~Blake~
Ben Sanders was dead.
It was no accident that had taken him from the world. No car accident, not some strange virus, and not anything that had been done to him. No, Ben had done this to himself.
Word travels fast in a small town, and though the teachers and administrators tried to soften their words for the students, the truth came out anyway.
Suicide.
It made for an early dismissal that day as Blake’s mind went to Ben, imagining him making his way out into the woods, far out onto some property, far from where anyone would stop him. Ben, all by himself, doing what he’d been driven to do by people who treated him unkindly, who made his life miserable…
There had been a mental reel going in Blake’s head of every time he’d done the wrong thing when it came to Ben Sanders. Every harsh word, every fight, every insult, every fist and shove and push…
His head was hurting by the time he got home that day, heavy with guilt and shame for what had happened and for the role he’d played. The headache only got worse when his father intercepted him at the door.
“Why are you home so early?” he asked, staring as Blake moved past him, avoiding his eyes.
“Early dismissal from school,” Blake mumbled, intent on heading straight back to his room and avoiding any more talk. His father was hard to tolerate on good days, but on bad days, he was impossible.
The phone rang just as Blake reached his room, and he hesitated for a moment, trying to decide in a split second if he should answer it and risk more conversation with his father. If it was someone who needed to leave a message for his mother, it was important enough to not leave it to Tim, who was as inconsistent in keeping things up around home as he was at work –
“Yeah?”
Tim had gotten to the phone first, negating Blake’s need to make a decision either way. Just as he turned back to his door, ready to get in, turn up his music, and try to forget everything, Tim spoke up again.
“Yeah, Blake’s home,” he said. “School can’t manage to keep the kids occupied, huh? Lazy teachers always calling early dismissal, right?”
Always blaming someone else. So Tim.
But the look that crossed his face next wasn’t.
“What?” he asked, shock in his tone, mirrored in his expression as he glanced back at Blake, who was now frozen in his doorway, watching his father warily. “Really? Patty, are you kidding me?”
Blake’s mother, calling about the school, about Blake, about the horrible news. The administration must have been calling all the parents and letting them know what had happened, explaining why their kids had been dismissed early, and doing everything they could to do some damage control.
As if any of this situation or the damage it had caused could be controlled in any way.
“He looks fine,” Tim said, his eyes darting over Blake quickly, assessing him with a short glance. “But… yeah. Sure.”
And after a few more words and a mumbled “I love you, too,” Tim hung up and swiveled around to look at his son.
“That was your mom,” he said. “She found out at work that… well, that some kid from school…”
Tim was at a loss for words. Small mercy. So was Blake as he struggled to keep his emotions under control, feeling as though he wore the blame for this horrible day and the horrible thing that Ben Sanders had done.
“She wanted to make sure you’re okay,” Tim said.
“I’m fine,” Blake lied, as the images of all the ways he’d tormented Ben over the years flashed through his mind. “I didn’t even know the kid.”
There was some truth in that. He’d never taken any time to actually know anything about Ben, apart from the fact that he was crazy, that people made fun of him, and that life felt a little easier if Ben was there to take the brunt of Blake’s anger.
Tim had no clue.
“You sure?” he asked. “Your mom said he was a junior, just a year behind you.” He took a breath as Blake remained silent. “Probably didn’t run in the same circles, huh? Guy didn’t play football. I didn’t even recognize his name.”
Tim had been working at the same company with Ben’s parents, Travis Collins’s company, before getting fired late in the summer, so he should have recognized the last name.
Blake didn’t offer this up, willing his dad to just drop the topic and give him space to crawl back to his room and hide.
“Wow,” Tim exhaled, scratching his head. “Things like this just… they don’t happen around here, huh?”
The same thought had gone through Blake’s mind earlier. Maybe this meant a change for their town, for their school, for all their lives. A suicide. This was the kind of thing that could rock a community as small as theirs, an event that would reverberate beyond just the families and friends that were connected to the Sanders family. He thought briefly of Jordan. Such a nice guy, a good kid, going home to…
Blake closed his eyes.
All his fault. Or at least, partially his fault. His and every other person who had delighted in tormenting Ben Sanders.
“Your mom said they found him in the woods, out behind his house,” Tim kept on. “Said that he’d taken a gun with him. Blown his brains out.”
These were details that Blake didn’t need. Details that he didn’t want. But there they were now, in his mind, probably forever.
“The mess… what a mess that must have created.”
Blake opened his eyes to see his father… smiling.
What kind of sick jerk was he?
“Dad.”
