“What—what do you mean—what happened?” Emily looked at her phone.
“I don’t know, but we can’t find her,” Ingrid said. She seemed to know more than she was saying. “You have to call your coach.”
“What? What do you mean?” Emily’s first thought was that Maddy had tried to kill herself, but she couldn’t really complete that idea.
“Please call your coach,” Ingrid said.
Emily found Steve Dolan’s number in her contacts and hit the call button, but she didn’t know what she would say when he answered—I’m calling about Madison? I’m calling because I think maybe something happened to Madison?
“Can you talk to him?” Emily asked as the call started ringing. “Because I don’t know what’s happening.”
Emily handed the phone to Ingrid. Dolan answered.
“I’m calling about Madison…” Ingrid began.
Emily could hear her coach talking on the other end. She could also see Ingrid’s hand shaking, her breath becoming irregular. A few seconds later Ingrid began crying hysterically, unable to hold on to the phone any longer.
Down in Alabama, Ashley’s phone began to ring again.
“Mom,” Ashley said. Then she realized that both her parents were on the line.
“She’s gone,” Stacy said. “She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s… gone.”
“What?” Ashley said. “Gone?”
“She’s dead. Madison is dead.”
“Oh my God.”
Ashley walked into her roommate’s room and told her what her parents had just said. Ashley shook her head: “I don’t even know what’s going on right now.”
“What do you want to do?” her roommate asked.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
As the two drove around Tuscaloosa, the texts started pouring into Ashley’s phone. Then her grandpa called, crying. He had exchanged e-mails with Madison just a few weeks before:
On Friday, December 13, 2013:
I WANT TO KNOW AND I want to know the truth—HOW is Madison Holleran doing and I don’t mean your grades.
I mean how are Y O U doing?
Answer quickly as I am old with not a lot of time left. Papa.
Madison responded the same day:
Date: Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM
Subject: Re: YOU!
Never been worse
(The two spoke on the phone after this exchange.)
“Are you okay?” Papa now asked his middle granddaughter, because she seemed distant, stunned. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Ashley replied, then looked at her hands, which she couldn’t keep steady. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Coach?” Emily said, standing in the lobby of Hill.
Dolan repeated what he had just told Ingrid: Madison had killed herself. He told Emily not to tell anyone else yet, because he needed to coordinate a way to inform everybody, in the correct way, and not have the information burn through the campus like an awful game of telephone.
“Yes, Coach,” Emily said. “Okay, Coach.”
She ended the call. The information didn’t make sense. Emily didn’t shout, or cry, or yell. She just stood there. Maddy killed herself? But I just saw her. And now she’s dead. How… why… what?
Ingrid was a mess, inconsolable. The resident advisors who were on duty came to the lobby, and suddenly the space was filled with people, all wanting to know what had happened. The housing staff helped Ingrid and Emily to the lounge, calling Ingrid’s roommate as they walked, asking if she could come to Hill and help with Ingrid.
An e-mail was sent out by the housing department to everyone who lived in Hill, letting them know that one of the students who lived in their dorm, Madison Holleran, had died. People started congregating in the lounge. The school’s counseling services, CAPS, sent over employees to help. Because there were parties and events taking place all over campus, people started calling Emily to find out what had happened: Was it true?
At 12:41 a.m. Steve Dolan sent this e-mail:
From: Steve Dolan
Date: Sat, Jan. 18, 2014 at 12:41 AM
Subject: Urgent Message from Penn Track and Field
Dear Track and Field Family,
This is the hardest email I have ever had to write. It is with a heavy heart that I share with you the following information about your teammate and friend Madison Holleran.
In grief and sorrow we share the news that Madison Holleran (C ’17) died Friday evening in Center City, Philadelphia. She was 19 and lived in Hill.
We will be having an emergency team meeting at 8:15 at the Dunning Coaches Center for all those who are not traveling on the early bus to tomorrow’s meet. Coach Martin and I will be by our phones throughout the night if you have any questions or need or want to talk. I am on my way into the office, and will be there throughout the night.
Our numbers are below.
Emily stayed in the lounge at Hill until the sun was peeking over the horizon. Someone had pulled a mattress into the room across the hall from the one she had shared with Maddy. Emily slept there for a few nights so she wouldn’t have to face what was behind the closed door.
“I put my phone away early that night,” recalls Emma, who had been in her room at Boston College. “I woke up to a hundred text messages and calls. I was the last person to know. I was sound asleep; it was terrible. I called my mom right away. I had read my messages and I said, ‘Mom, did Maddy die?’ She was already on her way to come get me. I was like, ‘It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think she got murdered.’ I started to realize she had done this to herself, because in my heart, nothing bad happened to her—I knew it wasn’t something bad. Something clicked in my head that maybe suicide is what happened.”
The Rules of Suicide
I am nervous. I’m waiting in a café in New York City, just around the corner from Columbia University. The décor is funky bohemian: tattered couches, lopsided coffee tables, lamps with jewel shades, beer in small cafeteria cups.
I’m nervous because any minute, Dese’Rae Stage will walk into the shop. I texted her that I’ve arrived at our agreed-upon location and that I’m sitting near the kitchen. The three dots immediately appeared on my iPhone—she was composing a response. “Be right there,” she wrote. A small part of me had hoped she would cancel. Conversations with strangers require focus, steady energy, the burden of making sure the conversation is efficient, never stalls, never becomes awkward. It’s like going to the gym for a workout: until the moment it begins, you kind of hold out hope it won’t.