I remember when they lowered his casket. Jamie swore up and down year after year that when he died he wouldn't allow his parents to stick him in the ground with all the other dead bodies and worms. Jamie hated worms. But it didn't work out that way. His parents were standing by the priest, his mom, Carol, sobbing into a tissue, and his father, Craig, standing there stone-faced. I don't think the priest even really knew what happened, or why we were all standing there while he read from a bible that none of us believed in. All any of them knew was that there had been an accident, and that Jamie wasn't standing with us.

We were all there...Trisha, John, David, Mark, Nick, and me, Natalie. Standing in our usual half circle, places left unfilled because of the accident. We couldn't talk about it. We tried, time and time again, but we just couldn't get it out. Susan and Darren were buried earlier that month, and now it was Jamie's turn. We weren't sure what happened to everyone else. There used to be twelve of us.

It was late summer when we buried Jamie. The grass was dry, and looked as though it was trying to grow in the middle of a desert. It wasn't exactly cool in the cemetary either. Nick, John, Davie, and Mark were wearing suits that their mothers had gone out and bought for the "occasion". Our parents acted as though we were going to a birthday party and not one funeral after another. I don't think they really ever understood why we refused to talk that day. Trish and I were wearing long black skirts with black silk blouses, our black Mary-Janes polished until we could see our faces in them.

Jamie always said that words didn't say everything, and that it was a waste of breath trying to explain exactly what we felt. Sometimes we still try though. None of us could find the words that day. David always had some smartass remark, but even he was quiet. It was almost as though we finally understood what Jamie meant. We'd spent nights screaming at Jamie for leaving us, and cursing that supposed god for taking him from us. But that day we were silent.

Sometimes we sat together at night, all of us mentally replaying the tape of that horrible night. As much as we tried to forget, it was always there in the back of our minds, just waiting to sneak up on us and cause us all to break down crying again. I woke up every night for months hearing the sirens and Jamie's screams. Nick's eyes were constantly rimmed in black, and we knew that he dreamed too. Whenever we closed our eyes, all we could see was the pool of blood, and Jamie's body laying in the middle.

We all had those weird memories of Jamie at his best. Like the time he went and rescued every single frog out of the road so that they wouldn't get run over, or the time he used a net to save worms from drowning, because he was too scared to touch them. Sometimes we sit down at the table late at night eating, and we can all imagine Jamie right beside us telling us how wrong it was to eat animals. None of us ate meat after the accident. We traded in our chicken salads for cesear salads, sea food for fries, and a hamburger for a cheese sandwhich.

Sometimes I wondered why I couldn't remember what Jamie looked like the night of the accident. I remember the gun, the blood, the screaming and the sirens, but I don't remember Jamie's face. All I remember is his screams and his body cascaded in blood. If I close my eyes, I can still remember Trish dropping to the ground beside him with me at her side. Screaming at Jamie to wake up, yelling that he couldn't leave us. None of us remember what happened to James or Kevin. The police keep saying that they'll search harder to find them, but we know they won't.

We were seniors that year, and Jamie was always considered one of the geeks. I never understood why. No one ever gave him a chance because of his white and blue checkered shirts, the same style he was wearing the night of the accident. They didn't care that he was a PETA supporter, a vegetarian, that his mom was a lawyer, or that his dad was the one that kept the house clean. They didn't care that Jamie saved worms, that his jokes made us laugh, or what it was like that night. James and Kevin acted like they cared....they fooled us all. They pretended to be his best friends, but it turned out they were his worst enemies.

It hit me so hard when almost no one came to the funeral that day. Carol, Craig, Trish, David, John, Mark, Nick, the priest, and me. That was it. No one took the time to really get to know Jamie, and it hurt so much. I wanted them to care, wanted them to know what James and Kevin did. I wanted them to understand how much we were hurting. They didn't know or understand anything other than what they were told, and it ripped our hearts to pieces time and time again. They remembered James as the quarterback, and Kevin as the basketball star, but they didn't remember Jamie.