Blake had barely gotten the word out, laden with reproach, before Tim was struggling to get his face back to a somber expression.
“I’m sorry, kid,” he said, which might very well have been the first time Tim had apologized to Blake for anything. “But wow. What kind of loser does something like that?”
A kid was dead, and all Tim could manage to do was call him names. Was this any surprise to Blake, really? He was a bully. He always had been.
“What a loser,” Tim repeated, and for the first time ever, Blake considered something.
He’d said the very same thing about Ben Sanders himself. Even as Tim’s mouth formed the words, Blake recalled how the same sentiment had come from his own lips, more than once.
Like father, like son. That troubling thought led him to one even more troubling. A vision of himself in another eighteen years, stuck in a trailer as sad and pathetic as this one, no better than the man who he loathed with every bit of himself.
He was no better than his father, who demeaned others to make himself feel better. For the first time in his life, as he heard the news about Ben Sanders, Blake realized a sobering truth.
He was going to turn into a guy just like his father.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. No, the worst of it was that he’d done this, that he was to blame for Ben Sanders and what he’d done.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Tim asked as Blake pushed past him, back out into the afternoon sun, squinting against the brightness and wondering at how nothing outside had changed when on the inside nothing would ever be the same again.
“And we’ll have grief counselors on call all day today. If at any point you need to talk with a grief counselor, you can leave class to do so.”
Blake listened half-heartedly the next day in chemistry as their teacher had read from a sheet of paper. All the teachers must have been debriefed earlier, before school had started, prepared with written statements about what they could say and what they couldn’t say regarding the day before and what had happened. The words had come easier as soon as the news came in earlier, but now, they were tight-lipped and reserved, formal and careful, in full damage control.
Grief counselors.
Blake was hardly listening, doing his best to ignore the words and all the emotions he’d been struggling with since his conversation with his father. If he could just keep turning into himself, he could forget, could stop feeling so guilty, could –
“Are you going?”
He looked over to Leslie Collins, who had whispered the words to him. Her eyes were red and filled with tears even as she looked at him, waiting for him to respond.
“Am I…” He blinked. “Uh… no. I’m good.”
Except not. Not at all. How could any of them be “good,” least of all him who took the blame for Ben’s decision?
Leslie bit her lip, taking a breath, a single tear escaping from her eye. She wasn’t good either.
She and Ben had known one another. They probably hadn’t been best friends or anything, but Blake could remember the cupcakes Leslie had put into Jordan’s hands just a week earlier, her eyes looking over to Ben, who hadn’t even bothered to wave his thanks as she’d done it.
She had her own memories, her own grief to work through.
“Are you going?” he asked, turning her question back on her.
She shook her head, her lip still between her teeth, more tears escaping.
She needed to go. And she wasn’t able to do it herself for some reason. Well, Blake could finally start doing the right thing. Albeit belatedly for Ben’s sake, but maybe he was righting some wrongs by helping Leslie Collins get the help she needed.
He took her hand in his after making the decision and jumping to his feet with determination in his eyes. Leslie followed him, gripping his hand tighter as though he was a lifeline. They were strangers. They hardly knew one another. Blake had that fleeting thought as some of his buddies saw their hands joined and grinned knowingly, some of Blake’s stupid words likely springing up in their minds, about his intentions towards her.
He hated them all in that moment, marveling that at a time like this their thoughts could lead that direction, as if they had no respect or decency either one.
He tugged Leslie’s hand tighter in his, looking away from them, his mind dismissing all the dumb things he’d said about her.
This – what he was doing now – wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about how well he and Leslie did or didn’t know one another. It was about helping her to get the help she needed and…
… well, maybe he’d talk to someone, too.
Because he needed to. That probably meant that he was weak, just like his dad was always saying he was. But Blake didn’t care. Maybe if he told someone how awful he was, how this was all his fault, he could be free of some of the guilt. What was it that people said, that confession was good for the soul? Blake wouldn’t know it personally, having never felt like he needed to confess anything, not knowing who he’d confess it to even if he had, but surely trying to confess this would alleviate some of the heaviness in his heart.
Hopefully.
His courage to do so, though, was all spent by the time he’d gotten Leslie downstairs to the cafeteria, where they’d partitioned off several areas for counselors to talk with students. Leslie squeezed his hand once before letting it go and following one of the women who stood at the entrance. The older woman had a nametag and a gentle smile, and that had been enough for Leslie, who began crying even as she was led away.
