some kid

the last time i stood in that hallway and stared at the locker it felt naked. it was years ago, now, at least three. but it was scrubbed clean. the sharpie that my class spent three years endlessly replacing as custodians scrubbed it off and we fought to keep you, to keep the only symbol we had left of you, alive. pink hair and guitars and matchmaking and roller skates and bubblegum contests and skateboards and gym class and singing in the car were only memories.

that locker was real. the sharpie was real. that plaque with the numbers that you boasted about being in order, '678' when it was assigned to you was real. endless notes filling it up and up and up were real and if i had been the janitor i think i would have cried throwing them away knowing they contained the grief and heartbreak of a large chunk of 368 fourteen year olds. but you're still 14, nearly a decade later now. you always will be because of stupid mistakes, like driving with a permit at 2 am to hang out with your girlfriend and speeding away from the cops with no headlights on because you had weed in the glove compartment and you were young and puerto rican and scared of becoming just another number in the system but in doing so you became a statistic of a different kind. metal screeched and headlights shattered and your car

exploded. you died on impact.

"hey, some kid from your school died last night in a car crash."

heart racing, beating out of my chest, no breath.

did i know him? yeah, I knew him. he was my friend. "Not well."

and all i could think was making sure that my other friend, the girl who was even closer to you, knew too. she didn't. i had to be the one to tell her. and i sat in driver's ed in that class without you, the 14 of us and our teacher and he cried. and we all did. and i left the room and i sat in the hallway and sobbed and some senior sat with me, a stranger i don't even remember, i just remember that she asked me "were you Wil's friend?" and i only cried harder and she held me.

three months later, I heard that sentence again. so casual. so nonchalant. "some kid from your school died. killed himself." as if it were no big deal. my heart stopped, once again, and this time with even more dread because this time i knew. i knew it in my soul it was one of yours, Wil.

every time i visit home, which is almost never but just often enough to be noteworthy of mentioning, i stop by the playground. the same invisible struggle we fought for years against the maintenance crew to keep that date inked in sharpie on that yellow swing set. we didn't want anyone to forget. but they have. no one knows, now. they don't know their children play where boy in a suit chose his end to be. and maybe they shouldn't.

and two months after that when we came to school and halfway through the day the word got around that there was someone on the water-tower across the street, that someone climbed up and up and up and we didn't know who, we did inventory, we texted near half of our grade trying to make sure we were all safe and accounted for and 'was she sick today?' 'has anyone seen him this morning?'. we all ditched class and we sat in the workshop and we held each other and we cried and we said it out loud like a mantra, 'not again, not again, not again' as if saying it together out loud would make it come true. somehow, it did. they got to him in time.

this isn't some beautiful piece of writing. this is ugly. it's 1:34 am and i am awake thinking about the events of a decade ago and i haven't thought about that year in awhile but i don't think it will ever go away. i'm friends with our driver's ed teacher on facebook now. he blamed himself for your death. but he's married, now, and he has a toddler. life moves on. we moved on.

but i want you to know that we didn't forget. sometimes it feels like it was all a dream, like maybe i'll wake up in someone else's life. my roommate gets annoyed when i check on him. he didn't come home last night but i just wanted to know if he was still alive. i don't think that will ever go away either. and i will always yell at my friends when they text & drive and i will always tell them 'be safe' and i will always make sure they've got where they're going, and i will always check in to see how they're doing and i will never in a million years make them feel like they can't come to me. no good could possibly come from what happened to my friends. but as long as i live i swear that i will not let others repeat your mistakes.