why?... ᵗᵐᶠ

chapter 1: The diary

Knocking on that white door was difficult. It took a lot of motivation and many should I?'s before I did.

Drew's mother opened the door. Despite the fact Drew had had three sisters and a brother, the house behind them seemed quite.

Could I blame them though? They were mourning. It was most likely they were all thinking about ways they could've prevented it.

"Oh Jake, I'm so glad you came!" His mother said, forcing a smile from her saddened face.

"It's the least I could do," I say.

She welcomes me in the house - more accurately known as a mansion and asks me to take a seat.

"Where's Mr Ramirez?" I ask, trying to make small talk.

"He's.. I probably shouldn't be telling you this but.. he's been in prison for the last three weeks. Stuck there until the trials finished."

"What trial?"

"He's being charged with money laundering and a bunch of minuscule crimes on the side," Mrs Ramirez confessed. "Honestly, it's a load of dog crap but we can't do anything about it. Trust me we tried."

I try my best to be polite after the whirlwind of a confession. "My.. condolences?"

"It's not your fault. Now, were where we?"

Mrs Ramirez takes a look through the pile of stuff on the glass coffee table. 

"Ah of course!" She says as she finds a sheet of paper. It looked like it had been scrumbled up ten times over, nothing like the majority of stuff in the Ramirez house, but I ignore it, desperate to understand why I'd been called here.

"What is that?" I ask, my curiosity unable to contain itself.

"It's Drew's will." she said unfazed. If I hadn't seen at the funeral, I would've thought she didn't care about her son's death.

"He left you something. His diary from middle school apparently."

I sat there confused for a minute. Memories of the night before the incident overcoming me.

Drew had been there, outside, for a good hour begging me to come out and speak to him.

My step-dad was the only other one in, and he didn't know I was there. I didn't know what to say to Drew. We hadn't spoke since our arguement last year about me joining the music club. I couldn't bring myself to face him. Part of me thinks if I did, I could've resolved this all.

But I didn't. Now, I'm here; about to be left with a book containing all our happiest memories, as if it wasn't our worst ones that caused this.

"I'll go and get you it now," Mrs Ramirez said, lifting herself onto her feet and walking towards the stairs.

I tried to think back to middle school. What memories Drew and I had during it.

I couldn't think of any, maybe we had only just became friends from playing soccer or something.

Drew's mother's heels clicked along the tiled floor.

"Here it is," she passed me the book. "It's a bit broken but it looks like it reads just fine."

"It's okay," I say.

The book was a dark red. It was barely together, corners of pages ripped apart. It was hanging on by a thread.

"Thank you, but I must be going," I said, fearing Drew's mother too much to create small talk.

She tried to say, "Have a nice day!" but I was out the door before she even gets the chance.

Reluctantly, I carried the book under my arm, making my way back towards my house. The guilt I was feeling was spinning around my mind.

All I could think of was the day before he died. I could've saved him. All those people at the funeral who felt as if they were responsible for Drew's death when I was the problem. I was the one who made him snap.

I removed the book from the underside of my arm. I stopped at the corner of the street before my house to admire it.

It was only to focus all my guilt on it. I was desperately hoping I could swap our memories from middle school from the diary, with the guilt of the memories from last night.

That's when I realised something truly confusing. Something that made me sprint doen the streets of Rosemeadow, desperate for answers.

It was only one minor slip up. A mistake was made with the wording. Drew's mother may have gotten the time wrong.

However, when I paired this mistake with the fact Drew tried to visit me the night prior to his death, something felt odd.

Why was Drew giving me his middle school diary if we didn't go to the same middle school?