Maybe he should stay here and wait for her. It wasn’t like they were getting any work done in chemistry anyway, and there was no way they’d be getting any work done in any of their other subjects. The administrators should probably have called off school for another day, because no one could –
“You need to talk to someone?”
Blake looked up from where he’d been studying his sneakers, his expression apprehensive as one of the other counselors stepped out from the crowd. This one was a man, which set him oddly apart from all the women gathered there, as did his nametag. Pastor John.
A pastor.
Blake considered mumbling some unintelligible statement about how he was fine, that he didn’t need to talk to a counselor or a pastor either one, but before he could, one of the other ladies standing there had turned to the pastor.
“Yes, if you’ll take him to the last cubicle on the right,” she said, gesturing Blake towards Pastor John before he could agree or refuse either one.
Pastor John nodded and looked to Blake expectantly.
He’d have to go now, wouldn’t he? Even as he sighed inwardly, his mind went back to what he’d originally thought, about how maybe, just maybe, confession would be good for the soul.
Confession. A pastor.
What a day.
He was still thinking it as John led him into the makeshift room, gesturing to one of the chairs sitting there and lowering himself down into the one opposite after Blake had taken a seat.
“I’m John,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Blake,” Blake answered, glancing at the nametag again. “Your nametag says Pastor John.”
John glanced down and smiled briefly. “That it does,” he said. “Someone else filled it out for me before I could even specify that just John would be good enough.”
“Just John,” Blake repeated.
John smiled again. “That’s right.” He watched Blake for a moment. “Did you know Ben?”
What a loaded question. There was no quick or easy answer to that one, but Blake attempted it.
“Kind of.”
Ineloquent, at best, and that response didn’t begin to cover the past.
John nodded thoughtfully. “Kind of know everyone around here, though, I’d imagine. Small town. Everyone knows everyone.”
He had that right.
“Yeah,” Blake said.
“You came down here with Leslie Collins,” John said, nodding over to another area of the cafeteria, where Blake could assume that Leslie was talking with another counselor.
“She sits next to me in chemistry,” he said. “She seemed really upset, so I brought her down here to talk to someone.”
“Good man for doing that for her,” John said. “Unexpected deaths like this one tend to upset a lot of people, no matter how well they did or didn’t know the person who died.”
Blake nodded absently then chanced a glance up at the older man. “Did you know him?”
John smiled sadly. “Not as well as I would have liked to,” he said softly. “His family goes to my church. Very involved members actually. But Ben was different.”
Understatement.
“Yeah,” Blake murmured, looking back down at his hands, trying to imagine Ben in any church with good and kind people. “I… I find it hard to believe that he ever went to church.”
Why had he said that? Was it because Ben was crazy and mean both? And what room did Blake have for saying anything? It’s not like he or his family had ever gone to church a day in their lives.
He wished the words back into his mouth until John spoke up again.
“And why is that, Blake?”
There was no judgment in his tone. Just curiosity.
It made Blake feel freer to say what he really thought.
“It’s just that he doesn’t seem like the type,” he shrugged. “He was… different. I would think people at church are…”
Not crazy. Not complete psychos. Not mean. More like Jordan, Ben’s brother, who was kind and good. Or even more like Leslie, who had her life together and all of her plans well thought out.
“You would think people at church have it all together, huh?” John asked.
Blake looked up. “Well, yeah.”
“I think that’s a common misconception,” John said. “This idea that churches are full of people who have it all together, who are living perfect lives, and who never do anything wrong.”
Tim Young wouldn’t have agreed to that. He railed on everyone, church folks included, talking about how they were hypocrites.
But Blake was more inclined to believe the opposite, that the church people weren’t hypocrites at all, simply because he knew his father so rarely spoke with any kind of authority or wisdom either one. If Tim was wrong about everything, Tim was probably wrong about church people, too.
So hearing the pastor say this… well, it made him uneasy.
“Well, don’t they?” he asked. “I mean, aren’t they different?”
“Jesus makes us different, in His time,” John said, astonishing Blake for just a moment at the freedom with which he said the name Jesus, even here at this public school, where he probably wasn’t allowed to speak so freely. But desperate times called for desperate measures maybe.
Or maybe what John had to say was that important. Or maybe John’s allegiance to Jesus was greater than any allegiance he had to following the school’s rules.
Blake watched him with greater interest now.
“That said,” John continued, “I don’t know what was going on with Ben when he made the decision he made yesterday or how he was relating to God and what kind of person it made him all the days that came before that.” He paused for a long moment. “But I do know this, Blake. Jesus came for those who are broken and sick, in need of healing, those who aren’t perfect. And churches are full of those people, in various places in their walks with Him, in becoming better people, in becoming His.”
