This book’s presence on the roof of the parking garage remains confusing to her family and friends. (Her parents haven’t read the book, only the synopsis.) Did Madison want them to comb through her past to try to piece together the different versions of her, to come to some logical solution for why she had jumped off the building? And that final twist at the end of the book: Was that just an inconvenient detail that didn’t fit into Madison’s story, but since so much else about the book did fit—Amelia was even Madison’s confirmation name—she was willing to overlook the ill-fitting ending? Or was she figuratively trying to say that Madison felt she, too, had been pushed?
Maybe all Madison was trying to say was that she saw a version of herself in Amelia, in the perfectly crafted veneer that could never feel like an honest reflection of her interior life. Just as Madison worried that she could never find validation for her struggle, because how could someone so beautiful, so seemingly put together, be unhappy? This is illogical, of course, like believing a computer’s hard drive can’t break simply because the screen hasn’t a scratch.
Depression does not have a one-size-fits-all prognosis. Bill Schmitz Jr., the former president of the American Association of Suicidology, points out that the course varies. “In a way, it’s the same as cancer,” he says. “For some, we might prolong life for months, for years. For others, it can be very sudden.”
Madison left the bag of gifts out in the open, where she knew it would be found, then walked away from it. The farther she got from the bag, the farther from any connection to her family, her friends, and to the life she had just started to live.
There are friends and family who believe Madison took a running leap over the metal railing, clearing the side as she had once cleared hurdles on the track. She landed in the bike lane some distance from the side of the building, which seems to suggest a momentum that could not have been gained from standing on the edge, looking down, and dropping. If she’d taken a running leap, then Maddy never had to stare at the ground, truly contemplate it, before choosing to let go.
Maybe she meant to jump. But then, maybe she didn’t truly understand. Then again, maybe she did. “People do a lot of different research before doing this,” Emma says. “And if you run and jump, it just happens. It’s over with. And you don’t have to struggle. I just can picture her walking up there and knowing that she could jump, just setting her mind to it and knowing it could happen—that’s something I can see her doing. When she gets on that line in track, it’s like: ‘I’m doing this.’ She was so determined with everything that she did, maybe even too determined. That’s not the greatest way that people should be. But that was something about her.”
“I’ve thought about what that must have felt like, being up there,” says Jackie Reyneke. “That’s something that’s scary to me, looking down. When I’m at an amusement park, at the top of a Ferris wheel or roller coaster, and I look down, I always think, ‘How could she have done that?’”
The first responders found the gifts with the following note:
I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out, and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in. For you mom… the necklaces… for you, Nana & Papa… Gingersnaps (always reminds me of you)… For you Ingrid… The Happiness Project. And Dad… the Godiva chocolate truffles. I love you all… I’m sorry. I love you.
The first sentence of Madison’s note is a quote from Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself at the age of fifty-nine.
The last thing Stacy Holleran texted her daughter was an update on how the family’s youngest, Brendan, had performed at his track meet. At 7:35 p.m., she wrote: “B came in 2nd in 4x4.” About two hours later, as Stacy was collecting Brendan from Highlands, a call came in to Stacy’s cell phone from a 215 area code: Philadelphia. The call was from Steve Dolan. “My phone rings, and I answer by saying, ‘Is Madison okay?’” recalls Stacy. “Something didn’t feel right: Why is he calling me so late on a Friday night? And he just didn’t know what to say—I think he assumed I had gotten a call already. I think he was calling to say he was sorry, and he paused. He thought the police or school had already called. So he’s like, ‘I heard something happened to Madison, but I’ll find out more details and call you back.’”
Shaking, Stacy hung up and immediately called her husband. After that, she called Ingrid.
“Are you with Madison?” Stacy asked.
“No, I haven’t heard from her,” Ingrid said.
Stacy explained the call she had just received, then asked, “Who might she be with?”
Ingrid said she wasn’t sure, that she hadn’t heard from Madison in hours, and that Maddy was supposed to have met some people at the Penn cafeteria but hadn’t shown. Ingrid said she would go over to Madison’s dorm and call Emily, Maddy’s roommate.
While Stacy was talking to Ingrid, Jim was talking to Ashley, who was back at school in Alabama.
“Have you talked to Madison?” he asked.
“Yeah, I just talked to her, like, this afternoon—everything was fine,” Ashley said. She had been on a group text with Maddy and Mackenzie; they were assessing the cuteness of a boy Ashley was considering going on a date with. Do you guys think he’s cute? Ashley had typed. Madison responded: Eh, debatable. But when Ashley prodded her sister for more, writing, Helllooooooo?, she hadn’t heard back. That was in midafternoon.
“Well, try calling her,” Jim said. “Her phone is dead.”
Ashley called. No answer. But that wasn’t unusual for Maddy. By that time of night her phone was often out of power and she was at a party anyway, and there was no way to connect with her until she got back to her dorm. Ashley logged on to Facebook and went to her sister’s page. It said she was last active just a few hours earlier.
A few minutes later, Ashley’s phone rang again. This time it was her mom. Stacy had just received another call from a 215 number: this one from the chaplain at Penn.
After hanging up with Stacy, Ingrid ran across campus to Hill, Maddy’s dorm. Emily was there watching a movie with friends, in the room across from the one she shared with Maddy. That afternoon she had been at track practice, wondering, along with the rest of the team, where Maddy was. Emily knew that her roommate had switched her training plan, but she still found Madison’s absence that afternoon unsettling. One of their teammates had asked Emily if she knew where Maddy might be, or when they could expect to see her, but Emily didn’t know, so she just shrugged and said as much.
Around ten o’clock that evening, during the middle of the movie, Emily’s phone rang. It was Ingrid. Emily looked at the caller ID. She knew of Ingrid only through Maddy, but she answered because she figured Ingrid would have a specific reason for calling.
“Hi,” Emily said.
“Are you in your room?” Ingrid asked. She sounded panicked.
“No, I’m across the hall,” Emily said.
“With Madison?” Ingrid asked.
“No, I haven’t seen her.”
“I need you to come down to the lobby,” Ingrid said. Her voice was so even in its tone, without inflection, without emphasis on any specific word, that Emily’s heart rate spiked. She stood up from the bed and walked downstairs to the lobby. Ingrid was standing there, phone in her shaking hand.
“You have to call your coach,” Ingrid said. “You have to call him.”
“I don’t understand—why?” Emily asked.
“Something has happened to Madison,” Ingrid said. “You have to call him.”