We were all sitting there in the bleachers one afternoon, wondering why the school never bothered to say that he was gone. David looked up at me with tears in his eyes, and I knew he was remembering all the times Jamie kissed him. I was locked in a memory of the time Jamie tied himself to a rope and propelled down to save a kitten that had fallen onto a ledge. I felt the tears roll down my cheeks remembering the sparkle in his eye when he held the kitten and walked five miles to the local animal shelter, and when they told him they were going to have to put it down in a few weeks, he took it home. I can't forget the look on his mother's face when we all turned up at the door with that little tabby cat.

I remember that night perfectly and yet I don't remember it at all. The way Kevin grabbed Susan and swore he'd kill her if she screamed. James slamming Darren on the head with a baseball bat, the collision killed him instantly according to the doctor. Nick remembers the look on Susan's face perfectly when Kevin slid his hand up her sweater, the look of pure terror and hatred. All I can remember is the look on Nick's face when he saw what Kevin and James were doing. Jamie screamed louder than I'd heard anything scream before, and the sound echoed all around the park we were in. I remember Jamie shoving James to the ground and James picking him up again, telling Kevin to hold him while James shot him. I remember Susan sinking to the ground crying, and the sickening smirk on Kevin's face when he took the gun from James and shot her too.

I still can't forget how fast they ran. How Trish and I fell to the ground screaming at Jamie not to leave us, David frozen in place, his voice louder and higher than either of ours. I remember the look in David's eyes when Jamie told him that he loved him, and how hard I cried when Jamie said that he loved us all and would never forget us. I remember Nick screaming for help, and watching John run as fast as he could to the nearest house, pounding on the door screaming at the people to open up. I remember Mark catching David as he fell backwards in a faint, his face so close to tears.

I remember the details...The fifty-five minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive, the tears in David's eyes when he woke up and laid down by Jamie, swearing to him that he'd never forget him. In our own way we all loved him. The shirt Jamie was wearing that night was thrown away, but we found it in the garbage can and cut a small scrap of fabric off for each of us. David has Jamie's kitten, which Jamie named Davie.

I don't think anyone besides the six of us even remember how much Jamie loved David. I don't think the school knew that Jamie was gay, or that he loved to go shopping with Trish, Susan and me. His parents knew though. Jamie had a whole section of his closet devoted to our old shoes, and he took longer in the bathroom than Trish and I did put together. It was the little things that kept us going I guess. The things that most people forget that meant so much to us that we refused to let go of them. Refusing to let Jamie go.

The teachers and the hospital offered us therapy, but none of us took it. Nick lost his sense of humour, David stopped talking and took Davie the kitten everywhere with him, John walked around like he didn't know why he bothered getting out of bed in the morning, tears constantly in his eyes. Mark didn't want to believe what happened. He was always crying, and I spent most of my time with him helping him through it. Me, I lost everything the night we lost Jamie. I lost my best friend, my reason to wake up, my reason to care, and my reason to talk. I lost my love of walking around at night too. I can't go anywhere near the door after it gets dark any more, and my mother always gives me a knowing look when I run to my room crying when I see the dark sky.

I can't help hating Kevin and James for what they did to Jamie. James always went along with what Kevin did, and when Kevin fell for Susan and wanted Darren out of the way, thats exactly what happened. I don't think they meant for Jamie to die that night, but he's still gone. I know James didn't expect Kevin to turn the gun on Susan because he couldn't have her. Jamie was always the hero.

I still wake up every morning expecting to hear Jamie holler at me to get out of bed and have him tickle me if I didn't move. We changed a lot since we lost him. But I don't think anyone changed more than David did. David always loved Jamie the most. And though he thinks he should have told Jamie more often, I know that Jamie knew then, and that he knows now. And none of us will ever stop loving Jamie. I don't think we could if we tried. He was such a part of our lives, and he was snatched away from us too quickly. Jamie never got to graduate and go off to college, get married or get a job. But he did get to do one thing.

Because Jamie will never stop being our hero.