Stares from people were normal, but these felt different, they were no longer judging looks, but worried ones.
"did you hear that he did."
"I saw it all happen."
"I heard he's done it before."
"I heard he did it for attention."
All of these voices run around me, like somehow, me attempting suicide was their thing, just another opportunity to brag about how hard their life as, having to be the one who saw the kid with slit wrists, they didn't care about the kid, I had somehow been left out of my own suicide.
I walked down the halls, I could feel each set of eyes, grazing me, long enough for me to notice, but not long enough to seem rude, like they were looking at me to see how I was doing, but not long enough to seem judgy, they didn't seem to care if the looked judgy a week ago.
My locker had get well soon posters blue-tacked to it, signed by over a hundred people, in all different fonts, in all different colours, I hated it, no, I don't want to be a pity case, if I did, I would have left notes, but I didn't feel like anyone would even care to read them.
I couldn't stand the sight of them, if any of them really knew the first thing about me, they would know I despised those sorts of things, the committee of cheerleaders, writing notes for people and organizing the prom.
I grabbed the rim of the papers highest, and dragged my hands slowly down, pulling each individual card off, people looked at me, shocked, "why would he do that? they were so nice to him and now he is just being rude."
"Well everybody knows he is just doing it all for attention," Gerard had spent so long without anybody's attention, whenever he had it, it felt strange, wrong, like he had done something awful.
I opened his locker, his feet surrounded by papers, found my textbooks and headed off to my first lesson.
The room fell silent as I walked in, I slowly walked to my seat and slouched in it, trying not to think about the images they must have seen of me, shared of me, laughed at because I lay with thin blood dripping from my tattered black t-shirt.
My first lesson of the day, history, I wonder if my teacher knew... of course, he knew, him and all the teachers knew, they gossiped about me and all the students at this godforsaken school.
I distanced myself from everyone else, if I just dreamed of drawing, dreamed of cloud watching and sweaty concerts, the lesson might pass me by, if I just wandered off in my own little world, I might be able to make it through the day.
"Gerard, what year did the attack on pearl harbor take place?" I had been sent crashing down, back into reality, and that hurt like hell.
"umm...sorry, what?"
"I said what year did the attack on pearl harbor take place?"
"uh," my head rushing through everything, every little detail of my memory, "1941."
"well done," he said reassuringly.
It felt like being in a room alone when you were me, like all the things going on in everyone else's life felt so pointless.