Thursday's Trash Day

Death isn't a resolution, it's an unsatisfying ending.

He was found by a fisherman.

It was a thursday, because I was cursing the garbage men and their racket for my now throbbing hangover.

The garbage men were replaced by sirens about ten minutes after. My sleepy town came to life with the prospect of drama this early in the morning. With nothing better to do I joined the other residents in their housecoats and slippers in the crowd forming outside. My thoughts got tangled in the sunlight as I tried to massage away the pain. Things quickly unraveled from there as I heard whispers from the huddled adults. Suicide. Lake. Boy. Theo. The words rammed into me with the goal of taking me down.

He was found in the lake, floating on his back. His clothes were in a pile on the shore. It didn't seem real. I had just talked with him the night before.

News stations and their manicured reporters hurried to the lake to film the recovering of a boy's body. No sign of life. Plain as day his picture was on every news station.

There was a stabbing ache in my chest for weeks. My throat closed up in classes as I tried not to break down and sob. They covered his case’s development as we had a moment of silence in school. I wanted to scream. Three days later they had blamed it on the alcohol in his system and his troubled home life. They didn’t know. They ruled it to be a suicide due to no evidence of drowning, he froze to death, and testimony from his mother that he could swim. He could dive too. The stripped clothes were used as evidence that his actions were calculated. They blamed the genius who didn’t care, the boy without a winter jacket. They called him Theodore. I can remember watching in school and audibly uttering. "It's Theo."