Friends lean on memories to grapple with sorrow

'There's just no way to make it add up,' 1 teen says of apparent suicide

The stories about Desiree Patrick trickled out slowly at first, evoking both tears and halting laughter. Sorrow and disbelief filled the room, but then came dozens of stories about chocolate fights and her ninja-like stealth when stealing a friend's Mountain Dew or slipping gum out of a friend's purse.

Dozens of Patrick's friends from Stafford High School and Forest Park High School gathered Thursday night at a Stafford funeral home to mourn the sudden and shocking loss of a promising young woman to an apparent double suicide with her boyfriend, Quirinius "Rain" Williams. Patrick, 17 and a senior at Forest Park, was remembered as intensely smart, a great writer and the glue that held several groups of friends together.

The outward joy and apparent zest for life that Patrick's friends described belied something dark and mysterious going on inside they did not see or understand. Her death by gunshot Monday afternoon in an attic bedroom in her father's Triangle home makes no sense to them, and they are unsure they will ever get answers.

"She had more intelligence and wisdom than any 17-year-old," Brittany Sibley, 18, Patrick's best friend, said through tears, noting that they texted, e-mailed and talked several times each day. "She was so loving and always happy. There was no sense at all that this was going to happen. She said nothing; she hinted at nothing. There's just no way to make it add up."

Prince William County police have said evidence at the scene -- including how the bodies were positioned -- leads them to believe that the two teenagers came to an agreement to commit suicide. Police have declined to say whether there was a suicide note or how the deaths were carried out other than to say each died of a gunshot wound.

Patrick moved from Stafford to Prince William the middle of her sophomore year, leaving one tight-knit group of friends for another. She met Williams, 18, at school, and by many accounts they fell deeply in love.

An avid reader, Patrick devoured Harlequin romances and the vampire series "Twilight." She was known, sometimes to playful annoyance, to correct others' grammar.

Friends said Williams, a dedicated pianist who often carried a keyboard slung over his back, was an adherent of Wicca, a naturalist religion that painted him as a bit of an outcast at school because it is so often misunderstood. The relationship between the two teenagers was rocky at times, and both sets of parents decided during the past year that they should not see each other.

But they did, both at school and elsewhere. Friends said they texted constantly, and Patrick would often borrow friends' phones to speak with Williams, sometimes for hours.

Alicia Adams, 18, of Stafford said she heard from Patrick on Oct. 28, just a few days before the suicides, and Patrick said "life was going good" and that she was happy.

"To me, she was the strong one," Adams said. "I looked up to her. If you were ever sad, she'd be the one who would say, 'Get over it.' And she was so anti-suicide and even said that to people. It's what makes it even more shocking."

Sibley and her mother, Denise, saw the couple as recently as Halloween, when they all went to see a concert at KC's Music Alley in Fredericksburg. Patrick and Williams were holding hands, hugging, kissing and acting normal. But still they went through great pains to hide the trip from their families, dropping Williams off a few blocks from his house in the early morning hours to avoid detection.