After the flowers are gone

I sit and stare at the school. I’m not going anywhere, and you won’t make me. I know they don’t want me here but I don’t care what they want anymore. I want nothing more than to stay here and stare. This is the last time I’ll wait by the school gates.

He wasn’t perfect, it’s not like he even went to school most days. He wasn’t well behaved. He didn’t come home for days on end. He did drugs, well smoked weed, got drunk and I don’t want to know what else.

It didn’t make him a bad person. It doesn’t mean I loved him any less. It doesn’t make the hurt go away. Why did he do it? I keep going over it in my mind, the way it happened. Some people blame me, the mother. Others blame the father for not being there. Other’s still blame the school for making him feel unwanted. Me? I blame you. I blame you for not caring.




The school were always getting on Chris’s back. They didn’t like the way he dressed, they didn’t like his long hair, they didn’t like him smoking. They didn’t like a lot of things about Chris, but what they didn’t like most was the fact he didn’t care if they didn’t like it. In fact it’s fair to say a lot of people didn’t like Chris. He didn’t have many friends, he could never get a job, I don’t think he ever had a girlfriend either. I guess the only reason he went back there was he had no where else to go…

The school were always ringing me, I used to joke they must have my number on speed dial. They had all these ideas of how to get him to join in more. They let him drop some of his classes to tempt him to come into the others. They even got him a mentor, a “friend”, to help make sure he went to his classes. I lost count of the number of parent-teacher meetings I went to. I remember the time I got called in because Chris had put a little remote control car into a dissected frog in biology. Most of the time it was just that he was skipping classes or had been caught smoking.

I, I can’t believe he’s gone.

When you got to know him, he was so full of life. But it’s not like anyone bothered to get to know him, other than me.

The presentation for assembly had been another one of the school’s ideas to get him more involved. As he was in Year Twelve they asked him to give an assembly to years seven, eight and nine on school life. The best ways of coping with work, fitting in things like that. Sort of ironic asking him to do it really. He had seemed really excited about it. I sat down with him the night before and we went over it. He had wanted it to be really good. He said he wanted them to remember it. Looking back I doubt they will ever forget. We wrote it out, like a speech. Then after we’d perfected it, we transferred it to notes on little cards. I still remember exactly how it went.

“Hi my name is Chris, I’m in Year Twelve. The school have asked me to talk to you about fitting in and coping at school because I used to find that hard. I’m going to start with fitting in because that’s something everyone worries about. I’m going to tell you now it doesn’t matter. If you try to be someone you’re not just to fit in, you never truly will. So how about you all start being yourselves. Forget about the make up, forget about the show. Be you. Once you start being your self you’ll find it a lot easier to cope at school. What if I am myself and I still don’t fit in? I know you’re all thinking that. If you don’t fit in straight away, don’t worry, look around, you’ll find someone who likes you for who you really are. When you have someone who likes you for who you are you’ll never want someone who likes you for who you’re not again.
School’s not easy and coping with the amount of work you get can sometimes seem damn near impossible. Just sit down and start, start with the bits you can do and you never know, when you get to the bits you can’t, you may just find you can. You will never get in trouble if you’ve tried. Once you get started on it, it’s a lot easier. If you sit there and think I have maths homework and an English essay all due in tomorrow, I’ll never get it done, then it’s true, you won’t. If you sit down and do it, you will. School’s not as hard as they would have you believe, all you have to do is try.”

I guess then he realised the cold, harsh reality; they were only words.

He knew what he was meant to say. He had his little cards. He got up on stage in front of all of those children. He got up and said, “Fuck it. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’ll never fit in, you will never be able to cope, you may as well give up now”. He turned round and walked off stage. The swing doors slammed behind him. The scream of a gun echoed through the hollow walls filling the stunned hall.

I wish I could say it was another joke. Like the frog. That it was a blank. But it wasn’t. As he crumpled to the ground the school fell apart. Someone called an ambulance, but he had died the moment you stopped caring. There was nothing they could do. All he had ever wanted was for people to actually care. For them to see the person, not the picture. For them to care when he did well, care when he didn’t feel well, care when he didn’t go to lessons. No one did. They all went along with their little lives, mocking him every now and then. Who wants to live in a world full of such people?




I sit and stare at the school. I’m not going anywhere, and you won’t make me. I know they don’t want me here but I don’t care what they want anymore. I want nothing more than to stay here and stare at the place he breathed his last breath. I was going to put a pipe from the exhaust in through my car window but I figured it would be impossible. It was a stupid idea anyway. Then it came to me. I got a bottle of gas from the camping store. I didn’t know how much it would take, so I got a big bottle. It’s only a matter of time now. You see, I don’t know what to do, now that the flowers are dead and gone.





i can't upload deviantions at skwl so i had to put it in a journal.