Everything I Should Have Said

I'm

manqué

[adj.] having failed to become what one might have been
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You know the feeling, the feeling of utter confusion when you want to tell somebody something but the words are refusing to be let out and then right after the moment passes you instantly regret it.

You see I have many things I've wanted to say Shane Moore but I doubt I can because Shane Moore is dead. There's no sugar coating it, he committed suicide. He took his own life at the expense of others.

It wasn't like he was bullied, he was just unloved, he was popular, extremely and even if I did realize at some point in time that he was suicidal I chose to ignore it, we all did.

"Don't you ever wonder how it would feel for everything to just stop, for your heart to take a rest and for your body to feel completely numb. I always do, I want to feel that." His voice betrayed nothing, it still had a lightness to it that it always held but his eyes were dull and I felt as if he wasn't thinking straight or he didn't care for the seriousness his words held.

I could see something was wrong, the way his eyes almost dared me to ask what he meant, to almost ask him what was wrong but I was scared, terrified of what he could have answered.

"Oh yeah, I feel like that too. Just to feel calm, yeah?" He shook his head, I knew he was lying but I smiled and dragged him to our next class.

I wish I could skip back time and tell him what he needed to hear. What I needed to say to help him and the saddest part is I was given many opportunities to help, and I let them slip past without a single thought.

I pretended like I didn't see the bruise under his left eye or the cut on his lip and when he did tell me what happened I forced myself to believe his lie.

I knew he didn't fall down the stairs. I knew what Matt did but he was my best friend too and I couldn't throw him under the bus either, so I chose the simpler way out for all of us. I threw all of us under the bus together, destroying whatever we had to nothing.

"You guys didn't ask about my eye or lip, why?" We all automatically looked at Matt who avoided eye contact and looked at the floor. Shane didn't seem to notice though, he were to busy assessing his food.

"We just didn't think it was important." Lea, answered for us and we all agreed to her previous statement. We just didn't want to face the fact that Matt, our best friend, Shane's best friend had chosen not to be your friend in that moment.

"It isn't." Was all he said, and I could see it again, his eyes betraying his words. This time they weren't daring they were pleading. Pleading for us to say something, but I just smiled.

"Falling down the stairs again, Shane?" He shook his head his forced smile almost looking as if it was going to split his lip in two again.

"Something like that, listen I have a project I have to work on. You guys have lunch without me." My mind screamed for me to offer him my company, but I thought space was what he needed. He didn't need space, he needed to feel claustrophobic. He needed friends, and we were really sorry excuses of them.

He grabbed his stuff and I felt guilt, knowing all my classes were with him and we had no project to work on in any of them. So maybe that was his little message to me, for me to help him but I didn't and I truly am regretting so now.

"Matt, what did you do to him?" Lea asks her face angry. Charlotte looked at Lea in warning and I felt excluded.

"What happened that you guys aren't telling me?" I should have gotten up right then and followed Shane, but I felt selfish and so I stayed.

"I was drunk, clover. He was getting punched by a couple of boys on the football team and I was right there, and he saw me I know he did. I didn't help him, I was with a girl who dragged me away from the scene because she didn't want me to get involved. He saw me but he didn't ask about it yet, maybe he's letting it go?" I was drunk was his excuse and I condoned it so easily. I nodded and acted like everything was fine, that his excuse was perfectly reasonable.

I should've stood up to Matt and told him what he did was unbelievably selfish, and friends don't do that to each other but that would've have been extremely hypocritical on my part because I too am selfish.

My name is Clover James, and I had let my best friend die, not unnoticed but noticed. I noticed every single thing about him. I noticed the way he became so uncaring about everything. His sudden change didn't want to believe what was happening, I didn't want to believe it and so I made myself believe that he was ok that nothing was wrong.

That he was going through a phase, that when he got himself sorted out everything will go back to normal but normality long passed us.

Normality was not something we could obtain, we were all messed up but we put on facades and that broke each other until one of us truly broke. We realized the facades we put on about being perfect and  enviable were dangerous and we were playing with fire, and that's when we changed, when one of us killed ourselves.

So I almost hear his voice warning us that we were going to perish and they could too so we manned up and became one of the normals.

Believe me it's not because we chose to, but because we were the best friends of a dead boy who we didn't save and the law soon became our friend.