The day after the rich boy was killed in a car accident, every house in Garnet Valley, including mine, received a bitter phone call.  I remember the smell of fresh baked cookies as I raced into the kitchen, only to find my weeping mother placing them in a gift box, while begging me never to text and drive.  I just nodded and trudged onto my bus empty stomached. 

As the bus rolled by, on every telephone pole and building wall was the same picture of the rich boy posing in his lacrosse uniform.  “Pray for this poor boy’s family,” some of the pictures said.  These were the same cries that echoed inside the bus as students reminisced over what little memories of stories they’d heard about him.

“Pray for him.”  

The boy had belonged to a private school, a little over twenty miles away, yet my public school mourned for him as well.  The principal held an assembly to allow us to grieve, presenting a video with all of the boy’s greatest moments in life, from home footage of his first steps to highlights of his lacrosse games.  Everyone watched the screen with red eyes, embracing whoever sat next to them, imagining the terrible things his family must be going through.

The week the rich boy died, my public school held a lacrosse game in his honor.  Students from his private school also attended, cheering and sobbing on the opposite side of the field.  The lacrosse players performed honorably, beating and butchering each other through sweat and tears, while merchandise was sold on the sidelines with the slogan 10VE, honoring his former lacrosse number.

The year the rich boy died, my school assured his family that he never would be forgotten.  Kids strutted the halls in 10VE shirts; cars parked in the school lots flaunted the 10VE bumper sticker, and teachers often reminisced on the boy’s year in the our middle school.  There were thirty articles that came up online when I looked up the boy’s name.  Each one explained thoroughly his loving impact on our little public school community, yet I had never even seen him before.

The day the druggie died, I watched the news for the first time.  I saw street footage of him walking in the middle of the road, waiting for the tractor trailer to hit him. 

As I entered the bus, the same the druggie used to ride, I expected to watch the tears, hear the sobs, embrace my neighbor, see his picture in the bus driver’s window...but there was nothing but the usual morning drowsiness and blabber from all of the kids. 

I walked into the school to find that we were to resume our normal schedule.  There would be no assembly.  I asked my friends if they knew about the druggie’s death.  They nodded yes, then dismissed the matter with a shrug. 

The week the druggie died, his best friend missed the bus every day.  The bus driver stopped at the druggie’s house a few times by accident, but then cursed at himself, remembering that he didn’t have to wait anymore at the old, brick, one-story house with the cracked roads.  The times the bus driver didn’t forget, he smiled at himself, relieved that he didn’t have to take that inconvenient detour.

The year the druggie died, I searched his name on the web to make sure that he actually had died, and I hadn’t been hallucinating.  Only one article came up about a tractor-trailer accident in Garnet Valley, and his picture popped up inside it.  But then I looked again, and it wasn’t an article, it was his obituary.  I couldn’t find any other sites with him, so  I showed the picture to a teacher and asked if he remembered him.

“Him?”  The teacher responded as he glanced at the picture of the fifteen-year-old boy smiling in front of a christmas tree.  “He was nothing but a damn druggie.”