This used to be called "Sam's Town," but since I plan to sing "Starry, Starry Night" at my friend's funeral, I'm putting that as the title. And yes, this will continually be marked as complete, but I might add more to it later.

I know I should be working on Lucky Blurt right now, but on August 8th I found out that one of my friends had killed himself. He was someone I saw every day at school, a perfectionist, nattily-dressed, and unsmiling. I wrote this that night between bouts of crying because I couldn't sleep.

The sad thing? I barely spoke to him. I wish I had. I wish I could go back in time and shake a reason out of him. I wish I could go back in time and force my younger self to talk to him. All the signs were there...and I missed them. Don't be me. If anyone you know (including and especially YOU) is considering suicide, please, please, please tell a counselor, a doctor, or someone who can help. No one has to suffer alone. No one should suffer alone. And the people you'd be leaving behind? You won't expect it to hurt so much.

Disclaimer: I don't own "Starry, Starry Night" by Don McLean or the show "Glee."

"For they could not love you,
But still, your love was true.
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life as lovers often do.
But I could've told you, Vincent,
'This world was never meant
For one as beautiful as you.'"

Starry, Starry Night

Karofsky looked at Azimio. This was it. This was the day. This was the most important reaction to him, so he wanted to get this out of the way first.

"James," his voice shook so much, it nearly broke, and he was afraid that it wouldn't last long enough for him to get his secret out.

"Why you sound like that?" Azimio asked.

Karofsky swallowed. "I have something to tell you and I'm afraid of how you're gonna take it," he said so quickly the words blended together.

Azimio looked at him appraisingly. "You don't have cancer, do you, because my Uncle Jonny had that exact expression on his face when-"

"I'm gay."

For a few seconds, everything seemed to disappear. It was as if there was a tornado, and the eye was Azimio's face, which twisted into an ugly expression. Still unable to see anything clearly but Azimio's face, Karofsky didn't realize until his back slammed against the lockers that he had been pushed away by his best friend of all eighteen years of his life.

Something sat on his chest and he couldn't breathe. Boy was he glad it was the end of the school day, because he definitely couldn't handle any more classes today.

He walked home, random thoughts entering his head. It felt like his brain was surrounded by water, blurring everything. Only random thoughts entered his head. Thoughts of how big that squirrel's tail was, how crunchy the gravel was. All the details of the world he had been too busy trying to destroy suddenly seemed to present themselves to him like they knew it was the last time he would pay them any attention.

The gun was in the safe. Tee hee, the safe. Guns weren't really safe, but they were kept in the safe. He didn't feel cold when he put it against his head. Nor did he feel any relief when he pulled the trigger. There was just nothing, like he had died before he ever got inside the building. His best friend of eighteen years had physically rejected him, and he knew it was going to hurt. He just didn't expect it would hurt so much, it would take away all hope.

Azimio lied in bed thinking for a long time, knowing that Karofsky hadn't come in yet. He didn't know what to think. On one hand, homo. On the other, best friend for eighteen years. What to do?

Oh, hell, eighteen years definitely overruled a two-second confession. Besides, if the PSAs were true, then it was something people were born as and he had always been friends with a f-a gay boy. He started to type out a text message, but decided that something this big needed to be discussed in person. He heard the door open and started to walk downstairs. That was when he heard it. It was the air being let out of a tire, it was so quiet, but the damage it caused left him anything but quiet on the phone as he screamed for an ambulance like a little girl. But Karofsky would never hear his screams.

Dave Karofsky killed himself. His best friend of eighteen years was dead because of something he was just a few seconds too late in saying. He didn't expect a few seconds to hurt so much.

"Lopez," James' voice was not like anything else she had ever heard come out of his mouth, and Santana knew to leave her HBIC tone out of hers.

"What happened?"

"Look, I don't know how to tell you this, but Dave? He was gay. He told me yesterday. And I know this isn't how you would want to find out, but he killed himself last night," James' voice was starting to draw a crowd, but Santana didn't particularly care. Her stomach twisted.

She pretended she didn't care. She made sure everyone saw her as someone who wouldn't be messed with. But she let Karofsky get under her skin somehow. What was that quote from that Harry Potter book Kurt's boyfriend was always going on about? Something about someone pouring so much of her soul into his that he poured some of his soul back? Yes, that was it. Lonely and hidden and bitter, they had shared something. And now Santana had no one to share it with.

She didn't expect that thought to hurt so much.

"Can we plan a memorial?" James was still talking. Santana snapped her mind back to the conversation at hand.

"Um, sure. I'll put something up online, see if I can get anyone else to join in and help out," so I can go home and cry while they do all the work.

Kurt found out about it on FaceBook first, ironically enough.

R.I.P. Dave Karofsky.

Surprised, he scrolled down the page, reading all the comments of people who had loved the closeted bully. It was immediately clear that Karofsky had outed himself. There were hateful comments from the people who had been part of his crowd and not Kurt's, but then one comment caught his eye. It was Santana's.

"I wish I had known you were in so much pain. I wish you had said something. I wish I had seen. I was more honest with you than I was with anyone else, and I wish you had been the same way. I wish I knew why this hurts so much."

Kurt swallowed and closed his computer. He shakily drew out his phone and found over a hundred missed calls, mostly from Glee Club. But there was only one girl he wanted to talk to, and it wasn't Mercedes.

"Santana?" he asked when the ringing stopped.

"What do you want, Lady-face?" her voice was harsher than usual, but Kurt understood that she was grieving and felt that her grief was unusual.

"I need your help to plan a memorial," Kurt said numbly. "We're going to out him."

"He outed himself," Santana said. "He told Azimio."

Kurt sighed. "Let me guess, Jimmy flipped."

Santana sniffed, and her voice came out in a gruffer growl to compensate. "Azimio's already planning one. He wants us all to bring a candle and to wear something about football."

Kurt swallowed. He hadn't really known Karofsky outside of the bullying, but it was clear that the boy had been hurting just as much or more than he had been. Kurt nodded before remembering that he was on the phone and said something affirmative before hanging up. He turned his computer back on and went to the page. His fingers paused on the keyboard. What could he say?

He didn't have much to say. "I wish I had known you better, because then I would know why I'm so devastated. I might have said three civil sentences to you my entire life. I didn't even know you existed until high school, and even then I dismissed you as someone who had no feelings. Clearly, you did have feelings. And clearly, those feelings were negative. I wish I had known. I wish I could bring you back and shake you just so you could tell me why you did this. Actually, I just wish I could bring you back and shake you until you talked to me. Karofsky, you were making so much progress." No, he couldn't type that. He deleted the last sentence. "Dave, you were making so much progress. Why was that not enough for you?"

Before today, he had had a chance of not being the only out kid in the school, besides Blaine, who was getting enough flak from being in a relationship with him. Now he didn't, and he didn't expect that knowledge to hurt so much.

Kurt called Blaine next, and they talked until the sun came up. Kurt cried, endlessly. Blaine apologized, endlessly, and in the end had been driven over by his mother. The families spent that night going over every interaction any of them ever had with the kid Karofsky, wondering if they could have done anything different.

They all felt alone in their guilt while the entire town joined in, wondering what became of their fallen footballer.

Looking over the lyrics, I can't believe I didn't think to call one of the following numbers.

1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433)

1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)

Deaf Hotline: 1-800-799-4TTY (1-800-799-4889)

There are ALWAYS options.