Blake wasn’t sure what to do with all of that. But one point repeated itself in his mind.
Jesus came for those who are broken and sick, in need of healing, those who aren’t perfect.
Like him. Just like him.
“I wasn’t very nice to Ben,” he said, finding that the confession, once started, sprung from his lips quite easily. “I was… I was really awful to him, actually.”
He saw the worst episodes in his mind as he stared at his hands, willing himself to not get emotional.
“I said and did a lot of things that probably led him to… well, to do what he did,” he said softly.
Then, he waited for it. For the judgment. Even as he sat, he could feel the words building up in his throat, all the justifications he could make for what he’d done.
My dad is awful to me. I hate going home. I feel like nothing. I’m a bad person. I’m worthless.
But he kept silent, knowing that he was no better than Tim if he blamed someone else or even his own feelings for his actions.
He waited for John to say something, anything.
“Blake.”
Just his name. Blake looked up, preparing himself for the judgment to come, but there was only sympathy in John’s eyes.
“You didn’t do the right thing when you mistreated Ben like you did,” he said. “But in the end, he’s the one who made the decision to end his life. You didn’t do that.”
Blake wasn’t sure if he could believe this.
“I just feel… really bad,” he managed to croak out, swallowing to keep his emotions under control.
“That’s a good thing,” John said.
Blake snapped his head back up, surprised by these words. How could feeling bad be a good thing?
John was ready with an answer before Blake could even voice the question.
“You’re right to feel grief and guilt over the wrong things that you did, Blake,” he said. “Those things that you did to Ben? Out of anger, frustration, or whatever reason you had for doing them? Sin.”
Sin. This guy really was a pastor.
Blake thought for a moment about telling John that he didn’t sin, but the lie was caught there in his mouth. Of course he sinned. Maybe he wasn’t a serial killer or a child abuser, but he sinned all the time. In the way he treated others, the way he loathed his father, the kinds of relationships he had with girls…
It didn’t take going to church every Sunday for Blake to know that he did wrong things. Sins, as John called them.
“You sin,” John kept on. “But guess what, Blake? We all do. You, me, all of us.”
The pastor sinned, too. Blake could imagine Tim agreeing with this whole heartedly, but Blake himself wasn’t convinced.
The disbelief must have shown in his eyes because John nodded knowingly. “It never changes, that. We all sin. But what’s different, when God is working in your life and in your heart, is that you feel grief, guilt, and shame for your sins. You feel just like you’re feeling right now. Sorry for what you’ve done. And you have a choice at that point.”
Blake couldn’t imagine what the choice could be.
“You can either ignore that nudge from God and keep right on sinning like you’ve been doing, which won’t make anything any better, or you can repent.”
Repent. Another one of those churchy words.
“I don’t even know what that means,” Blake said.
“It means,” John clarified, “that you acknowledge that you’ve done wrong. That you turn away from the sins you’ve been committing, and you do the right thing.”
Repent. Blake wanted to do that. Every bad thing…
But how long could he last? His dad would rail on him again, and he knew there would be some other kid that he’d want to fight, to hurt…
He clenched his hands tighter together, realizing with sudden clarity that the problem was bigger than he thought. This wasn’t just about Ben, though his heart still stung to think of what he’d done and what part he’d played in Ben’s death. No, the problem was bigger.
Blake was becoming his dad. He would be just like his dad if he didn’t change, if he didn’t get help changing…
“What are you thinking?” John asked softly, sensing the turmoil that Blake was in.
“I don’t think I can change,” Blake said, thinking about his dad, who always went in to a new job swearing that it would last, how it never did, how he always failed.
Was Blake going to be like that, except with much more important things? Was his life going to be one sin after another, one huge blunder to follow another, without any hope of change?
He needed help. He needed help that no one could give him.
“You can change,” John said. “God will help you.”
It was a crazy thought. But there was some comfort in it, even if Blake wasn’t certain that there was any truth about the matter. God will help you. It would take God Himself because there was no hope…
“I don’t know,” he said softly.
John didn’t appear deterred by this. “It’s a lot to think through,” he said simply. “And on top of all that you’re dealing with regarding Ben… it’s a lot.”
It was. It was too much.
“But do me this favor, Blake.”
Blake looked up at him.
“You try praying,” he said. “Just tell God what you told me. Tell Him all the things you can’t tell me. And see what happens.”
And of all that he wasn’t sure that he could do or believe or imagine, Blake thought he could manage this.