After Port Townsend Film Festival director Janette Force watched a documentary on suicide at last year’s festival, she approached its creator about bringing the film back to the community for another screening in 2018. It turns out, someone else was one step ahead of her. That someone was Callay Boire-Shedd, a high school junior who is devoting much of her energy to opening up conversations about suicide. The 17-year-old is hosting a screening of “The S Word” for the community this Saturday.

Three years ago, Callay Boire-Shedd was in the middle of making dinner, back home from a day at school, when she got a text message from a friend.

“Are you OK?”

She didn’t think much of the text at the time. “There was some high school drama going on.” Maybe it was about that, she thought.

Then, her friend asked to Skype. His face appeared on her screen.

“He was just crying, just, pure ... just crying,” Boire-Shedd said.

Their friend, Benji Kenworthy, had committed suicide. Boire-Shedd hadn’t yet heard.

“I was shocked,” she said.

Boire-Shedd and Kenworthy were close friends who went to the same school – West Sound Academy in Poulsbo – and carpooled every day. During that year, Kenworthy, an outgoing young theater kid, started to confide in some friends, including Boire-Shedd. His conversations about suicide became a secret – one they kept, rather than betray.

“We had never dealt with anything like this before,” said Boire-Shedd. “We didn’t really have anybody [to talk to],” she said. And, they never took it completely seriously. They were in eighth grade.

When a student is in eighth grade and a friend expresses suicidal thoughts, what should they do?

Boire-Shedd didn’t know then. Three years later, she does.

“Now I know who I’d go to immediately, and I know exactly who I’d talk to,” she said. “But I didn’t know how to get help and who to listen to in eighth grade. I had no idea.”

Today, Boire-Shedd is a junior at Port Townsend High School, where she is devoting much of her energy to starting conversations about suicide, with a community event set for this Saturday, April 7. It’s become her senior project, but Boire-Shedd would have pursued this anyway, she said.

“This is a project I would have done regardless. I’ve had friends threaten [suicide], attempt it.”

A friend of hers also lost her sister to suicide. “It’s been something that’s been in and around my life for years,” she said.

A core element of her project is the screening the documentary “The S Word” for high school students and the broader community. The film is directed by Lisa Klein, who lost both her brother and father to suicide. She decided to make a film tackling the shame and discrimination around suicide. Klein’s husband, Doug Blush, is a friend of Boire-Shedd’s family. He was her dad’s teaching assistant at the University of Southern California.

Watching “The S Word” made Boire-Shedd realize suicide was something that needed to be talked about. “It really hit home for me,” she said.

On Thursday, March 29, she hosted two screenings of the film at her high school, and created a space for high school students to talk with the director and a suicide-attempt survivor featured in the film, Kelechi Ubozoh, both of whom Boire-Shedd flew in as special guests. (See related story.)

“We had fantastic conversations with ninth through 12th grades,” said Boire-Shedd. “What amazed me is that everybody was willing to talk.”

She also had eight therapists available for students if they needed help. “We didn’t have any idea what the reaction would be; you don’t know what emotions it will bring up,” she said.

On Saturday, Boire-Shedd is hosting a community screening at The Rose Theatre in partnership with the Port Townsend Film Festival and The Benji Project, a self-compassion program for teens that was started by Kenworthy’s mother.

“Cal has been tireless in her efforts, rescheduled numerous times, all to make certain that this poignant film addressing the taboo of suicide is shared widely in our community,” said festival director Force. “Until we start the conversations, our hearts are just going to break and break and break.”

For Boire-Shedd, this is only the beginning of her project.

“This is nowhere near the culmination,” she said.

From here, she is planning on continuing conversations with the community and her work with The Benji Project, and hopes to join the crew of “The S Word” and attend other screenings at the end of summer.

Boire-Shedd said the most significant thing she has learned from the project is to find someone whom you can go to to get help for a suicidal friend.

For her, it’s her mom, but it could be anyone. “Find somebody that you know, that you trust,” she said. “Find somebody that you can talk to.”

She wishes she had done this with Kenworthy.

“Whenever you lose someone, it’s ‘What could I have done?’” But she didn’t know then. Now she does, and she wants to make sure others do, too. “I don’t want to lose any more friends,” she said. “I don’t want those conversations not to happen.”