"Mess"

I know what he said was something that would get most people to worry, if he was serious. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was just joking around, as people do. As I, and others around him, as well as my other friends, have been known to do.

Joke about things that aren't funny.

But there was just an edge to it that seemed... real. Too genuine. Too much a real desire to do this.

You don't joke about that. You just don't.

It all started with a conversation about The Things They Carried, the book I was reading. The book was about the Vietnam War, but moreso, a fictional group of soldiers who served in it, told from the perspective of a writer who holds the same name as the actual author of the book. But that wasn't exactly relevant.

I don't remember all the dialogue, but I know the conversation digressed.

My friend, he said he'd serve in a war if he believed in the cause. He said he'd kill someone. The idea of killing people, lately, to me, had caused me to ponder the great distress that those who do kill, those who kill and don't want to kill--whether by war, or through accidents, or even those who think they're in the right by the act of euthanasia, or even those who commit suicide...

I continued asking him about things.

Eventually, he was outright saying it.

That he wants to kill someone. Keep in mind, the tone of conversation had not yet gotten very serious. Of course it hadn't. We were just talking.

I do remember this, however. Essentially, this is what was said:

Me: "Would you kill a child?"

Him: "Yeah."

Me: "An infant?"

Him: "Yeah."

Me: "A friend?"

Him: "Yeah."

Affirmative answers, whether they were "yeah's" or "yes's" or anything of the sort. For once, my friend who once, very often, casually would make a fake gun with his fingers and point it to his head and say "I'm done" after me or someone else being obnoxious, actually scared me. We were always joking. Him, and I, and others. Joking about lots of weird things, lots of sadistic things, gruesome things that, when intergrated with real life, were just plain sad and tragic and disgusting.

He said he just wanted to have the experience of killing someone before he died. Whether it be by an "accident" or war.

"I've got to do one of those murder-suicide things someday."

He says he lives off of anime and video games. That atheism and anime made him stop being depressed and suicidal.

"Would you kill a friend?"

"Yes."

I can never tell if he's being serious or not.

When I told the counselor, I never intended for her to tell the principal. The principal and the counselor didn't want to get the other friend I'd told involved.

The principal told me my friend who wanted to someday experience the feeling of killing someone was at home sick. He told me that he called my friend's mom.

After meeting with both of them, I went straight to the nurse's office. She called my mom. My mom said I could go home. I went back to English, showed my pass to the teacher, spoke quickly to another friend, gathered my things, and walked straight home.

I thought I was going to cry. But I didn't cry. I just walked straight from school, down two streets, through my front door, up the stairs, and into my bedroom. I changed into pajamas, and crawled into bed. I deliberated two hours before eventually falling asleep.

My other friend, the only other person who really knew, he texted me. He told me the school officer had spoken to him.

No. The principal and the counselor hadn't wanted this friend to get involved.

Stupidly, I continued the conversation. Asked him how he knew. The officer had called him into his office.

The next day, rumors were spread, as I watched House and did Geometry at home. I was "sick", after all. I had been coughing, and sniffling and sneezing, and my throat had been at best, scratchy, for the past three weeks.

I thought he was suspended, because my other friend sent me that text. Then he revealed that was a rumor.

Rumors.

Funny how "rumor" is one letter away from "tumor". No matter how little had spread, these rumor-tumors could grow into full-blown cancer, all over the student body... and, after all, my potentially homicidal friend and I had been sick, for at least a day and a half (two days for him).

So then, it turns out he wasn't suspended. But the rumors had already started...

Yesterday, I pondered all about how this would ruin our friendship, at the very LEAST. How he wouldn't trust me with anything ever again if he ever figured out who "reported" him. How this decision would either be a completely unnecessary mess that destroys friendships and trust and drives tragedy, or a mess that does the same, but saves a life.

But he'd joked more about killing himself than killing someone else. And he told me how he'd been genuinely depressed and suicidal before. He was still depressed, I'd say. Perhaps. I wasn't sure.

He was so offended when the speaker came to school, and told her story of experience with mental illness, with depression, and suicide... how she'd said one could not handle depression on their own. He was so offended because he believed he'd treated his own depression.

Anime and video games were his cure. It wasn't drugs, or partying, or running away, or avoiding everything in the world, but it was certainly not a long-term treatment. I have nothing against them, but I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that a serious mental illness could be treated on one's own. That any serious issue could be dealt with solely on one's own, really.

Now you wouldn't think he was depressed, really, if you met him. If you were one of his friends. You might think he had a sick sense of humor, is all. Or you would laugh and joke along with him, as I have for a while now.

And now I've screwed it all up. Unintentionally, things have started to unravel, and both of us have been absent.

No one knows that I was the one who talked. Neither the principal nor I know how those words got out enough to even start rumors.

I'm going back tomorrow. I'm going back tomorrow, and I'm going to talk to the principal and the counselor again. The principal's gonna call his parents again.

I've made a mess. I can only hope it'll do more good than harm.