would they mind going out there? The dispatch on the phone agrees to placate me and promises they will send someone to check. I don’t hear anything for a few days, which my mother promises is normal and I spend the nights torn between demanding we fly to where Brandy is and in a crushing pit of depression. What if I was too late? What if she’s fine and hates me? What if this was all an elaborate ruse and she just didn’t wanna be my friend anymore? What if, what if, what if circles the drain of my mind and I slog through the days waiting for any news, any sign that maybe she’s okay. I would take her not wanting to be my friend over this feeling, this sick fear that I have been stuck in.
Someone in our shared discord sends a news article from Brandy’s town one evening, the small red dot on the server icon doing nothing to show how absolutely crushing the news inside is.
“LOCAL DEBATE STAR AND FAMILY BRUTALLY SLAIN BY SON IN FAMILY BONDING GONE WRONG”
I scream and my mother comes running. I am torturing myself through my tears, reading details about how Brandy fought him off until the last moment and how this was the final straw for Kevin. She had apparently caught him smoking weed and had she told her parents, he would have been kicked out. The news interviewed his best friend who said that Kevin told him what and why he did this before he took his own life. His secret had come out during a family game night that the siblings had no doubt been wrangled into and by the end, my friend’s family was no more.
Brandy’s picture was the main focus, with one beside that of her with her father, step-mother and Kevin.
She had spent weeks dodging him and keeping him away from her, staying at school for hours, not sleeping until she knew he was asleep, said her friend, also interviewed. She knew he was going to hurt her but the fear of retaliation kept her from telling anyone besides a trusted friend at school. Well, and me. The article continued with a date for a service for all members of the family. Kevin would be buried with them, silencing Brandy forever. The article further implored for donations to the suicide hotline, perversely contrasting my feelings on who the real victims were here.
She had tried to tell me. She called me and who knows what she was risking by doing so. All I did was jump all over her, talking when I should have been listening. I could have helped her, I could have done SOMETHING. I wish I could have told my mother sooner. I hope more than anything that refusing to give Kevin her passcode did anything to help. I guess he was trying to find info that would blackmail her back, keeping her silent. If I had given him that, would he have found something? Would Brandy still be here if he had found what he was looking for? Sure, she might be grounded or in trouble for whatever he found but she would still be alive. She would be here and my heart wouldn’t be breaking into a million pieces.
I stare at the pictures of the family, my mom trying to pull me away from it. My body is heavy like a stone, refusing to be moved and finally she shuts off the monitor and I collapse. I sob for what feels like hours and my mom holds me and sobs with me, intermittently apologizing. Whether or not it’s for the situation or her own inaction until the last minute, I’ll never know. I can’t blame her for it. I’m the one who waited and now I am the one that has to wear this shame around my neck for the rest of my life.
I don’t go on the supernatural sub anymore. I don’t use discord and I don’t use anything on my phone besides texting which makes me feel like I just have a really expensive brick. I used reddit to get this out because it is festering inside me and hurting and I just need someone to know that Brandy lived. That I tried.
I am bitter that my father was right about the internet being dangerous. I just didn’t realize the danger would be this. I didn’t think that all his lectures were to save me from the heartbreak of losing my best friend.