The not so glamourous life of teenagers.

Perfection cannot be created, it is already there.

He's Jace Carter.

Jace Carter, is the guy every girl wants to date and every guy wants to be. Even I wanted to be him at one point, though I'd never admit it out loud. He is idolised by the younger kids and the older ones are jealous of him. 

Until everyone found out about...

He's Jace Carter.

 He's strong and athletic, but he has an obsession with photography. He's naturally good at sports and every school team wants him, but he'd rather spend his time off of the pitch, capturing the perfect picture from the craziest angle. He's not above hanging from the railings or laying in the mud if it's for the perfect picture. Even when he takes the most amazing pictures, that everyone stares at in awe. He is never happy with them. Jace Carter is a perfectionist.

Maybe that was the problem...

He's Jace Carter.

If you look closely at him, you can see how his smile never quite reaches his eyes. If you know him like I do, you can see how his laughs are usually forced, or how he never quite looks you in the eye when he's talking to you. If you know him like I do, you'll have noticed that he always wears long sleeves. 

But most people didn't notice that...

Because he is Jace Carter.

No one would ever even think that something could be wrong in his life. No one would even suggest that it was a possibility because he always seems so happy. Because Jace Carter, is good at keeping secrets. 

Too good.

He was Jace Carter.

 And even though he'd been my best friend since we were 7 years old, for 9 years, I didn't know him. 9 years of friendship and I had no clue about anything until a year ago. I had seen the cuts and scars and burns, I had noticed the sudden obsession with the way he looked, I had witnessed, first hand him throwing up into school toilets or into a bucket in his room pretending he had the flu. I knew it was bad, but I didn't say anything. I thought that if no one else had noticed, it couldn't be that bad, I was wrong. He'd been striving for the perfection that everyone thought he already had accomplished. The image of himself that he couldn't see, I never realised just how badly he wanted it.

I didn't know the half of it. I didnt know that the cuts had spread from his wrists up to the tops of his arms and then to his stomach and legs. I didnt know that he had started throwing up after every meal religiously. I didn't know that he hated himself so much that he didn't think he was worth anything anymore.  I'd never seen the complete despair in his eyes afterwards each time.

Until I went to visit him in the hospital. He was laying there, deathly pale and weak with sunken eyes and hollowed features. Slashed wrists covered in dark dried blood and ugly red words carved in to his arms. The look of shame on his face as I walked in,  he was too afraid to speak to me, worried I would hate him, as if that were possible. So I sat in the chair next to his bed, and turned to face him, my best friend. I waited for him to look me in the eyes and I simply said, "Brothers."

And he smiled, a genuine smile. 

His last smile, because two days later he was gone.