When I was in high school, there was this kid - wore raggedy clothes, smelled terrible. At the cafeteria, when all of the other kids ate in their cliques, this kid ate alone. He would eat kind-of hunched over his food, in order to keep other kids from stealing it or knocking it away from him. He would scarf down his food really quickly - so quickly that sometimes he'd gag or puke. Again - he did it so he could eat before the other kids knocked his food away or stole it.
Anyway, one day I was in the principal's office (I spent a lot of time in the principal's office in high school), and the principal was called away for this reason or that, and while he was gone I snuck a peek at the paperwork on his desk. It was the enrollment list, with the names of students whose enrollment status had changed up at the top. Two or three new students moved to the district, a couple moved out. But there was another name: that kid from the first paragraph. And the reason for his drop was listed as "deceased." That was it. No ceremony in the gym where everyone mourns him or whatever - just paperwork to be filed and forgotten about.
A couple of weeks later I was talking to the youth minister at my church about his job. He told me that he made a little money on the side by contracting with a local funeral home, doing funerals for children and teenagers whose families weren't attached to a church. He had done two such funerals in the past couple of weeks. One was a popular girl - a cheerleader, good grades, good family, the whole bit. The entire town turned up at her funeral, and there was a line of mourners down the block. She had committed suicide, and no one knew why.
The other was a younger boy, whose name I recognized. There were only two people at his funeral- his parents. He, too, had committed suicide. And I knew exactly why.
