Guess I Died, Let's Try Again

1) What is life without the promise of death?

English class was always my favorite, not the subject matter, no, what I enjoyed was messing with the enthusiastic Mrs. Turner.

"murmur murmur murmur nouns blah blah blah"

I rose my hand and without waiting for a permission to speak, said.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Turner, but that's stupid and doesn't make any sense."

The class groaned as Mrs. Turner happily started to explain compound nouns in excruciating detail. We were a solid three weeks behind in English and everyone knew it was my fault. As I was already familiar with what the teacher was saying, I started to turn around to talk to my friend in the desk behind me. I wasn't exactly disliked, but when people asked me about my friends I could only really name four or five with confidence. The guy behind me was one of them. When I fully turned around I expected to see the disheveled dirty-blonde hair of my friend, but I was only met with an empty desk and a notebook with a very good, although grim, drawing of a destroyed city. I recognized it from a video game, and remembered him raving about it a few days ago. I could absolutely tease him for this when he came back from the rest-room. That's the only place he could be right?

The class droned on without much of anything being accomplished. When we were dismissed my class moved as a mound to the lockers and then to lunch break. The cafeteria was in a large high-ceilinged room, not too far removed from the main high-school building. As we crossed the the thin campus rode that divided the two buildings I spied a mass of tousled dirty-blonde hair in the parking lot. I stopped, elicited a few grumbles of complaint, there was no real heart to them, so I didn't bother apologizing. Keeping my eyes fixed on the carefully moving mass of hair, I moved off of the path and started to walk towards the parking lot.

What on earth is he doing?

I thought to myself with a growing knot in my stomach. I was only around fifty feet away.

I know I'm being unreasonable, but why can't I shake this feeling?

Thirty-five feet

He's always been a quiet guy, there's no way... Is there?

Twenty feet

My view of his hair disappeared behind an obnoxiously large truck and I stopped walking.

I'm such a bad friend for even thinking such a thing; his home life isn't great, I know that much, but he's been sticking it out so far. He's an honest to God trooper. He's a great guy. He would never. It's impossible.

So, why am I so scared to walk out behind this truck? What's wrong with me? There are a million different reasons why he would be in the parking lot. He's only getting a change of clothes, maybe he spilled something; or maybe he left a book. It's okay, he's okay... I would have noticed if he wasn't alright... I'm a good friend.

I took a step forward, my toes kicking a can along the way, making a loud scraping sound as it skidded across the pavement. I rounded the truck, and stared into the hazel eyes of my best friend. What I saw in those eyes was a storm of emotion, fear, sadness, anger, determination, and confusion were evident on his face. As my eyes moved from his face to the small black object he was holding in his hands my heart dropped, and my blood ran cold. But, for some strange reason, I wasn't surprised. Inside my heart the emotions I should be feeling all fought for supremacy; the victor, was regret.

What was I doing when I thought he was okay? Why didn't he tell me? What on earth made me not realize my best friend was suffering. I wasn't aware enough to help my best friend before he made this decision. I won't make the same mistake twice.