We had just finished a discussion about the deaths of Tybalt and Mercutio, the bell had rung, and Ms. Tolentino said that she had an announcement from the principal. Immediately, I thought that someone had died. I don’t know why, but I just knew. As I realized that, I told myself that I should keep thinking that because anytime I guess anything I’m wrong. So if I was “sure” that a student had died, I should keep thinking that, so that way a student hadn’t died. Of course, this had to be the one time that I did “know”, so it was a lose-lose situation: I became part of the cliché of psychic ‘I just knew what would happen’ people; and someone had died. After Ms. Tolentino finished the first sentence of the notice, I started wondering who had died. I had dealt with my fair share of school-related deaths – my principal when I was in 7th grade, my 4th grade teacher when I was in 7th grade, a 6th grader when I was an 8th grader. Nevertheless, I hadn’t really known any of them. I hadn’t seen my 4th grade teacher in ages; my principal died over the summer so I was disconnected from the reality of it; and the only time I had interacted with Finn was when I helped direct the 6th grade play and yelled at him for texting during rehearsal. So as Ms. Tolentino started to read the second sentence, as she approached the name of the deceased student, I started to think that this would be the time that I knew the person who died. I was wrong this time. Ms Tolentino came to the punch line, Oscar Miles, and I had no idea who the heck he was. So it wasn’t supposed to affect me.

Oh yeah, he committed suicide, said Hannah matter-of-factly.

How do you know that?

My brother’s friend told him. He went to Sellwood Middle School.

Kids were filing out of the classroom now. We were already late getting to 4th period. On my way out, I said to Ms. Tolentino, Wow, way to end class on a happy note.

I know, I was debating on when I would tell you guys.

Everyone in the school had heard from their 3rd period teacher, so I assumed that the hallways would be quieter, with people whispering to each other about Oscar. Again, I was wrong. They were talking about him, but they could have been talking about their favorite Starbucks Frappucino, or what they were having for lunch. Of course, I was in Freshman Hall. Oscar was a junior. He probably didn’t know any freshmen. Unless he was in Algebra 3-4, the junior level math class that over-achieving freshmen (like me) are in. Or was he good at math? What was his GPA? What was his rank? Who was he?

The week before, a man who I had gone camping with since I was 6 months old was hit by a train. My mom and sister started crying, my dad got surly and went to bed, and I went online and found out everything. It was 10:52 at night, and he was crossing train tracks where there wasn’t a crossing. His truck got caught. The train came, and he was killed on site. The article didn’t say why he didn’t get out of his car. But at least it was something. I knew, I grieved, I moved on.

I wanted to go home and get on my computer and Google Oscar – find the article that said that he died, how he died, who he was. I wanted to figure out what exactly the world lost that day. Maybe that was the hardest part about someone dying. A human’s life is this entire sphere of love, and hate, and friendship, and a future of could’ves, and a past of would’ves, and all of it simply disappears. How does that happen? Someone is here with us, and then when they die their mind simply goes out like a candle? One minute he is here, the next minute he’s not? Maybe “Oscar Miles” is still here, because his body is still in the world, but his brain is gone. Everything that everyone loved or hated or respected about him is gone. Where did it go? Is he just asleep? If thoughts are just neurons firing within our skill, does that mean that he is gone? Because the neurons aren’t firing anymore, and his limbs aren’t moving anymore, and everything tells me that he will never exist anymore, but I still can’t picture it. Is he asleep? Do our minds go off the way that they go off when we are sleeping, and is he forever trapped inside of his sweetest dreams and darkest nightmares? I reached the top of the staircase and went into my math room.

My math teacher is someone who likes to talk about life issues. 60% of his lectures are mathematics, the other 40% consist of whatever he finds significant on a certain day. We’ve discussed Shakespeare, rocket science, four year colleges, football, depression, suicide, and I expected that he would ditch his lesson plan for the day to talk about Oscar. But he didn’t. No one mentioned it. Instead, I got my test back – 101%. We discussed inverse functions. He taught us about logarithms, and I was a smarty pants and answered all the questions fastest. Oscar’s match had been blown out, but obviously this room didn’t feel any colder or darker without him here. At lunch, me and my friend walked to the coffee shop about half a mile away from the school and I got a latte. Between the 16 ounce beverage and my yogurt, my stomach was full enough that I didn’t eat my soup. I considered how many calories I had saved.

