When you hear about someone from your school dying, you go through a cycle. First, you DM everyone you know, you find out their name, find a pic of their face, realize that you have never seen this person in your life, and then you forget it happened. That process works for ninety-nine percent of the school whenever someone dies. The other one percent is made up of those who actually knew the guy, and that’s when their passive death-cycle breaks for them. You’re reading this because that cycle broke for me.

I’d never lost anyone before I lost Sunny.

The night I heard about it, my first thought was that it had to be a car wreck. The roads were icy. It made sense. And honestly, compared to what really happened, I was content with it being a car accident. Car accidents have millions less unanswered questions.

All they said was that it was ruled a homicide, Adrian texted.

My gut felt like it had just been suckerpunched. Somebody killed Ash? Somebody had the audacity to kill Ashton fucking Sunny? The brightest, funniest, kindest human I’d ever met? Then the thought circled around on itself. Ash is dead. Ash has been murdered. What was the reason? Was it a mugging? It had to be. I thought about him getting shot, or stabbed, or beaten to death. I imagined his face, already covered in smile lines from how happy he always was, contorted into a look of mortal terror. My stomach twisted into a knot so tight I was choking from the pressure.

What did I do? I sat hunched over the toilet bowl throwing up for the next twenty minutes. Then, I went to bed. My brain had convinced me that I was already dreaming. Death just doesn’t make sense. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with one crucial piece suddenly going missing. My life was truly over. Ashton Sunny was my best friend, and I hadn’t realized until just that moment that he was my everything.

I wanted him back. I needed him back.