Among the Living

Chapter Five

It’s all your fault that he’s dead," I hear my mother yell. "You never paid attention to him. You never cared about his feelings. Remember the day when Alex said that Colton told him to cut himself? You never believed him. I don't understand why you always favored Colton over Alex. It was always like Colton was more important to you than anything even more important than me. But I never said anything I always put up with it."

"Regina you know that's not true."

"Yes it is and you lost your job because of it. You always called in "sick" just to take him to games or whatever the f**k you guys went out and did. Whenever Alex got out his guitar and started playing you and Colton would always leave the room. I was the only one in this household that ever heard him play and he was really good. But you wouldn't know that because you never paid attention. Now it's too late to hear him. You know why because he is dead. You should have paid more attention to him when he was alive."

"But Regina I took him to that baseball game."

"One baseball game. Did he even want to go? Or did you just say Alex you're going to this baseball game with me because Colton can't go. Did you even know that Alex didn't even like baseball? He only went so you wouldn't go by yourself."

Not a sound came from my dad. He didn't even try to protest against what my mother was saying.

"George, I don't want to do this anymore. We never fought like this when Alex was alive so why should it be any different."

"If that's the way you feel then fine I'm not going to stand for this any longer. I'm leaving."

"where the f**k are you going?" My father just ignores her.

"Whatever. Answer me this, why did you never care about Alex?"

My father sighs. "It's not that I didn't care about him. I just favored Colton because we were into the same things. We both like sports and rock music. Alex liked Screamo, playing guitar, and being bullied. Colton and I don't like any of those things."

"If you noticed Alex didn't like being bullied he never asked for it. It was your favorite son who bullied him the other kids went along with it. They use to be like best friends until they got into high school then they both went their separate ways. Colton started bullying others. Alex was always by himself he only had one friend. No one else wanted to be his friend. Remember the first girl that he brought home? He liked her a lot and it turned out she used Alex to get Colton. At school Colton tried to make all of the "weird" kids' lives miserable. Including Alex's. Remember Alex's only friend James Dawson? A few weeks before Alex died; James committed suicide he jumped off the Borne Bridge into the Cape Cod Canal. His body was never found. You know why he did that? It was because of Colton"

"But how did you know that he committed suicide? He could have just run away and who was James Dawson I've never heard of him?"

"James Dawson was the Dawson's only son. They lived next door then after Alex died they moved to New York. James and Alex went to Borne high school together."

"Oh well, how do you know he committed suicide and how do you know that Colton made him do it?"

"A few days later I was talking to Samantha Dawson. She said she found a good-bye note or suicide note whatever the kids call them these days. It was on his desk saying that no one would miss him and he was doing this because kids were tormenting him at the school."

"How do you know Colton did it?"

"Because George. James died two weeks before Alex. People were tormenting him. Colton was the leader of the bullies. They tormented Alex. And look how Alex ended up. Dead. Put two and two together George. A few days ago the principal called me at work saying that a teacher spotted Colton giving a boy a hard time. He called Colton in the office and Colton denied everything he called the boy in the office and the boy said that Colton tossed a razor blade with a little bit of dried blood on it and told the boy to go cut himself. Remember that was the same story Alex had told us. I think the razor blade was Alex's."

I decided that I didn't want to hear the rest of the argument. I go into the garage and find a bunch of boxes piled up on top of one another labeled, Alex's clothes, Alex's desk supplies, Alex's posters, etc. There was one box put to the side. It was labeled, throw away. I decided to open it.