During P.E., I ran a mile in 10 minutes and 53 seconds. At the beginning of the year, I ran a mile for the first time, and got a time of 12:29. And yet, after improving so much, I was still much less than mediocre. The official assignment today was to do a 12 minute run around the quarter mile track. My P.E. teacher told us that we should get at the very least four laps in that time. The tone of her voice told us clearly that four laps was a wimp’s distance in 12 minutes, and that only the weakest of us would only achieve 4 laps. So did that mean that I was a horrible person? That I wasn’t fit? That even though I had improved my running by almost 20% in the past several months, I still sucked? I still failed? After I murdered myself by running a mile that fast, I stood in front of the mirror in the locker room. My hair looked like I had just woken up, and my face looked like someone had smeared it with pink food coloring. My heart rate was at 200 beats per minute, and Oscar came back to me. Did his heart speed up before it stopped? What did he do to himself? What happened to him that made dying the only escape from the pain? For me, it was a combination of things. That one summer when I talked myself down from suicide every night, it felt like everything and everyone had abandoned me. It felt like I had lost the ability to feel joy, and that my life was already over, and that I was just a burden on people by existing because for all intents and purposes I was already dead. Everything that made me Violet was already dead, and I could never go back and I could never feel happiness again and no one loved me and everyone had left. And maybe if I took my life, people would notice. Maybe people would see that I existed, maybe people would understand who I was. But Oscar took his life, and I don’t know what he felt. I talked myself down every night. I went through the therapy, and the pain, and I got my life back. But Oscar will never get his back again. He’ll never suffer through another corrupted day of P.E. He’ll never get to tell us why he did it; never let us understand what he was thinking. He will never feel his heart pound 200 beats per minute, and he’ll never let me know him. Would I want to know him? Did I see him every day in the hall and classify him as a thug? What did his face look like? Was it beautiful? Would he and I have been in a class together next year, and gotten together, and had children? He will never learn that it’s possible to talk yourself down, like I did, he will never learn that there is an end to the tunnel and that even when you get into a pit there is always, always, always a way to get out of it. He never climbed out.

I was late for Spanish because of P.E., but my Spanish teacher was still out in the hallway, holding open the door and staring into space. I remembered that she had taught at Sellwood before coming to my high school. I wondered if she had had him as a student. The cute boy who sat next to me in Spanish was also gone. Then I remembered – he was a junior, and he also went to Sellwood Middle School. Was he in the grief room? Did he know Oscar? In class, we finished watching a movie about a girl named Martha and her 15th birthday party. It was one of those rare movies that you watch in class that was actually good. Once Spanish was over, I walked to drama class with my friend. When the student teacher told us that we’d be playing a warm-up game, I was exasperated. We were creating our own original myths, and were performing them in a week, and she still hadn’t given us any rehearsal time with our groups – now she was going to waste our time further with a “warm-up game”. But when we got into a circle, she had us all sit down. She asked if anyone wanted to say anything. No one said anything, and we were all a little confused. I just want to know how you guys are doing, she said.

Oh, you mean about Oscar! Neil was probably my least favorite person in the class. He needed to take a shower and change into a different pair of pants. Yeah, the student teacher said. I wanted to check in with you guys, if anyone had anything to say about the subject. I know it’s hard today, and I’m not sure if you’ve been able to talk about it in any of your other classes.

It was probably one of the best things she ever did. I have a thing against all forms of student teachers, and I had been far from her biggest fan before this discussion, but I thought that she handled the situation very well. After Spring Break she would be gone, and I considered having flowers delivered to her. She really wasn’t that horrible a person, or that horrible a teacher – it’s just that she was a student teacher, so I had to hate her. But now that I looked closer, I could see that she had gone through a lot in her life. She hated being a student teacher as much as I hated her being a student teacher. She didn’t deserve the hoops I was making her jump through. If she had been the one who committed suicide last night, she would have remembered me as Violet, the self-righteous snob who made 7th period hell.

Of course, I was probably the only person who had this epiphany during the discussion. We were going around, raising hands and talking about Oscar and death in general, but people were talking on the side of the conversation. Neil would interrupt every other person talking with an unwanted, selfish comment. The student teacher finally said, Neil, I appreciate what you’re saying, but it would be nice if you could raise your hand like everyone else and respect the people talking.

Well, he said, maybe I’m grieving.

