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“I’ll get it for you in the morning.”
I didn’t fall asleep that night—last night, the final night that it didn’t feel quite real, before I saw them lower his coffin down into the dark.
Instead I stayed up, thinking and planning.
Whenever I was about to drift off, I pinched the base of my thumb until I felt awake again.
Revenge is all I have left now that they’ve put him in the ground.
* * *
I know who instigated the worst of the harassment that targeted my brother. Four rich boys with no better things to do. They call themselves “The Elites,” as if being born with a silver spoon in each of their mouths wasn’t enough to set them apart. There are whispers about them in hidden corners, places I find on the internet because I have nothing else to fill my life now that he’s gone and everything is different.
Grabbing Silas’s laptop, I flip it open, put in his password—Brenna224—and look at what I haven’t dared to admit to myself existed before now: every filthy thing they said to make him put a rope around his neck and end his life.
In the chat logs, I find their names.
Cole Masterson. Lukas Dupont. Tanner Connally. Blake Lee.
Again, in the emails and comments, the social media messages and viral movement.
Cole Masterson. Lukas Dupont. Tanner Connally. Blake Lee.
Even where they aren’t there, the influence is clear. It’s written all over the friends who do their dirty work, the sources in the posts that tear him down, the text messages with coy not-quite-death threats hoping he’ll jump to his death or die in a fire. The world would be better off without him, they say, and they convinced him it was true. I hate them more with each passing breath.
Cole Masterson. Lukas Dupont. Tanner Connally. Blake Lee.
Around me, life somehow goes on. My cousins squeal as they poke and pinch each other, playing a merry game of tag that nearly knocks over the dinner table. Cheryl scolds them; my mother watches them with pain in her eyes. I know she sees innocence in the little boys playing around her feet, and is remembering my brother as he was as a child.
But I can’t remember him that way.
The only way I can see him is how he looked as Wally drove him to Connecticut for a week of orientation at Coleridge: happy, alive, and looking forward to something.
My father’s fists couldn’t knock the hope out of Silas, but those rich boys did it with their words. They didn’t lay a hand on him, because they didn’t have to—once they tore him down, they knew he’d end his own life.
How else could they have seen the messages taunting him, encouraging him to commit suicide, and done nothing? When they thought a girl was assaulted they unleashed the hounds of hell, but the instant it became clear the so-called perpetrator was becoming a victim, they were silent. They sat back. They watched. No doubt they enjoyed it. People like them always do.
The Elites killed my brother.
For that I’ll make them pay.
11It continues…
I didn’t fall asleep that night—last night, the final night that it didn’t feel quite real, before I saw them lower his coffin down into the dark.
Instead I stayed up, thinking and planning.
Whenever I was about to drift off, I pinched the base of my thumb until I felt awake again.
Revenge is all I have left now that they’ve put him in the ground.
* * *
I know who instigated the worst of the harassment that targeted my brother. Four rich boys with no better things to do. They call themselves “The Elites,” as if being born with a silver spoon in each of their mouths wasn’t enough to set them apart. There are whispers about them in hidden corners, places I find on the internet because I have nothing else to fill my life now that he’s gone and everything is different.
Grabbing Silas’s laptop, I flip it open, put in his password—Brenna224—and look at what I haven’t dared to admit to myself existed before now: every filthy thing they said to make him put a rope around his neck and end his life.
In the chat logs, I find their names.
Cole Masterson. Lukas Dupont. Tanner Connally. Blake Lee.
Again, in the emails and comments, the social media messages and viral movement.
Cole Masterson. Lukas Dupont. Tanner Connally. Blake Lee.
Even where they aren’t there, the influence is clear. It’s written all over the friends who do their dirty work, the sources in the posts that tear him down, the text messages with coy not-quite-death threats hoping he’ll jump to his death or die in a fire. The world would be better off without him, they say, and they convinced him it was true. I hate them more with each passing breath.
Cole Masterson. Lukas Dupont. Tanner Connally. Blake Lee.
Around me, life somehow goes on. My cousins squeal as they poke and pinch each other, playing a merry game of tag that nearly knocks over the dinner table. Cheryl scolds them; my mother watches them with pain in her eyes. I know she sees innocence in the little boys playing around her feet, and is remembering my brother as he was as a child.
But I can’t remember him that way.
The only way I can see him is how he looked as Wally drove him to Connecticut for a week of orientation at Coleridge: happy, alive, and looking forward to something.
My father’s fists couldn’t knock the hope out of Silas, but those rich boys did it with their words. They didn’t lay a hand on him, because they didn’t have to—once they tore him down, they knew he’d end his own life.
How else could they have seen the messages taunting him, encouraging him to commit suicide, and done nothing? When they thought a girl was assaulted they unleashed the hounds of hell, but the instant it became clear the so-called perpetrator was becoming a victim, they were silent. They sat back. They watched. No doubt they enjoyed it. People like them always do.
The Elites killed my brother.
For that I’ll make them pay.
11It continues…