AWKWARD HONESTY (TGD BOOK ONE)

Chapter One

Chapter One

As is a tale, so is a life: Not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

- Seneca

Dear Diary,

It is the last day of the year, a year I will not miss. Not that the prospect of the next twelve months is shaping up to be a huge improvement on the last go around. This past year, my parents finalised a divorce a decade in the making and my decision to move up a grade into an advanced placement program stripped me of every single close friend I'd come to rely on since moving to this crap hole of a town half way through primary school.

Best of all, just when I thought things were looking up and the summer holidays were in sight, my school year ended with a cheerleader from the grade above mine committing suicide on my birthday. Not that she even knew it was my birthday. Somehow though, it still feels personal.

3:23 p.m.

I can't believe I thought my homeroom teacher was going to highlight the fact I had finally reached my teen years when she quieted the class down to make the announcement. My ears heated in anticipation of the embarrassment that having your birthday pointed out in class would bring. I forced myself to smile politely at her, which was when I noticed her swollen eyes and creased forehead.

I didn't know the girl who died very well at all, besides her obvious popularity, but her actions have impacted my life noticeably since that uncomfortable morning. The term finished up a day early to accommodate her funeral and instead of escaping to the airconditioned bliss of the tech zone at our local council library my mother forced me to attend her service. Of all the people crammed into that chapel, I had the least obligation to be there.

I went in alone, my mother conveniently had to work. She usually does. I sat down in the last pew, wearing an uncomfortably stiff cotton blouse and spent the entire funeral service staring at a small grey diary sitting atop the dead girl's pristine white coffin.

The drab little book was surrounded by colourful teddies and roses and the contrast made the spectacle of her death something more than just a tragic curiosity.

What made her do it?

What was written in those pages that was awful enough that her family would want to bury her story with her?

Why were the three assholes from my grade who tease everyone with a pulse even here?

Why would anyone choose to be dead?

Did it hurt?

The service was long, when it was over You Should Be Here begun to play as the crowd lined up to farewell her. I watched a familiar looking pink nosed blonde girl in a black mini dress escorted by an equally blonde boy in an unironed zoot suit walk up to her coffin and write a message on the side in purple marker. Then I watched as more people approached to bid a final farewell and leaver their own mark.

I was the last person to walk up to the coffin. My steps came slowly and by the time I arrived to bid the wooden box and its contents goodbye there was no one else left in the chapel. The music ended while I fumbled for the words to write.

Sorry your life was so shit you ended it. Hope you're in a better place? No. Better not.

I sighed and picked up the pen. I wrote exactly what I was thinking in that moment.

Heaps of people turned up today, clearly your absence will leave a big gap in many hearts.

I wish I could be so lucky I thought to myself as I put the pen back on the side table.