may shatter on impact (tronnor)

23. Truth & Tears

We sit on Connor's bed in silence, my thoughts screaming and his mind running at a million miles an hour, contemplating all the questions I couldn't answer. I tap his pocket, and he unlocks his phone for me. I get out the notes app and turn off the ringer and begin to type out all the answers to everything Adam asked and everything I never wanted to say again. But I trust Connor, and for some reason he seems willing to bear it.

it was dark and the entire school could hear what he was doing in the other classrooms.

i didnt know it was him until he had already gotten to forty nine people. we all just thought it was some random guy, no one thought it could be tyler oakley. so i didnt stop him because i didnt know it was him before and during and then when i did know i didnt know what the hell i was supposed to do. i mean, what would you do if your girlfriend was shooting everyone here?

and i did love him. i loved him more than anything in the world.

And now I can't. Now all anyone, including myself, can tell me is how horrible he was. But at the same time, I can't help but remember the way the stars were reflected in his eyes, and the way that sometimes he would let me pick what color he was going to dye his hair next, and the way he made pancakes for me in the morning when I slept over, and the way he and I both jumped off the pier for the first time together, and the way we would pretend we were the kings of the sand dunes.

he didnt tell me, and i didnt know. no one did. he wrote in his journal that he told me that he was going to get revenge on all the people who had hurt us one day, and that that was synonymous with "im going to shoot everyone in the school". all the professional people basically agree that he was delusional, that he thought that it was obvious, but really, it wasnt. if anyone had searched his room and found the lists and the plans and the gun, maybe they wouldve known. but his parents were still finalizing getting divorced and his siblings were moving out (he was the youngest). so no one, including me, knew. when he said those things, i always thought he meant that one day he would be their boss, he would be all successful and famous like hed always wanted and they would be nothing - thats the kind of revenge that we always talked about together.

he did find me and thats why hes dead.

the school doors are locked from the outside, someone inside has to let you in unless you know the code. no one could get in and so no one could stop him until he shot himself and a boy named chris kendall ran out and let the police in.

i swear didnt help him.

please believe me.

He reads quickly, scanning through the note, eyes widening as he begins to understand what happened better than any of the vultures that spent weeks investigating and interviewing and snatching snippets of private conversations and bringing their cameras into his home and stealing journals and polaroids that caught our last happy moments together.

"Of course I believe you," he whispers to me, putting down the phone now full of secrets and words that I could never speak. "And I'm sorry, and I'm glad that you survived, Troye."

I rest my head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around me as I cry what I swear are the last tears I'm going to cry for Tyler Oakley.