I was fourteen; you were sixteen when it happened. I had known you for two years after living in the same street since, well, forever. I don’t remember you moving in or actually being introduced to you, we just kind of passed each other and the older I got, the more pleasentries we would share. It was only when you stumbled home from a house party in the middle of summer that you found me hiding up on the concrete steps with tears in my eyes. I think you were too scared to go home too, which is why you stopped to talk. And I needed someone to talk to, which is why I actually spoke to you. You were the stranger I needed to confide in; you gave me the perspective that I needed. You eventually showed me the outlet that I needed and I’ll never believe the people that told me you were a bad influence, because without you, I wouldn’t have made it.
We started speaking more. Bumping into each other more. We stopped the pleasentries and moved into conversation. We compared scars and compared our new bruises over energy drinks and vodka shots. We played music on what would now be considered an ancient brick phone and shared memories that only we could make. Because eventually we became a we. An us. Not in the sense of a relationship, but we became inseperable. School would finish and we would ride our bikes up to the yard where I kept my pony and we would sit in the stable in silence, away from the world for hours until we rode back, shared your last cigarette and said our goodbyes. I’d stand in the doorway and watch you until you faded into darkness before I ascended to my own room with the feeling that things may just get better as long as I had you fighting the world with me.
It was a Thursday when it happened. I hadn’t seen you in the street or online for two days, but that didn’t worry me. It was summer and I knew you had people to see and things to do, the same as myself. But it was the third night after coming home from the stables did I need you. I wanted to talk to you. To tell you that things felt bad inside my head, to have that all important punch in the arm and a badly rolled cigarette to make me feel like there was some kind of purpose for me in this world. After a quick bath, something to eat and a cup of tea, I left and walked down the road to your door. That’s when I knew. Your window wasn’t open and the curtains were drawn. There was no light. Your mother answering it only confirmed my worse nightmares as she took me into her arms and told me. Told me what you had done the night before. Told me how you left this world with a rope around your neck and a note under your feet.
*unfinished*
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