The Rope's Secret

Chapter Two ~ The Funeral

Tyler's funeral was held five days later, on the 9th of April, 2015.

The paramedics had announced him dead at the scene. They'd predicted he'd died fifteen minutes previously to me discovering him. There was a chair lying on the floor. They thought he must have kicked it from underneath him.

After that, the next five days were the craziest I'd ever been through.

I was called in by the police a number of times. At first it was just to ask questions about discovering Tyler's body. Then they began to change the subject, asking if Tyler had been under any stress, if Tyler had been bullied at school, if his parents had been abusing him. They even went as far as to ask if I'd been giving him any grief. I said no to almost all of their questions. It was physically impossible for Tyler to keep secrets from me. If he was stressed, he would tell me straight out that he was stressed. If not in lessons, we would always be together at school, so I know that he was most definitely not being bullied. His parents were perfect examples of guardian angels. You may think it could have been a disguise whenever I or anyone else was around, but like I said, Tyler would tell me if he was having any problems.

As to the question regarding me, I was downright offended (you can guess why).

The police questioned others of course; his family, friends of the family, Tyler's other friends, some of the teachers at our school. But no-one could give any hints as to why he had suddenly taken his own life. He'd just been getting on with school work, nodding politely to anyone who greeted him, eating lunch with me and some other friends in the cafeteria, his well-known smile never faltering. Nothing was out of place.

Except on the Saturday. Where he was hanging off the ground, where he wasn't smiling, where he was pale and cold to the touch. Everything about that was out of place.

Then there was the post-mortem, despite it being obvious how he had died. Well there was the possibility that the paramedics and doctors had simply missed the rope burn around Tyler's neck, and only a certain few had the power to see rope burns, and so they'd called the help of an expert. Either way it was confirmed that he had indeed died by hanging himself. Asphyxiation, they called it.

The police were at his house for another couple of days, searching the place from top to bottom for any clues as to why Tyler had killed himself. But there was no suicide note, no unusual things hidden in his room, no hate messages on his computer, the only thing out of ordinary they could find was a search result he had typed into Google..."how to make a noose".

The first thing I thought when I heard about that was how Tyler always relied on his mum to put on his tie in the mornings.

After the police wrapped up the search, then came the funeral.

Me and my mum were near the front, sat on the left of the church, along with family friends and the rest of Tyler's friends. His friends basically consisted of half of year 12 in our school, so I recognised nearly everyone. There was George, Obi and Tilly, three of our "book companions" as Tyler liked to called them. There was Melody, the girl who'd always try to flirt with Tyler, despite the fact that he constantly make it clear he wasn't looking for a relationship.

And then there was Denver Bacall, one of the last people I'd have expected to appear. He knew Tyler, but he was never a close friend of his. He's one of those people who excels in sports, but are too lazy to put pen to paper, and he'd barely made the grades to be accepted into the school's Sixth Form (how he'd even managed to be accepted into a grammar school had given me countless possibilities to consider), and he was one of the guys who'd come rushing up to us in the morning asking if he could copy our homework. You see, Denver had somehow managed to make himself believe that if if a person reads a load of books, that instantly makes them clever. I may have obtained some good grades, but I was far from Isaac Newton's standards. But Tyler was too nice, and would always let Denver copy his homework. That left me with the possibility that Denver had attended Tyler's funeral in order to thank him for all the times he'd let him copy his homework. Then he'd eat some food at the wake and leave without another word.