In elementary school you called me names, chased me around the playground, and said nasty things about me behind my back. They told me that you were mean to me because you liked me. I guess a lot of people liked me back then. In middle school you refused to look at me. Sometimes you just crashed into me in the hallway because you “didn’t see me”. I knew that you never liked me. In high school things got worse. The names harsher, the rumors more personal and the attacks more frequent. Then you got suspended for it, and I went back to being invisible.
That was about four years ago. Since the day you were suspended, we had essentially no contact for four years, and I was ecstatic about that. Then I heard the news. Two boys, one 19 and the other 17, were speeding down a dark road at night. The combination of drugs and alcohol made it hard for the driver to drive straight, and he crashed into a parked truck. The momentum didn’t stop there because both vehicles flew into a local bar and exploded.
You somehow emerged from that truck without an injury, but your friend didn’t.
It’s been a over a year since that night, and your friend is still in the hospital. He’s in a coma and covered completely in burns from the fire. You were sentenced to six years in prison the other day. You’ll be 25 when you’re finally released. The judge said you needed those six years to realize that what you did was not an accident. Nothing you ever did was accidental.
No part of me was happy to hear this news despite everything that happened in the past. In fact, all I feel is sick. I wish the same thing for you that your friend’s family said in court. So I will leave off with the same two words that they said. “Be better.”
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