First of all, there was sadness. You’d never know it by looking at him, though. Or maybe you would. I suppose it really wasn’t hard to miss the sagging clothes, and I did find it kinda weird that his walk looked more like a crawl. He was hard to notice, though, a background kid. Faint and something blurred, like everything in a photograph that’s not the point. You just glance over it. But not seeing doesn’t stop you from feeling the void.

Graduation sparked a lot of conversation. Well, not started, really, since he was never the point of talking. But he was always casually mentioned, and then conversation wouldn’t stop. No one could agree on the events of his life. He always ordered the same thing, sat behind everyone in the cafeteria near the wall with the founder’s portrait. It was probably chicken. And what a weird combination. Who drinks chocolate milk with that? Middle schoolers do eat some strange stuff. It’s ‘cause he’s a guy. It can’t be. He had no one to show off for. Must’ve gotten it from his mom…

His family showed up for the ceremony, but I heard they left after hearing his thank-you play over the loudspeaker. My best friend’s parents exclaimed to me how lucky they were to find such a good spot.

It’s funny. The administration meant to honor his life, but there was little they could say besides the story we all knew. We instinctively looked between Jessica and Brian where we all knew a seat was missing. I felt a little sick with memory. Sammy wasn’t here tonight because he was in jail. Sure, he was naturally a bad kid, but still, no one saw it coming. There really wasn’t any point in bringing a gun to school and shooting someone no one noticed in the head. Sammy told us that he couldn’t take the goddamn moping. The kid never asked for pity, though. Sadness was just the way it was.