Shawny

Chapter 1

My four walls have been slowly closing in on me for the past month. My heart is empty. I have no reason to be here anymore. The love of my life killed herself, it's that simple. She hated this earth, and the people living on it, and now so do I. Wait. Does that mean she hated me? Impossible! We barely knew each other, and yet she was my whole world. Everyday I got to watch her at her locker, laughing and smiling, her waist looking so perfectly tiny in her cheerleading uniform. Her ponytail gracing the top of her head. Listen to me. I sound like some kind of "America's Next Top Model" judge. I'm just a 16 year old guy. I'm supposed to be a man, but that title doesn't fit right with me. I talk like i know all of the fashion tips here, but in reality, i just knew what looked good on Shawny. Even though she could make anything work. And that is a fashion fact. Shawny Brim, the girl who looked good in everything. LOOKED. The past tense still kills me a little bit every time I have to use it.

No one at school has any idea why she took her life. All of her closest friends swore they knew nothing, swore she was the happiest person you would ever see. I think that in part is what really killed. The survivor's guilt of something i know i really couldn't control. Am I stupid for feeling guilty? Of course not. Her best friends are all in therapy because they are going through the same thing. The only difference is they were close to her, and felt they were missing signs she was giving them. Girls can be so emotional sometimes. But i guess look who's talking.

After one month, I've managed to get myself to sit up in bed whenever I'm home. Which is every minute im not dragging my feet at school and ruining my shoes. Sometimes i can here the freshmen saying how badly the smell of burning rubber is around them whenever i walk by. They think they're being funny, but I'm one insult away from popping each of them one. Maybe I'll even get suspended. That would be nice. It would give my walls more time to get closer and closer together, slowly suffocated me,. To death. Unfortunately, I'm smart enough to realize my walls aren't actually moving. No one wishes they would close in more than me.

Everyone at school seems normal. I mean, aside from Shawny's friends who are depressed, hide the scars on their wrists, and cry between every period. That has become normal at this point. Even Chaz, her grew up right at Shawny's side, doesn't seem phased by her passing. Which make my life at school, and even at home, very, very difficult.

"Hey brah!" Chaz yells as he approaches me at my locker. More cheerful and happy than any kid at school should be, but definitely more cheerful and happy than any student at our particular school should be.

"Hi Chaz." I say, as I unlock my locker, and grab my books. A paper in the shape of a square falls out, but I'm too lazy to pick it up. Chaz's face is sheer annoyance with me. It has been a whole month since I had taken part in our handshake, called him brah, or at least said hey to him.

"Yo, you dropped this..." Chaz begins, but automatically stopped the rest of his sentence when he looked down at it. "erm.. never mind dude."

"What?" I say as I snatch the seemingly thick piece of paper right out of Chaz's frozen hands. My heart beats rapidly seeing Chaz this way. He hasn't frozen up like that ever. Not once.

Then I see it. The smiling face of Shawny staring back at me. I ripped it off my locker door out of pure anger the day after rushing to her house to find the red rings on her neck. But I swear I took it home. I promised my self I would rip it up, which I thought I did. But I guess I was wrong. I wasn't thinking right anyway, so I cant remember anything from that day.

"D-d-dude..." Chaz spat out. "I-I tried to warn you..."

"I know, its my fault." I say as my back slides down my locker neighbors locker until I'm firmly sitting on the ground, with my head in my hands, elbows on my knees, and the picture resting on the floor right next to me. Chaz managed to move his legs, closes my locker door, and sits right next to me. He flips to picture over so I cant glance over and look at her face.

There's a lump in the back of my throat threatening to let my emotions go. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes as the warm hand of my best friend touches my arm. He wants to comfort me. But at this point there is no use. My heart is broken, and nothing can repair it. All I needed was a reminder of Shawny to send me over the deep end, and that picture was it. No matter how much I think about my mistake of not getting rid of that picture, the more I know that I did. There was no way I would have kept it after my the beating in my chest stopped momentarily, and my heart  was ripped from my chest and stomped on. I know I threw it out. I tore it up into enough pieces that it could never be put back together, and I put it into the blue recycling bin underneath the sink in my newly finished kitchen. Something is going on. But what?

The ringing of the bell nearly deafens me, and Chaz is standing up to help me get back on my feet. Skipping class isn't an option. After Shawny's death I have been failing all of my subjects. My mom sure isn't impressed my me, and neither am I, but u cant help it. If I try to pick up a textbook, my brain hurts. As if it wants to give up. It sees no use in trying, when I only tried in school to impress Shawny. I'm 16. I'm gonna be crazy about one girl, and one girl alone. That's just the way it is.  As Shawny always said to her friends "Life will always go on, though there will always be reasons for you to let it live on without you." I guess she really lived up to her own words. But in a way she didn't mean. Those were words of encouragement, not telling them to kill themselves. She did it anyway.

With a clustered brain, I manage to collect my books and head off to my class. History, The class I met Shawny in, and the first class I noticed her absence. The teacher is my favourite though, so at least there is a little bit of joy in the class. She always seems to know just how to teach us. I guess being the youngest teacher in the school, she really connects with us, and that's a pretty sick quality for a teacher to be able to have.

The "I'm the coolest kid in the world" grade nines grins are sitting with their smug faces as I tread by them. Man, I wish I had the emotional energy to muster up physical strength so I could just beat the crap out of them. Teach them who's boss. But right now, they are. They have power over me. I've become the underdog, and all because of a girl that didn't even talk to me died. It's funny how things change so dramatically with simple stuff like that.

I sit down in my chair the world is going on around me, but my world is frozen. The moment that, for once, the whole class seemed to be a big group of friends, and we were all laughing and having a good time seemingly seemed so real when I looked at Shawny's old desk. 'No" I tell myself  'let it all go, it's in the past.' and I actually and managing pretty well as soon as class starts, and I whipped my text book open.

You can say I'm in my element here. History is my best subject, the one keeping my average as high as it is. Most people listen to music when they're depressed, I study history. It's just how I work.

As the period goes on, I find my hand rising more than normal in the class discussions. Answering questions in a quick fire of words spilling out of my mouth, without my brain having time to catch up. I didn't mind it. There was, for a brief 45 minutes, a chance to stop plotting investigations on how to detect Shawny's depression. How to detect the cause of her picture in my locker. I knew I threw it out.

Someone was after me. Possibly the same devil that was after my love. No. I'm over reacting, and simply letting my imagination run wild. Half the girls in this school suffered from depression, but had the same smile on their face that Shawny had. The face that could fool anyone.  

No matter how much I made my self deny everything, there was always that gut feeling deep inside of me, pounding to make me realize the truth. So from then on, I was eating, breathing, and sleeping investigation.

And what I found, the reason my jaw dropped, and tears rolled down my face, was something that no person should have ever had to go through.