Archery lessons.

No, not bows and arrows. I had a friend named Alex Archer, and he taught me a lot about stuff.

Alex turned 17 on March 24th, 2010. This was 10 days after I turned 15. He was my best friend.

On his birthday of that year, I went to his house to surprise him. I had moved, so he wasn't expecting me to come all the way from another town. His sister was cooking his birthday dinner in the kitchen downstairs, and she said Alex was in his room. I went to the second floor, to his room, and he wasn't there. The bathroom door was kind of open, so I knocked, waited, and pushed it open the rest of the way.

My very best friend, the scrawny track star with the emo-kid haircut whose parents abused him before he was emancipated, hung from the light fixture in the bathroom with a rope around his neck. His arms were cut and bleeding, razor blades scattered over the floor. His legs were cut through his jeans. His black shirt, that was a little too big for him, was smeared with bloody handprints.

Thank god his eyes were closed.

It was unreal, like I was reading it in a book rather than looking at this... mess...

I stood in the doorway for a long time, not moving, just shaking... not crying... Until Alex's sister, Elizabeth, came upstairs to see what was wrong. She closed the bathroom door, and we sat outside Alex's bathroom and cried for a long time.

Even writing about it, though I'm sure it will help me in the long run, is painful to me now. My hands are shaking as I type this.

I'm going to call Ian...

Love,
Alex