It was a kinder sort of eerie, the feeling I got when he sat aside me in school. It wasn't something unnatural, a boy sitting across from another boy, but he sat down without introducing himself and without a single glance. He sat down as if he couldn't be bothered by my existence.
I didn't put a lot of thought into it. People in school were odd very often. This was really no different. I was never a truly popular kid, but I was certainly known. I was involved in clubs, sports, honors classes. I was a happy kid. At least, I was then.
I smiled at the boy, seeing his brow furrow in confusion. I had never seen him before, and I don't mean to say this in a cruel manner, but I had just simply never met him. I had a few hundred people in my graduation year, so some of the kids were just so easy to miss. I assumed the boy was confused because I was kind to him, which was very sad, though not completely unheard of.
"I'm Simon. What's your name?"
He frowned at me, almost accusingly, before grumbling out a reluctant, "Mitchell", and turning away to his notebooks. I nodded, for some reason. I guess it felt like the right thing to do, nod, agree, even though I wasn't sure what I was agreeing to. I decided that I was agreeing to cooperation, to acquaintance-ship.
Throughout the school year, I became fairly good friends with Mitchell. I never went to his house, but he came to mine a few times. We sat adjacent to one another, so we were lab partners. He was pretty smart, though unproductive most of the time, and liked to focus on hypothetical trials rather than realistic experiment. He wasn't happy, exactly, though he never struck me as a person to hold a grudge.
.
People have come to know him as a monster. They have told em that it is an untold sort of evil that flows through his brain. I'm not sure completely what to believe. I knew him before. I can separate Mitchell into two clear and concise groups; I can sort Mitchell into a before and into an after. Most people only took notice of him during the after, while I was unlucky enough to know him before.
I had to know him before. I had to watch it happen, I had to watch him slowly change and degrade into the cursed omen that everyone else got to start from. I was by his side, most days, laughing about his rants about the other kids. I got to hate his bullies with him, and I got to stand up for him a few times. I got all of the before, which only leaves me awake at night, shivering and vomiting, finally understanding how someone who seemed so stable ended up in such a rage.
I had all of Mitchell's good times to remember, which only magnified the fact that I can't be sure which side is the more correct side. I don't know which side is a facade, but the emotions I saw from him were so real. He seemed so honest, so open, so ready for someone to finally believe in the potential he had. I had to coddle his broken hearts, bullied and bruised. I had to bear his weight of multiple suicide attempts. I think of knowing him, befriending him, as my cross to bear.
I feel guilt when I think that I wish I had not befriended him, though I'm not sure whether it's misplaced. Everything is fuzzy and confusing, and I became very suicidal during the after. I no longer see Mitchell, haven't heard from or of him in years. I don't miss him, but I miss who he was. I miss what we could have had, the friends we could have been, if things had gone differently.
.
I remember the day that things changed from before to after, I can hear his voice whispering in my ear.
"Hey, uhh, Simon, can we talk?"
I expected it to be about his depression, anxiety, suicidal fits. I was ready to accept and calm and aid as much as possible. I was ready to be on his side because I truly wanted him to get past it. I truly and genuinely wished that people were kinder to him and that he had grown up in a better family and that he had the opportunities that I had. I still, almost, want to believe. I want to believe that in another world, things could have been different.
His voice was quiet, shaky, and almost nervous. He was not calculated and determined, thirsty, like some have called him after. He was unsure, he had a conscience that was holding him back.
"Just...I don't know how you're going to take this but...You're a good kid, you know. You're a good guy, you don't need to be involved in this."
He wasn't crying, but his eyes were wet and he wouldn't meet mine. His hands were clamped against themselves and his arms and legs were speckled with goosebumps.
"Just, just...," he stuttered, as if he was making a point that I was going to find offensive. Red flags went up in my head, and I felt as though I wanted to run. I didn't want to be friends with Mitchell anymore, but I was stuck in some sort of obligation that friends keep loyal to one another even on the worst possible days. My legs stayed put, and I listened, almost crying in fear myself.
I wasn't sure when I realized it, but Mitchell was more powerful than many of us had imagined. Anyone who can hold their tearing souls and bouts of mania in for that long has got to be powerful. In that moment, I understood. Not only was he powerful, but he was treacherous. Like a land mine, he was the kind of unnoticed trip-wire that slides easily under your feet.
"God...just stay home tomorrow, please? Just trust me and stay away. Say you're sick, trust me. It's gonna be bad. You're not gonna want to be here, trust me."
I shook my head, walking away, with him calling me but not following me. I could hear him calling my name all the way home, though I was sure that the frantic calls were hallucinations. He kept using that phrase, "trust me", that haunts my night terrors even to this day. I can't trust anything, not even my own perception, not even my own heart or loyalty or friendship.
I got into my house, screaming and crying, angry with whatever God I had faith in for allowing him to give up. He was strong, but he didn't want to keep being strong. He wanted the easy way out, he wanted a way to be noticed before he was gone. I was angry: with the bullies for hurting him so, with the parents and teachers who brushed it off, with human nature for allowing him to rationalize it in his head, with myself for not seeing it coming and stopping it from happening.
I know I couldn't have stopped it, and I realized that all of the toil had screwed Mitchell's brain into a paranoid and angry state that I have never even begun to comprehend. I know of free will, and I know that no matter what I had done before, things would likely have been the same.
.
I didn't go to school the next day. No one went to school the next day. I had called the police, and then the Mitchell's parents, and then my parents, and then the school. I am surprised, even though I think I know myself fairly well, of how calm I was. I think, since the first impression of soft eeriness and danger, I knew that-deep down-my friendship with Mitchell was a land mine. The time bomb had gone off, and I had to diffuse it because I was the only one that could.
I haven't seen him in years. The afternoon I had called the police was the last afternoon he had ever seen. He shot himself cleanly through the head when he saw the police cars outside of his home. There wasn't even a letter. There wasn't a single sign of hesitation. He took the easy way out, and although I hate myself for thinking this way, I am glad that he took no one with him. I will not say that his death made me glad, but it makes me indescribably relieved to know that no one else was harmed in Mitchell's endeavors.
He had told me to trust him. I did, I did trust him. The only problem is that I trusted a different part of him, before he became twisted and out of my control. I trusted the lab partner, the hypotheticals that left me laughing and gasping for breath, the boy who wanted nothing more than to pass his chem final. That was the before, the boy I trusted.
The worst days are those when I am kept awake, drowning in the before and the after, unsure of whether either of them actually exist. I realize now that there is a very fine line between rational and insane. I realize now that there is a slight, easy-to-miss, yet undeniable turning point that is the point of no return. There is a point of no return that he reached, that not even the most divine god could have kept him from. My downfall was lying to myself, believing that I could save him. I had believed too much in both him and myself, I had believed that there was enough good in every person to fix any situation.
I cannot believe in that now, the situation has severed my previous ideals and left me in bouts of confusion that I cannot understand or explain. I don't know where I stand. I don't know what I believe.
.
I didn't go to school the next day. No one went to school the next day. It turns out, actually, that we were sicker than we could have ever imagined.
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(A/N: If this is too graphic or too dark, I can take it down from this contest, no questions asked. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable or make it too morbid.)
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