Here’s a story for you.

There was a boy named Austin. We had known each other ever since I could remember. We attended the same school for more than ten years, though he was in the grade above me. He was the older brother of one of my close friends, and he was never very kind to me, he bullied me daily, would spill his food on me, put gum in my hair etc., I would go home crying most days. I tried to avoid him at all costs when I visited their home or school, but our tiny school population (less than 100 people) made it nearly impossible.

As the years went by, he slowly stopped bothering me, but I still held an intense grudge against him. When 8th grade rolled around for me, he had left to attend the local public high school. But the following year, of course, my family could no longer afford our private schooling and had to transfer me to the same public high school. At least I knew it would be far easier to avoid him now with over 3,000 other students. He never bothered me again, and I only saw him in passing certain classes. We never even spoke another word to each other. Yet, when people would mention him, I’d talk shit the first chance I got about incidents that occurred when we were children (Yes, I was an asshole). Rinse and repeat until 11th grade, when I admittedly noticed Austin had disappeared. I hated what I noticed but I did. After school, I found a mutual-ish friend and asked where he was. I wasn’t necessarily concerned but curious.

But what I heard next made my stomach drop.. and in the next few seconds, I learned that Austin was a target of one of the school’s drug dealers; he apparently owed him a large sum of money, and Austin never paid up. He was choked out in the boy's locker room. The guy sincerely was trying to murder him. He slammed Austin’s head against the lockers until his nose broke and bled while holding him in a tight choke hold. He was a tiny guy, so I can’t even imagine how he was able to fight back... eventually, a coach heard the commotion and tackled the dealer, while another coach ran in and grabbed Austin and fleed him from the scene calling an ambulance. Austin never fully recovered from the attack. He had permanent brain damage and memory loss; I was told he didn’t recognize his friends, home, or even his family (Our mothers were friends, so this was not just speculation from other students). When my mom told us we should visit, I painstakingly agreed, my heart swelling with shame for never giving him another chance when I was told he had changed. But I didn’t listen. When we entered their home, it was the same one I had visited a few hundred times as a kid, but it was like all of the life had been sucked out of place it quite literally felt grey. Medical equipment speckled the living room and down the hall to his bedroom. Where I saw him, if I could even say that anymore, he looked like a shell of his old self, the usually cocky boy entirely bleak and slightly disfigured, wirh healing wounds on his face. His mother hoped reconnecting him with old friends would help him regain some kind of memory, but it never worked. Austin was gone, Is gone, and always will be gone. While I sit here perfectly content in my own life, I can’t stop thinking about him and the guilt I’ve carried up until now, six years later.