魚

a kid in my graduating class passed away on the day i gave a speech about being unafraid to live. nobody knew he had died that day, but he went quietly under the fluorescent hospital lights forty minutes from my school in a hospital in boston. i didn't know him that well, but i sat in my room over the weekend that we found out and i wondered who he was, all the times i'd seen him in the cafeteria with his eyes turned down and his lip busted, his loud voice, and how kids avoided him.

and then a couple months later, i searched his name up. he was one of those proactive, smart kids who did every internship under the sun and was already kind of guaranteed a spot in an ivy league. they said that he was smart in his obituary, but i wasn't sure if they knew exactly how smart. i knew how smart he was---incredibly---and the kids in his french class who complained about him ruining the curve knew, the kids in his college math classes knew, the other kids in his cancer research internship knew, and the kids on the soccer team knew. his linkedin profile was still active, blinking blue-white on my screen, his headshot staring back at me. i think i'd forgotten what he looked like. and i thought it was terrifying how his online body was still active, still blinking, connections booming, while he was six feet under at a cemetery in cambridge or newton. it made me so angry for an unknown reason.