After You

Max

Dear Alfie,

I'm going to be honest, it feels a little bit strange writing a letter to you. Not just because of what's happened to you, but because I feel I have no right to. I know that the counsellor has asked all of us to write one of these letters, but I feel like a fraud for going along to that session yesterday, if I'm completely honest. We've only known each other for eighteen months. Do I really need bereavement counselling?

I half-expected someone to say something; to question why I was one of the chosen few being taken out of class to sit in the counsellor's office. I certainly didn't expect it; I didn't think the teachers really knew that we are friends. Our seats weren't close together in classes, so we rarely spoke then. To be honest, we rarely spoke during break times. You spent most of your time kissing Willow, or being entertained by Finn. We inhabited the same spaces – not just classrooms and school grounds but parties and bowling nights and those evenings when we'd sit in someone's room and play video games until the early hours - but we weren't anything to each other.

Willow was your girlfriend, Finn was your best friend, Jess was your childhood friend, Jacob was your brother and I was the outsider. Everyone's identity focused on you except mine, which is another reason why I don't feel as deserving of this counselling as the others. I miss you, of course I do, and I am finding this so difficult, but am I really suffering as much as they are?

I haven't spoken to any of them since the funeral, and it's weird. I know I say I'm an outsider, but I'm not that much of an outsider. I thought we were all friends. We used to speak to each other every day, and since you've gone, it's like the thread that held us all together has unravelled. Maybe it has. Maybe you were the stitch binding us all, and now that you're gone, we don't really have anything in common. I wouldn't have become friends with the others if it wasn't for you.

You were sat in Mr Birchell's office on my first day. I remember wondering if you were there because you'd broken the rules, and then I saw the "Head Boy" badge on your jumper. The smile you gave me was slightly forced, and I realised that you were there to be my "buddy". You had to pretend to be my friend so I didn't feel like a complete loser. New schools always do that, and it always backfires. The only thing worse than having no friends, is having friends who are only there because they're told to be.

As soon as my parents and Mr Birchell were out of earshot, I expected you to point me in the direction of my first class and ignore me completely from then on. Instead, you grinned at me.

'Starting a new school in Year Eleven is cruel enough, but halfway through the year?' you asked incredulously. I stared you out for a second or two, wondering if you were trying to gain my trust before laughing at me, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt and nodded.

'Barbaric,' was all I managed to say.

That entire day, I waited for you to tell me to get lost. I had visions of you doing it publicly at lunch time; some kind of spectacle for the entire school to witness. I hoped you'd be kind enough to just tell me quietly that you had no interest in being my fake friend and let me get on my way. Lunchtime came and went without incident, as did the end of the day. Maybe you'd be extra discrete, I hoped, and tell me in a Facebook message. When you sent a friend request, I thought "this is it" - but all you said was how great it was to meet me.

It took weeks for me to be certain that you weren't going to build up my hopes, only to discard me as a friend. Other new people came along, and you'd show them around for a day or two before setting them free to make their own friendships. At times, I worried that I was clinging to you like some kind of limpet. When I finally told you this, you laughed, and told me that we were friends.

It's happened before. People have told me we're friends, only to betray me further down the line, casting me off in favour of cooler people. I don't usually trust when someone tells me I'm their friend – and yet, for whatever reason, I trusted you. I opened up, started being myself, and got to know you and the others. Although I never quite felt like one of you, I felt a sense of belonging, because of you.

Maybe it's true. Maybe you were the magnet that pulled us all inwards from whatever direction we were travelling in, holding us together until, without us even realising it, we became friends. Now you're gone, and it seems that the magnetic pull is gone too. There's nothing holding us together, and nothing to stop us from drifting apart.

I miss you.

Max.