Drama club was supposed to help. Talking to Mom and Snake was supposed to help. Shopping, Manny, therapy sessions every week, it was all supposed to help. Nothing ever did though. Everyone just kept saying "It'll take time. It'll take more time." But what if time had run out on me? What if this was as good as life was going to get from here? I just didn't know anything anymore. Everything I had known, or thought I'd known, was wrong. I thought Rick had changed. I thought everyone was moving on. I thought I was going to die. No, I knew. I knew I was going to die. Maybe that's the only thing I was right about. The way I saw it, Rick had it easy. The bullet took less than five seconds to kill him. Toby, Sean, and I…we were all still dying because of that bullet.
I think that's what Rick meant when he told us it was too late. He knew Jimmy was gone, and so was he. So was everyone. I'm back inside these walls and I don't recognize anyone anymore. Some of them I've know all my life…but they were all gone now, morphed into shells of who they used to be. A girl I met at the group they set me to, she told me about being raped. She told us the guy had held a knife to her throat and, when she begged from her life, he had laughed. Maybe that's how Rick felt. So anyway, the guy laughed. She was begging for her life and he was amused. He scratched out, "Look at me. Look at me!" And when she finally did he told her, "I wouldn't really kill you. It's so much better when they kill themselves." I want to say again: maybe that's how Rick felt. All I think about now is "Maybe that's how Rick felt."
Everyday he came to school and they tortured him, they beat on him, followed him, hated him. He wanted to kill us all…maybe we had killed him first. That's what haunts me. It really haunts me because if that is how Rick felt it changes everything. I remember the night of the shooting, sitting in that room with everyone watching the news. I could see the question in Toby's eyes, the "maybe this is how Rick felt." I went with him to the vigil in front of the school. I remembered how he had kept saying "He was not my friend." He had to separate himself…he had to make sure everyone knew they weren't alike. Because he was haunted by something darker than how Rick felt: how he felt himself. I saw it in his eyes that night; when he slammed the door…he knew it could have been him. He could've just as easily snapped. Toby and Rick, they were friends. They were more similar than anyone wanted to admit. And even if that one little detail had changed, even if it had been Toby who snapped…everything else would have been exactly the same. I've seen so much pain, not just in my own life, but at that group. At their root, all our stories are the same.
So that's that…that's what I'm building on. And I'm scared. Because I saw how I was going to die and now all I can do is…wait for it.