Ivy and I were best friends since primary school but suddenly everything changed when she found her “own group”. She was now the “poisonous Ivy “to everyone except the people from “her group” The funny thing is we still share the same best guy friend, ‘Chad ‘. Anyway, I tried not to think about our wrecked friendship even though it still cuts me deep inside every time I glanced at her.
That night, just lying there gave me an uneasy feeling. Nighttime scares me. I hate the complete silence of it, especially when I can’t sleep. I feel as if everyone could be dead and I would never find out until morning. When I was young I would stand by my mother’s door to make sure she was breathing. My mother is pretty strict with me. Like whenever school camp comes along, it’s fight galore. My grandmother thinks if a member of our family isn’t looking after me I’ll get raped and murdered. She accuses my mother of being a bad mother for not caring enough and letting me go. Mother almost gives in to her each time, and some days when the three of us are together it’s World War Three.
Have I ever told you about Chad Murray, “the love of my life “? Picture this. He’s the school captain of all-boys private school. Popular, charming, good – looking. Not that he’s a ‘pretty boy’ or even bursting with sex appeal, come to think about it. It’s the honestly and realness about him that I love. It’s written on his face like a script. What more could I want out of my life? …. For him to be equally in love with me, that’s what.
Before I could tell him how I felt it was too late. A year later.
Watching rugby union is probably at the end of my list of things I’ d like to do on a Sunday afternoon before exams, but my cousin was playing and I had promised to watch his grand final. Stupidly, I had taken my economics book with me thinking that I would get a few minutes of reading, but every time when someone scored, one of the hysterical people around me would hit me on the back and send my book flying.
‘You’d do anything thing to beat me in the exam wouldn’t you’ I looked up in surprise at seeing Chad and moved over for him. That familiar voice makes my heart starts beating so fast that I’m afraid he would notice it.
‘I just want it to be over. I want this year to be over, but another part of me is so petrified. God, Chad, we’re never going to be at school again. At university we’ll be nobodies.’ I said.
‘Just make sure your decisions and follow them through, Cath. that’s what I’ve done. I’ve got my whole future planned out the way I want it to be and there is nothing anyone can do to take that away from me.’
‘You’re not going to follow in your father’s footsteps?’ I asked curiously. He grinned, shaking his head. “No way, Cath. My father lived his life his way. I should have the same choice. The future is mine, to do whatever I want with it’
He hugged me, swinging me around. I couldn’t help thinking that everything was working out well for our lives, which had seemed so complicated at the beginning of the year. We chatted all the way to my place and by the end of our walk I was feeling as optimistic and positive as Chad.
‘Look after yourself, Catherine’ he said hugging me again.
I felt relieved walking up by the stairs. Thinking of the four years ahead of me at university I figured that patience was something I was going to need plenty of, but somehow having Chad, Mother and all my friends, I couldn’t possibly go wrong. So I slept without having nightmares that I was reading an exam paper that I know nothing about. I slept with the knowledge that my life was somewhere good because of the good people around me. And no exam failure could take that away from me.
The next day I was walking down the corridor towards the steps that led to the homeroom when I noticed Ivy sitting there with her head in her hands. When she looked up and saw it was me, she stood up quickly, wiping her tears and taking my hand
‘What happened’ I asked, thinking that maybe the school had given us the wrong novels to study this year.
‘Chad’s dead. Chad Murray is dead.’ She says it in a whispered voice.
I looked at her in numb shock. My mouth opened to say something but not a sound came out. She sank back down on the step and began crying again. I wonder now why I thought it wasn’t true. Maybe because people I knew didn’t die. Other people did. People I read about in the paper and could forget about it the next day.
‘He killed himself’ says Ivy. My hands started to shake at first and I wanted desperately to vomit but I tried to keep it down. I sank down in front of her, grabbing her shoulders. ‘Don’t be stupid, Ivy. Don’t be stupid. ‘I shouted. ‘Who told you that lie?’
‘He swallowed tablets and they found him this morning’
No, I kept telling myself. He tried to and at that moment they were trying to pump out his stomach. But he wasn’t dead because people I know couldn’t die. I couldn’t keep it down anymore so I rushed to the toilet and threw up nothing in particular. I sank down on the ground closing my eyes and wanting to cry but I couldn’t. I just felt so scared. I wrapped my arms around my knees for warmth and desperately wanting to go home. Instead I went to the homeroom and sat down to do my exams.
At the funeral when eight boys who were all his close friends carried the coffin out of the church. I cried. It wasn’t a physical burden on their shoulders; it was an emotional one. The pain and grief on their faces was indescribable.
Sometimes an hour has gone by and I haven’t thought of Chad. Sometimes two, but then I remember that not a minute will ever go by when his mother won’t think of him. Sometimes I fell like I’m lost in this small world. One minute something happens in my life and I’ m flying. Next minute I take a nose-dive and just as I’m about to hit the ground with full force something else will have me flying again.
But the day Chad died was a nose-dive day and I hit the ground so hard that I feel as if every part of me hurts. I remembered how we talk about our future. The horror is that he had to die to achieve his but the beauty is that I’m living to achieve mine.
