He wasn't really a monster. It must seem crazy, making excuses for him- he got drunk off his ass one night and came this close to drowning a boy in a fountain, after all. Most people would say he got what he deserved, ending up stabbed to death by his greatest enemies. Poetic justice, that kind of shit.
I knew him. Not the way half our grade knew him, from beer blasts and senior pranks, but as the closest thing he ever had to a friend- even in second grade he had an aura of power, one that said he could be let off a murder charge by batting his eyelashes, and that drew me, in a way. Being Bob's trusted lieutenant had its advantages- we were the most popular guys at school, able to score any broad we wanted, the pride of the football team. He let me in on his plans, told me what to do and how to do it, and all I had to do was keep my mouth shut tight and listen. No thinking required. By thirteen we'd already started fighting skirmishes with the east-side greasers, white trash who thought they were tough as hell because they slashed tires and never cleaned their hair. I'm not sure if he took offense at the very fact that they existed, or itched for a fight he couldn't truly win, or if his grudge ran deeper than that. It's too late to figure it out, now.
He didn't have the best home life, as cliché as it sounds. Not that his parents beat him or starved him-they spoiled him rotten, and there lay the problem. Either they loved him too much to set any boundaries or couldn't be bothered with discipline if he maintained the bare minimum of respectability needed for them to look good in public. It drove Bob wild, trying to figure it out, even if he never said so. He did everything he thought of to piss them off- got arrested for brawling, partied all night and came home completely trashed, skipped school to smoke weed behind the garbage cans- hoping they'd get angry, finally decide that enough was enough, but that was nothing more than a pipe dream. I wanted to shake them sometimes, make them realize that their perfect little Bobby was killing himself and the blame rested on their shoulders. If his father had whipped him once, just once, he might be alive today. I'm serious.
And he could be a genuinely decent person when he wanted, don't get me wrong. I remember the way he was around Cherry Valance- she's a nice sort, a redhead with a pretty laugh. She likes watching sunsets, refused to put up with him when he started drinking or spoke to her too sharply. (She was probably a better mother than his actual one, and that's the sickest thing I've ever heard of.) But Bob was good to her- bought her chocolate, took her to the movies, all that saccharine romantic crap women expect. She hardly ever saw his less-than-rosy side until the month before he died, and even then she didn't know half of what he got up to when she wasn't around to supervise. He smiled a lot, with her. Sometimes he brushed strands of hair away from her face and I couldn't believe this was the same guy who slid his hand up greasy girls' skirts at the movie theater.
But it isn't like this matters, anymore. He started cracking up around junior graduation- maybe he knew that eventually he'd have to start making choices, maybe he knew that he could count the amount of people who really gave a damn about him on one hand and have fingers left over. At any rate, some hoods decided to drive Cherry and her friend home one night- I actually think that's all they planned on- and he hit the roof. I told him not to strike back, tried to calm him down. Dallas fucking Winston is part of their gang, and I'm not ashamed to admit that there's no way in hell I'd ever go up against him- he's a genuine thug, the kind even the police are scared of. He called me a pussy in response, and I dropped my point like a hot coal.
So we went, and drank until we saw stars, and gathered some of our buddies and jumped the two of them in this shitty park. We underestimated them, though. The scrawny dark one rammed a switch straight into Bob's chest once he realized that his friend was going to asphyxiate otherwise- someone taught him to do it, obviously, because his knife didn't even catch on the ribs. And that was the end, really, for all of us.
I'm not too surprised by the way he went out, even though everyone else was- a nice boy from a good family, bringing his death upon himself at age seventeen. His parents were the most shocked of all. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his mother's face when I burst into the house at three in the morning to tell her that her son was dead. Hell, I couldn't stand the woman- maybe if she put her foot down every once in a while, Bob's cold body wouldn't have been the first part of him to touch solid ground- and I still don't think she deserved that.
His funeral was a lavish spectacle- attended by our plastic classmates, mostly, gathering to express their 'condolences' at the loss of such a 'dynamic young man'. I couldn't sit through the entire damn ceremony, sweating in my ridiculous tailored suit, waiting to address some meaningless speech to Bob's coffin. I ran out of there, not caring where I went or how it looked to the mourners- fuck their false sympathy, fuck the American Dream, fuck him, for kicking the bucket before he even left school, for practically becoming a murderer, for leaving me in the goddamn first place, the rotten bastard.
I finally crashed on the sun-roasted sidewalk a few minutes later, once I was sure that I was far enough from the church that nobody would come looking. Not that I wanted to duck my head between my knees and start bawling or anything- Bob would rise up again just to kick my ass if I did. I just needed to clear my head before I slapped the preacher across the face, or did something equally stupid.
He could've been sober that night, he could've let the slight go, he could've dodged the switchblade, he could've actually been a nice boy from a good family and not the terrified hurricane he actually was... my mind kept playing the same reels.
Tomorrow, I'll go back to school and try to keep my eyes off the empty desk in the back of the room. Tomorrow, I'll hide behind a lopsided smile and watch Cherry's from across the cafeteria. Tomorrow, I'll find a way to move on. Maybe I'll stop picking fights with the greasers, even. I talked to Ponyboy Curtis a few weeks ago, the guy who almost got drowned, and he's not so bad, for an east-side hood. Pretend-warfare seems so childish, so utterly pointless, when Bob sacrificed his life in exchange for his hate.
He wasn't really a monster. But I'm not sure who I'm trying to convince, anymore.