"I'm thinking about killing myself"

Those were the words of my best friend, and crush, Lucas Madaria. He'd said that one summer with the most mundane expression on his face. I wondered to myself, just how true was this? For as long as I had known him, he was a liar. Most of everything he uttered out of his mouth was usually a lie. That was one thing I could count on.

Even so, I didn't take seriously. I asked him about it, of course, but he immediately back peddled with his usual jokes in hand. The once a day "Nah, just messin' with ya", that had become his catchphrase.

And sometimes I think, had I been a little more attentive to his problems and words of solace, could I have saved him? If I hadn't pushed him away the day he confessed his undying affection for me with a forceful kiss, would things have turned out differently? Would we have fallen in love, like those Hallmark movies? Or, at the very least, would he be a Junior in high school with me, instead of a rotting corpse under the soil of the Earth?