That Kid

I won’t write his name, for the same reasons I don’t ever say it out loud. 

He always smelled like shit and his brother pissed himself in the school cafeteria. He said that it wasn’t his brother’s fault. It was because he fell off his skateboard and broke a bone in his ass so it made him incontinent. 

I was one of the poorest people in school and this kid was my savior. When people were ripping him to pieces they didn’t notice I’d been wearing the same clothes for days on end or I never had any lunch. He helped me too. Helped me make friends. When people cussed him out, I’d say insults I’d been practicing on the walk to school. Came across as witty. My put downs were ‘hilarious’ people said. Hell, one of my nasty impressions of the boy even made the teacher laugh out loud. 

I was a poor kid without a bus pass or a pot to piss in but that boy always had it worse. The holes in my shoes and the missing buttons on my shirts went unnoticed because that kid’s mom cut his hair, his teeth were crooked, yellow stumps and he was always late for class. 

It reached the point where I got a huge dopamine hit every time we made him flee the school in tears. The time he tried to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that I was poorer than he was and I smacked him in the mouth and smashed his head into the locker. I became a school hero. As though I’d taken the basketball team to the nationals and won. Hi-fived in the halls. 

Then he killed himself on the railway tracks. The headmaster did a large assembly about it. The same people who made him cry said what a great guy he’d been. What a smart, kind and funny kid. A good student. They cried. Grotesque plastic tears on grotesque plastic faces. Took time off school to deal with their mourning. Called out of class for counseling. Suddenly everyone had been best friends with him. A competition to see who had been the most detrimentally affected by his suicide. They wore black ribbons on their sleeves to show the compassion they’d never felt. Another school trend that faded away quickly, with plastic bracelets, gelled hairstyles and brands of shoes.

Whenever I went to the railway lines, the place where he died, I never saw anyone else there. It was just me and the birds in the trees calling out and the hum of the electricity passing through the rusty rails. Walking around in circles, kicking at small stones because I wanted to tell his ghost that I was sorry. If it wasn’t him, it would’ve been me. Knocked into darkness by that speeding train. Wanted him to know that. He saved my life and more than that he showed me that the majority of people who thrive in crowds have no souls at all.