The Better Place

Prologue

A phone call from your ex is the last thing you want after a long day of work, but that is what I came home to on October 26th, 2018. The phone call started the usual way that talking to your ex does, a couple of eyerolls here and there, a lot of annoyance at the fact that they called you, and questions about why they actually were calling you rushing through your head. Then it happened, the moment that tore my heart out of my chest and left me gasping for air on the floor, because I wasn't expecting it.

"You might want to sit down for this." came the voice on the other end of the phone call. I was just blindly expecting him to say 'I can't be your friend anymore because my new girl doesn't like you'. I was not expecting what was actually said, so I remained standing.

"What?" I asked coldly, only to be put into my place by the words that came next.

"Kirsten, Jason's mom found him in the bathroom. He's dead." His voice came, only that's not what he actually said. My mind wanted desperately to believe that it was Jason, the kid that I used to tutor in the summer that yeah, I had became friends with, but that I wasn't as close to as I was to Mason. My mind wanted so desperately to believe that Mason was still alive that it had misunderstood the name that Thomas had actually said.

"Oh... damn. Well, is everybody there okay?" I asked, I had just moved to a new city that was about 2 hours away from them, so my only concern was to make sure that my little small town was okay with the news that "Jason" was dead.

"...Yeah, everybody is just still trying to process it... It'll be okay though." Thomas's voice came, sounding broken, which I didn't understand because he wasn't ever close to Jason.

"Okay, well I have to go. I just got home from work, and I need to shower." I answered and hung up. I just got up and carried on with my normal life, sending Mason a text like I normally did, just the usual "How's your day going? I heard about Jason, are you okay? I know that you got to know him a lot through me tutoring him, and bringing him under our wings at school. I love you" I remember finding it strange how Mason didn't answer me. I remember feeling confused that he would just ignore me like that when we had been sending each other daily texts for at least 5 years. I remember thinking that he was mad at me because I couldn't be there for him through this hard time, and I remember sending him at least 6 more texts that day that all got ignored.

It was only later that night when I realized the real reason why Mason wasn't answering me. Later in the night when I was scrolling through Snapchat stories and I saw all of the pictures with captions of "Tell me it's not true", or "RIP Mason", or "I know we didn't know each other very well but you were always there for me", that I realized that my best friend was dead. The boy who I had loved for 5 years was gone, and there was no way to bring him back. The boy who I would sit with on my front porch for hours talking about the future and who we would marry, and how life would be was lost. The boy who the first night I met him, he bought me countless numbers of Mountain Dew, and rapped with me to random Eminem songs wouldn't be here to create more memories with me. The boy who would send me random texts at 2, or 3 in the morning just to check in and make sure that I was still okay, or to tell me what was bothering him so that we could talk it out would no longer be there. When I say it hurt like hell, I'm underexaggerating it. I was alone, and heartbroken, crying on my couch until my step dad walked out of his room 6 hours later and found me. 

The next few days passed with me still having false hope that he would text me that this was all just a big cruel joke, but it never happened. He was really gone, and it didn't fully hit me until his funeral when I hugged his mom who was trying her best to stay calm for the rest of the community. She said that I was still welcomed at her house whenever I needed her, but when you live 2 hours away from someone, it's hard. His funeral is when I overheard that he had gone to one of his ex girlfriends for help and she just told him to do it, that's when I lost it and had to go outside with my friends. I slid down a brick wall, and punched it as hard as I could, before sobbing into Thomas' chest, just needing comfort, knowing that my best friend was dead. I felt like my life had ended when his did, because I no longer had the boy that made me laugh when I was about to break down. The boy that would have stayed by my side at this exact moment, and would have checked my hand once I calmed down was now dead, and I had no clue what I was going to do. I just knew that my heart was broken, and I felt like I had no one.