He used Oscar’s death as an excuse for insulting the student teacher’s intelligence. I wanted to walk over to him and punch him. Him and his greasy and hair and his pompous comments and utterly inexcusable insubordination. Neil didn’t know Oscar. Neil didn’t understand.

But… neither did I. I had never even heard Oscar’s name before this morning. If Oscar hadn’t died, I probably would never have interacted with him or cared about him at all. He would have graduated in a year, and I would have never seen him again. Who was I to insult Neil and his “grieving”, when I was no better than him? And the student teacher was still annoying – we didn’t get around to any group work in the entire period.

After school, I got off at my bus stop with my friend. I really miss the store that used to be down the block from my house, I said. I could use some ice cream right now.

Yeah, me too, she agreed. As we walked down the block to my, a 20-ish year old man came walking our direction with the smallest, most adorable white Pomeranian dog that I had ever seen. My friend and I pet the dog for a few minutes. The man mentioned that we had probably seen the dog before at the store that used to be down the street. Then I recognized the man. Oh! You’re the guy that used to work behind the counter!

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, I realized. Do you have a job now?

He looked down to the Pomeranian. I’m dog sitting.

Oh man… and we’re in the middle of a recession.

Yeah.

The dog jumped up to my elbow and shed a little white fur on my black shirt. Well, have a good day, I said. Me and my friend continued down the block. Doesn’t this remind you of Finn? I asked.

I know, that’s what I was thinking. I didn’t know him before he died, cause he was a 6th grader, but it was still a little bit of déjà vu all day. Pause. It sort of messes you up when a student dies.

The only thing I remember about Finn, I said, is yelling at him during a rehearsal for the 6th grade play.

My friend laughed. Yeah, he never paid attention to the directors.

A jogger ran past us. A bicyclist rode down the street.

It’s funny. You see all these people on the street, and no one knows that someone died.

While we waited on my front lawn for my friend’s mom to pick her up, two older ladies came walking down the street with their dogs. They stopped to look at my neighbor’s garden, so I went over and asked if I could pet their dogs. I made small talk with them, about Portland and the flowers and the houses in the neighborhood. When they left, I went back over to my lawn where my friend was. You’re sure in a dog mood today, she noticed.

It’s one of those days, I told her. When her mom pulled up, I became jealous of her. She has her own puppy at home, and I really wanted something live and furry and cute and warm that I could sit down and love at the moment. I didn’t want to go into my house, and be all by myself.

I went onto Facebook, updated my status, commented on a few pictures. I thought of a song that was really sad/poignant, and put it on the speakers. I decided to buy some new songs on iTunes, then added them to a playlist. I mindlessly went through my library of music and added a few more songs to it. I named the playlist ‘Oscar’. I listened to the songs, listened to the lyrics, listened to the melody and chord progressions, and wondered what song they would play at his funeral. I wondered what music he liked. Rap? Pop? Was he a Beatles fan? Usher? Why do I keep asking myself these questions? I didn’t know him. I would never know him. His family, and friends, and acquaintances, and teachers – they are grieving. They are actually grieving. They knew him. They actually knew the color and texture and warmth of the candle that went out. But he committed suicide. He wanted to go. Maybe we’re grieving for nothing. Maybe he is happier now. Maybe when people who suffer from major depression go to heaven, the shadow is lifted from their mind. Skip the therapy and pills – maybe Jesus just takes it all out.

But isn’t heaven blocked for those who take their own lives? I don’t know. I’m Jewish. We don’t believe in heaven. I don’t even know what we believe in. I don’t even know what I believe in. I look up his picture in my sister’s old yearbook. It’s not how I pictured him. He is really cute. His shirt is green, the background color is blue. He isn’t smiling. Maybe he was already in the dumps when this picture was taken on his first day of sophomore year. Or maybe he just had a stomach ache, and none of it had started yet. He had no idea that 18 months later he would be dead.

Dead.

Oscar is dead.

No longer living.

No longer here.

That’s the only thing I know about him.

Now I’m getting the feeling that next time, when the teacher says that she has a notice from the principal, it will be someone that I know. I’ll be the one grieving for a reason, not the mindless heartache that I’m feeling right now. What if my mom died? What if Emily died? What if Tom died? What if one of their candles, the candles that hold my life together, went out in a gust of wind? Dead.

Oscar is dead.

No longer living.

No longer here.

That’s the only thing I know about him.