I Knew A Boy

I sat in a daze as I stared at the whiteboard in World History. I couldn't concentrate on anything; not like anyone else could either. Tough the rest of my classmates were excited that there was only a month of school left, whereas I was focusing on Zack.

The night he had overdosed, both my mother and my sister hadn't returned for at least an hour and I had started to worry. Lord knows how relieved I was to hear that the ambulance had come and taken him to the hospital for proper treatment. He was going to be alright, Zacky was going to be okay.

But I was still concerned, because Zacky had failed to show up to school. It was already the Wednesday after his accident, and I had yet to see him. I always saw him in the halls before all of school started, but for the past few days, I'd seen no trace of Zack in the school.

I wanted to know if he was really alright. What if something had gone wrong at the hospital? What if Zacky had....

"Amanda!" I heard someone shout for me, and I jumped in my seat, shaking my head as I picked it up off my hand. I looked around the room to see and hear my classmates snickering and laughing at me. I could feel my face heating up as I looked toward Miss Downs. She was looking at me expectantly with an annoyed expression.

"What?"

"I've been calling on you or the past minute. I expect you to be paying attention," Miss Downs scolded.

"...Sorry," I mumbled.

"Now, can you explain to me the Five Pillars of Islam?" she then asked. I felt my eyes widen a bit as I really had no clue as to the answer.

"Um..." I stuttered, glancing down to my open book on the desk and flipping the page, looking for the answer I needed.

"Without your book," Miss Downs' shrill voice called through the air. My head quickly snapped up, my eyes meeting with hers once more.

"Um... I -- I don't know them," I mumbled. Miss Downs rolled her eyes.

"Of course you don't. That's why we pay attention in class," she spat in her 'warning tone', and I slunk down in my seat, looking hard at my desk, praying for her to move onto someone else.

"Fuckin' retard," I heard a boy, Phil, mutter from the seat diagonally behind mine. I hated him. He would, in later years, go on to attempt to run me over in his truck, and then hack down the growing tree in my front yard.

His comment pissed me off. It pissed me off because he, like most everyone else in the school that did not know Zack much at all, did not know of the burden I carried on my heart. They didn't know how much his pain and struggling was killing me. They just didn't know. And even if they did, they probably would not have cared.

"Hey," my friend Sam greeted as she met up with me in the hall after class.

"Hey..." I mumbled, keeping my eyes glued to the floor.

"You alright?" she questioned, and I sighed, picking my head up and glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. "Did you... hear about Zack?" she then asked, an air of caution evident in her voice.

I stopped dead in my tracks., my hand enclosing around her wrist to keep her from walking on. My heart was beating at an inconceivable rate.

"Hear what about Zack?" I quickly inquired, my skin feeling like little bugs were crawling all over it.

"Well... he-" she started, but then glanced around at the hall teeming with other students rushing to get to their next class. With a sigh, Sam grabbed my arm and pulled me into the girl's bathroom that was right across the hall.

"Sam..." I pressed, and she leaned her back against the wall.

"Zack... well... they sent him to a psych ward. Down in that hospital he went to. They said they had to keep him there for a psychoanalysis and psychiatric therapy. Amanda... they put him on suicide watch."

Thoughts were running through my head at a million miles per hour.

"Su--suicide watch? But... Zack's not suicidal... he's not," I repeated, trying to enforce it as the truth.

"Well, he's been depressed for a long time. They found cuts all up and down his arms and legs," Sam continued, and I could feel my entire body turning cold. Now Zack.... not my precious Zack Baker. He couldn't have...

"But I've seen his arms. They looked fine," I replied, trying to keep the tears at bay.

"...Not up near his shoulders you haven't. That's where they said most of them were."

"How... how do you know all this?" I asked, looking into Sam's eyes.

She merely shrugged. "His mother."

It clicked in my head, making sense. Sam's and Zack's mothers were pretty close friends, not to mention Sam and Zack themselves.

"I've got to get to class. Everything will be alright, you'll see. I have his address at the hospital in case you wanna write him or anything," she then said, stepping into me to give me a tight hug. It seemed she was the only one that really cared.

"Okay," I said on a sigh, and watched as Sam left the girl's room. Thinking back to everything she said, I leaned into the wall, my hands covering my eyes as I took deep breaths. The bell for next class rang, echoing down the halls, and I looked up again, wiping the silent tears away before returning out to the empty hallway.