I knew him. He transferred into my eigth grade class somewhere past half way into the year. A friend raved about how the new kid was so quick to lend her a pencil. I didn't care.
He was in my PE class and even though he looked so athletic, he could never catch a ball. He was always a good sport about it, even as the other kids started to make fun of him behind his back. He talked differently, using big words, often incorrectly, and with a surprisingly hopeful inflection. He was loud. Not only did I not care, I contributed to his ridicule. It seemed good natured and I just wanted to fit in.
We all just wanted to fit in.
Coincidentally, we transferred together to a different highschool; we both didn't fit in, but for different reasons. He was in my home room. He was friendly and outgoing and always did what he could to try and make other students laugh. I couldn't tell if he knew they were laughing at him. I didn't care.
At first when he ran into me in the hallways, he would smile and try to talk to me. Mine a more familiar face to a boy stranded in a sea of strangers. I would only talk briefly and displayed no emotion, save impatientness. I didn't care.
He eventually caught on to my apathy, and left me alone. He preferred the company of those who laughed. At least an insult was a response.
We were all skippers, but he had been condemned to sail alone.
He twerked in a dance off at a school pep rally. He did his best to get in front of a camera when the broadcast kids came around. He was always extremely polite to our homeroom teacher. He talked a lot in home room. I sat in the corner and pretended no one existed. Before he would try and make everyone laugh, he would still say hi to me. I didn't care.
I joined the chess club for a while. At maybe my third meeting he came in and began to ask the teacher about something. I think it was the death penalty. I didn't care, so I didn't remember. At the end of the chat, he thanked the teacher for his weekly moral lesson. I never thought about it.
He said his morals were different from the rest of the world. I hear he shot himself. He said not to mourn his death but to celebrate his life.
I never did that. I never cared.
Even now, his life is catalogued in my brain as part of an awkward eighth grade year for me, part of home rooms I hated going to, part of a school that made me vaguely uncomfortable. Caring now is a lie, a lie to say I did all I could for a broken soul, that I am only an innocent bystander. I never cared, so I can't pretend that I did now.
I'm not guilty of his death. No one is guilty of his death. The blood is mixed with the dirt as his ashes will soon be. The blood is on the dirt, not our hands. But we walk on this dirt, we till this soil, we plant our futures here in this ground. It's time we all started taking better care of it.
