I was eleven when it happened. ­November 2008.
I was never going to write about it. It was too hard. I knew I should get it out of my system, but I never found the courage. I was alone. I never talked to anyone about it. I couldn't.

As months and days passed by, everyone recovered. Except me. I laughed. I joked. I continued my well-known sarcastic rants. But there was a soft interior, my body cavity, which had a hole: a gaping mess in my heart. I never showed anything. I kept a straight face, giggling at the gossip. I skipped around campus as though I had forgiven him, as if I had forgiven myself. But I never did; I still don't. But I kept my butterfly exoskeleton cheerful. It would have fooled anyone. And it did: it fooled everyone.

When I walked into school that Monday, all was normal. Crisp, frigid November air sharpened my senses for the day, and I dumped my backpack on the concrete next to the girls' locker room. It was then I learned the news. Then, I noticed the tear-stained cheeks and red puffy eyes, smudged with mascara and eyeliner. Then, I noticed the sobs muffled by hugs emanating from the entire campus.

What was the last thing I said to him?

A comeback.

An insult.

Something totally uncalled for.

Imagine yourself back in middle school. There's one kid, standing alone in the quad. Kids begin to pour out of their classrooms and circle him. Teachers join the circle. You join as well, curious to see what everyone is doing. Everyone is teasing him, except what comes out of their mouths are weights, not words. The silent weights are piled on top of his shoulders, one after another. A few of his friends frantically pull them off, but the subtracted amount is not enough. His knees buckle underneath the heaviness. You're frustrated with him, and even you add another weight. You watch as he takes a gun and points it to his head. He pulls the trigger. The weights vanish as his lifeless form crumples to the ground. Everyone is crying. You don't understand why they are crying, since they were the ones who inflicted pain on him. That circle, that ganging-up, put hundreds of tons on him. And now he's gone.

And then you realize you contributed to it. Yours may very well have been the straw that broke his back.

Sometimes, we make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes don't get second chances. You don't know what you have until it's gone. Erase those weights, and let each and every person stand up tall and proud. We all must be wary of what we say.

Every word.

Every sentence.

Bitter words filled with poison.

My classmate is dead.

Because of my sentence.

And I was only eleven.