The People Could Fly

"They enjoy the power high school gives to their fourteen-year-old lives. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and deep matching dimples on the lower parts of both of his cheeks, Josh is the picture of the perfect ninth grade boy. Paul is tall and skinny and has a slight acne-tainted complexion. They push themselves higher as cool, tough, popular guys as they push me down. I sit in front of them in homeroom. There are only three minutes before the bell. They throw insulting notes in paper dripping with saliva in front of my face. I sit there, scared, nervous, sweating. I can feel the September heat swell in my body; it makes my breathing quick and my stomach sick." When two boys bully Lisa in high school, she withdraws from people who care about her and thinks more and more about suicide. Though she tries to turn to the adults in her life, they are unable to offer any resolution. In winter of her sophomore year, the bullying reaches a climax, and Lisa decides to take her own life. When the attempt fails, she is brought to a psychiatric institution where she meets other girls who have been experiencing emotional trauma. It is here where she comes face-to-face with the demons she has been masking. Desiring to fly away from worldly misery is a common motif. In the movie Forest Gump, we hear little Jenny pray that God make her a bird so she could "fly, far, far away" from her abusive father. In addition to Lisa, the six characters that struggle with suicidal thoughts feel a similar need to escape from a worldly existence that has been traumatizing. As a result, we hear references throughout the novel that depict the idea of flying as freedom, even though, in their perspectives, this freedom can only be obtained through their deaths.