He wasn’t online the following night but two days after that he was, and while talking to him I picked up more and more attractive points to his personality about him. A great deal of things came out, although after an hour of delightful conversation John had to go. Yet again he assured me he would be on soon but he wasn’t. Days went by and the days turned into months which also did the same. I put it down to failing to catch each other using the Internet, I wouldn’t be on at the same time he was. I missed him. I know it sounds silly but not having someone to talk to when I was online and I enjoyed his company and I believed we had built up a friendship. Email after email I sent him, but no requital was made.
After two months I had added others to my buddy list and discovered that a few of my classmates had AOL so I could talk to them. To be honest I had forgotten about John yet I still kept his name on my list just in case he was to return. To my surprise he did. Whilst on relatively late one night his name popped up, on my buddy list, and he approached to talk to me. He kept apologizing because of the reason he had not come on or not been able to come on. His computer had been stolen; it wasn’t his fault yet he kept saying sorry. All I wanted to do was to move on and get to know him better. However I couldn’t, because when I said quite late I meant eleven, which was not ideal seeing as the sky had prevailed into night and I had school within the next ten hours. So he asked if he could converse with me once school was finished the day that followed. After consenting and telling him to sleepwell I logged off.
Monday came but I could not go online because my granddad had had a stroke. Tuesday evening I was the one apologizing but he said it wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t. Granddad Joe was lying in hospital and all I could do was cry. This was the turning point in our friendship because after confiding in him that I had never lost a relative before, he realized I felt fear. We spent hours talking about losing people leading me to believe it was a very personal conversation. I was telling someone I had known for a short time, my life story. It was a weird feeling but I trusted him and it felt like I had known him for a lengthy duration of my fifteen years on earth. The rain had been lifted from the cloud and the cloud had nothing more to squeeze out of it. Light had been painted onto my face, well that’s how it felt, John had taken away all my worries. The moments we jointly owned were mutual and I felt I could trust him.
I knew what he looked like and I fancied him yet he didn’t know what the picture was on my face. He had a firm belief in me too, he said he did and he must have because he gave me his mobile number so if I ever wanted to get hold of him I could.
Six months had gone by and I had gained a companion. I told all friends about him at school and showed them some of the conversations I had printed off. Sophie pulled out an article about paedophiles and how young girls had arranged to meet up with people who say they are people, yet they are not and these girls were never seen again. They made me ring John on a withdrawn number to see if he was being honest. He was, it was a man’s voice of about mid-teenage years that had a strong northern accent which I heard. This is all I needed to know because I never intended to meet him due to safety and distance reasons.
He wanted to see what I looked like but I kept putting it off because I had a feeling once he saw me he would finish out friendship. I would say I didn’t have a scanner when I did. So he gave me his address. He must have really trusted me and I was not going to betray that. After all we usually ended up talking for three hours at a time, four to five days a week and on top of that texting almost everyday. We did it to see how one another was. The crucial thing he told me was eight months after we had met. You must be thinking that I said this as if John was my boyfriend but he kind of was in a way. It felt like it anyway, although I never saw him and we hadn’t kissed our personalities were made in heaven.
“I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine. I’ll help you out anytime. To see you hurt to see you cry makes me want to weep and die. I’ll be right here until the end ‘coz you’re my love and my bestfriend.” This was the moment I realized I was something special to him, when the text message came through and I had read it several times, tears were drawn to the large brown eyes I have, I had a best friend.
He told me that from a young age he had never been a slim child. One could say fat but I prefer to call it as obesity. The trouble is other people do refer to the problem people have as well-fed, plump or corpulent and they did with John. John had been bullied. I do not know if you have ever looked it up but it means ‘one who oppresses or dominates by threat or superior force or to be teased physically or morally’. How can people pick on others because of what they look like? Human beings are shallow and this is what lead to something awful. John wanted to change his body. He lifted weights and worked out in the gym, but he also began to take drugs and steroids. I was not sure exactly what steroids were until I asked my mum, she told me that they could drastically change the consumer’s bodies. Which I suppose made John the man who I saw in the photo he had sent.
He truly was stunning. He had all the girls after him and because he was such a lovely person, I should have expected it. His heart had been firmly wrapped with the wings of love. Jealously, anger, sadness, all these emotions ran through my head yet not one of them was happiness. I should have been happy for my best friend to have a girlfriend, someone, who loved him and could be with him, something I could never properly do. I was devastated I knew this girl would conclude it all. It hit me John would never be mine and even though we had talked about meeting when we were old enough to he would never be my boyfriend. So I made up my own boyfriend calling him James. John was pleased when I told him he said that he was not sure whether to tell me about Gemma because he thought I would be upset. Well he hit the nail on the head there. Lying was the only idea I could come up with it made me feel better and I wanted to make him jealous but I had failed.
