03-11-10

Part 1

Daniel Bishop killed himself on March eleventh, 2010. He was seventeen years old. He was the same age as me. He overdosed on antidepressants in his car in a parking lot. He wasn't found until the next morning. They say he died just before midnight.

I grew up with Daniel. He was my next-door neighbor. We were actually quite good friends. That was until high school rolled around and my life did a one-eighty throwing me into the popular crowd. It was your clichéd high school stardom, and I was your clichéd high school jock. I had many girlfriends that I didn't like, but they fit the image I'd felt like I had to portray, and many friends I didn't trust; but who needed trust when no one liked each other to begin with. The parties were wild and the games were exhilarating. Football and parties seemed to go hand in hand. If we lost, I would get sloshed, to forget the mistakes and if we won I'd get even more sloshed to celebrate. While I was out partying my high school years away, Daniel spent his evading being the butt of a joke. We were mean to him. So very, very mean. Daniel never did anything wrong. His only crime was being different from us. He was small and thin with wiry brown hair and glasses thick as windowpanes. He would've struck you as a less interesting Harry Potter with far less friends. The closest person he had to either a Ron or a Hermione was his sister Mavis; who was two school grades behind Daniel making her sixteen at the time of his death. Being Daniel's sister did not necessarily boost her on the popularity scale, but she was pleasing to the eye so she had her fair share of friends, or I thought she did. She was never alone when at school so I just assumed she had friends but I'd later learned that she was a distant person like her brother. Daniel and Mavis grew up next door to me with their aunt, who was their only living relative and was out most of the time or hung-over. I don't have any real memories of his parents. They'd died in a car crash when Daniel and I were in the third grade. We spent nearly every day together then. He knew the woods that spread out along the mountains behind our backyards like the back of his boney little hands. We'd play in the woods all day for days on end. He'd been my best friend until I decided he couldn't be any longer.

Daniel Bishop killed himself on March eleventh, 2010. He was seventeen years old. He was the same age as me. He overdosed on antidepressants in his car in the mall parking lot. He wasn't found until the next morning. They say he died just before midnight. I was at a party on March eleventh. I arrived home to my bed while Daniel took his last breath. We both went to sleep on the night of March eleventh, but only I woke up on the morning of March twelfth.

Rumors flew when the rest of the town caught wind of his suicide. Our town was not a sensitive one. One person's business was everyone's business and Daniel was now the most popular topic of conversation. The other students were the most brutal. You could not go a minute without hearing someone voicing his or her opinion. This is why Mavis didn't attend school after her brother's death. There was no suicide note so people devised their own stories as to why he did it. They said Daniel had killed himself after being rejected by the girl he had liked. Her name was Sofia. Sofia claimed that he stalked her. She made the whole school believe he was a creep and everybody listened. They listened and they agreed.

The first time I saw Mavis after Daniel's death was at his funeral. It was a quickly arranged funeral, just two days after his death. It wasn't like in the movies: there was no rain to fall in sorrow over him or black umbrellas to catch it, just the lingering winter frost and a startling bright sun. We all wore black. Daniel lay in a closed coffin. No one cried. I watched Mavis throughout the entire ceremony. She didn't cry, not once, but I knew she had. Her eyes were puffy and her red hair thrown quickly into a knotted up do. Her black dress was wrinkled and her lips chapped. She wouldn't let anyone else see her cry. This was a cry for help in itself, and I am ashamed to say I did not go to visit my neighbor until it was convenient for me. I will never claim to be a good person, but Daniel's suicide kept me up at night. Something about it wasn't right. Daniel would not have killed himself over rumors of being a stalker or being rejected by Sofia. No, Daniel had faced worse. Whatever did drive him to kill himself was much worse. I had to find the truth.