Achievment

They were so confident, so full of themselves. They managed to convince themselves it was a bluff. That he wouldn’t really do it. They were wrong.1

It was just like every other day, that’s what made it so hard. Everyone got up, showered, and ran out the door, praying they wouldn’t be late for first period. Everyone except him. Jack had been awake for hours, thinking, crying, contemplating. He was the only one who knew that today was to be different. As he slowly made his way to the school that most kids liked to call Prison High, he took in his surroundings.2

Jack watched some neighborhood kids climb that old dogwood on 79th; it had been the first tree he had ever climbed. He remembered scraping his knee on the way down and being so proud, so excited that he’d done it. Jack looked down at the scar on his left knee and suddenly felt the same sense of pride he had on that warm day in June so many years ago. The feeling vanished so quickly he wondered if it had ever really existed at all.3

He took a deep breath and walked on. Passed the grocer he worked at the summer after ninth grade, passed the park he had his first kiss in, passed the river where he learned to swim. As the memories rushed through his head he realized they were all dead. He would never again feel the sting of the jelly fish from that river or the warm breeze on the summer sidewalks.4

Jack reached the entrance to Prison High sooner than he expected, pausing a moment to catch his breath. Slowly he walked up the stairs, remembering his first fight, right over there, next to little Billy. The captain of the football team had been picking on Billy because of his glasses so Jack stepped in. It ended with Joe Quarterback in the emergency room and Jack in detention for three weeks, but no one ever picked on Billy again. He smiled and walked through the doors.5

It was the middle of first period so there was no one in the hallways. As Jack walked past the wings he thought about the people in each of them. He was friends with just about everyone, teachers and students alike.6

Jack looked up at the rafters he had clung to when the principal caught him stealing the toupee from atop his head and laughed at the memory. Slowly, very slowly, Jack took the rope out from under his jacket and strung it up in the very same rafter. As he climbed onto a chair directly below his homemade noose, he let the rope fall around his head like jewelry and took out a razorblade. The tears began to flow, but not from his eyes, rather from his wrists, then, eventually, his neck. It was more than he could bear. Jack kicked out the chair from beneath him just as the bell rang.7

Jack’s friends and enemies swam through the river of his blood, each adding his own tear to it. The last coherent thing Jack saw was Joe Quarterback and little Billy crying together and he smiled.8