Dead Boy Walking

Cotton Candy at the Circus of Lies

One hill containing

One boy buried underneath

One grave surrounded

By hundreds.

   Whirling wind wistfully whipped thru Pink and blue spring flowers that blanketed the hill where the mourners gathered, garnered in jaded black. In a way, the ground looked like cotton candy and the funeral a circus of black lies. Yes, lies. One girl, a teenage girl of seventeen, knew this all too well. Her long chestnut hair lifted with the wind as she wrinkled her nose, her scattered freckles congealing as one at the motion.

‘Too happy’ she thought, ‘everyone and everything is too…happy.’

    The teenage girl had never thought death as a happy occasion. Definitely not. Particularly not this death; suicide. Suicide should never be an occasion of beauty, of happiness, of celebration. Nature seemed to disagree with her however, mocking her ideals by sending singing blue jays to the nearest tree, resting from a long journey.  She glared at the birds. Glared at the light atmosphere they brought, and as she did the breeze of a spring’s morning lightly brushed her pale skin, trying to sooth her frustration.

Only she could not be soothed.

   The mourners that stood around were not mourning. They disguised their indifference in black skirts and ties. But she saw, she saw right through their masquerade, she knew who they truly were. The couple sniffling to her left was parents that never cared. The woman’s makeup that ran down her face was not caused from the son she lost, it was caused by the realization that she was never a true mom. She was only a mother.  And the father, the father only stood there today for his wife, gazing at his watch every five minutes or so. Uncaring that he was never a dad, and never would be.  The sight was grotesque.

      The people behind her, the girls fellow pupils and the dead boy’s very terrorizes, were only here to see if they had finished their job. They only came today to see if they had finally torn the soul out of the boy. 

‘Bullies’ the girl's thoughts hissed.

   Bullies had no right to be here. Their eyes told a tale of sadness but their actions told a tale of hate. They hated the boy who now lay six feet under and had no justified reason. Was it because he was smart? Could they not handle that he had more opportunities then they would ever have? Or was it because he had known all their secrets? The silent loner who sat in the back of the classroom, absorbing everyone’s conversations like a sponge. Could they not handle that he knew their true colors? The colors that they hid behind the black and white society paints. Could they not handle that he knew them beyond the false façade that they put up for their peers, their audience?  Beyond the puppet show, being forever led in circles by strings, like a marry-go-round.

She didn’t care for the reason. Nothing justified how they acted towards the now forever silent boy.

However; as much as she detested bullies, they did not disgust her as much as they did.

The adult figures. The people of authority. The teachers.

     Had they no shame? Bystander, bystanders who had the power to put a stop to the dead boy’s humiliation, put a stop to all of his hurt, all of his pain. Yet they did nothing. Just stood in the hallways, in their classrooms…watching. Watching as the shy, meek, gaunt teenage boy shriveled up before their eyes. Watching him die time before he lit himself on fire.

‘Just like I did,’ she reminisced with a shiver.

        She had watched in the shadows time and time again as his books were thrown to the floor. As he was shoved into lockers. As people shouted and called him names. She was a bystander. What right did she have to be here? What right?