Christmas day, John and I were texting throughout because we could not go online. John was going away the next day to Canada, which meant he was not able to talk to me for two weeks. The longest we had not talked for was a day at the most. To my surprise I had an email through on the twenty-eighth of December from GEORDIELAD4EVA this was odd I thought until I read it. John had made his dad buy him a laptop so that he could talk to me. He was missing me so much he just needed to talk to me. Not for Gemma but John had got it so he could talk to me. I felt privileged, he had gone to that length for me, nobody had done this before.
One day we sat and talked for six hours, we laughed, cried and shared secrets. It was lovely. He told me that he had run out of steroids to take and he was craving them, that’s why he couldn’t sleep and was up the same hours I was. I felt helpless but I knew getting off these pills was for the best. Mum’s a nurse, she would know what to do so I passed on the information I had found out from mum to John. He wanted to get off them and I wanted to help him. After all I was the only one who knew about them. I made him promise me he would not buy any more when he returned home because he was suffering from the side effects. Headaches, arm aches, loss of sleep. I looked it up on the Internet, it told me he was spending one hundred and thirty pounds a month on drugs.
What’s the point I thought? Then it also occurred no one can change the past but they can change their future. John was going to change and I was there for him. Once back in Newcastle I found out John had bought more steroids. He had failed, after all that promising he had done to me he had betrayed every word letting himself down in the process. How could he do this? I was shouting at him down the phone until the point when he put it down on me. That was that, I did not talk to him for a month when it got to the point when I was able to forgive him. I contacted him everyway I could yet no reply. No answer. Was he still angry with me? Did he not want me anymore? Could he not forgive me? Those were the questions running through my mind but he could not answer any of them. I had an email through one night, from GEORDIELAD4EVA but it wasn’t from John.
It was from his brother Andy. “Kay, its John’s brother here. I’m sorry to say this but we lost John a month ago. He’s dead. I still can’t come to terms with it, but I hope to get to tell you the whole story soon.”
That’s all that was written in the email but that’s all I needed to know. He was dead. He was bloody dead. All because of the bullies. The reason he died was because of the steroids, he had had a heart attack. He didn’t even die in peace. I felt numb. My last words to my best friend were of anger. I hadn’t got to say goodbye. Why didn’t he listen? Why did he take those steroids? Why John? Why did God do this?
All I could do that night was to inarticulate utterance of grief. Cry my heart out and all I wanted to do was to have him back. I was not able to talk to him again and to say I’m sorry. Sorry for shouting at him, sorry for lying to him and sorry for not being a better backer. Like he was to me, he stopped me cutting myself. I wanted to say thank-you. Thanks for being there mate. Thanks for everything. The heavy rain cloud had returned in all its glory.
Talking to Andy made me lifted my spirits. He informed me with the works. He said that when I told John I had a boyfriend he was devastated and spent the night crying because he wanted to be mine. I did not know what to say but this wasn’t when I told him about James but about my real flame, Adam. John knew what I looked like because I sent him photos of myself as well as little gifts, like a sample of my perfume so he knew what I smelt like. A letter to him and seemingly he had made a reply parcel. Enclosed is a letter, ten pounds because I lent him money, pictures of himself and a few suprises. John put my picture in a photo frame by his bed together with telling Andy he loved me.
I loved him to but as a comrade, at the time when he was alive I believed it was true love but it was lust. I wanted to be with him. I know what loves like now because I’m in love with Adam. I can sense the difference. Being with someone is of a superlative feeling.
I still sit up at twilight and contemplate my life, which could have been different because John and I had talked about meeting in 2004 and see where things would lead. I vowed earlier in our social intimacy I would not meet him because of safety and distance reasons but all of my worries had gone. He could have been my lover, my soul mate, my one and only, the light of my life. It’s never going to happen now but he was my best mate. He still is. I talk of him as if he’s still alive because he is in my heart and always will be.
My last recollection will be of John’s letter that still has not come through. I don’t know what my response will be when I take possession of it but I know the rain cloud will return because there are so many unanswered questions and a sixteen year old who was the finest person perpetually has gone. He recreated me. If I could say one last word to John it would be R.I.P, you have earned it as due compensation.
