Dealing With Loss as a Teenager

**Names have been changed for privacy reasons.**

It was the second day back from break, so it was January 4th, and I was walking through the cold hallway of my school. The school’s color is blue, so that’s all you see, and the vibrant colors often give me a headache. I was greeted with the sight of a group of ninth-grade boys, who were like the troublemakers of the school. They were yelling “Yooo” while looking at their phones, so my friend Survive and I were feeling very nosy. We walked up to one of the boys who had an ankle monitor, asking what happened and what he said we never could have expected. He said, “People are saying John is dead,” but we didn’t really believe it, so we shrugged it off and kept walking to the gym. Gym class went by, and we didn’t hear anything else about it until we were cleaning up, when the same boy said, “Joey is dead too.” Survive, and I thought that was lying because there had been so many rumors about crazy things before, so we just didn’t believe him. But we wanted a reason to skip the class we had after, so we went up to Mrs. Hodas’ room to tell her what he was saying, and she didn’t believe it either. So we pulled up Google and looked it up, lo and behold, it was true. There was a car accident, and my friend was dead.

A couple of days after the whole situation, there were no new updates about what had happened until a boy named Lance, who always wears a ski mask, was going around telling people that the boys were ejected from the car, and one of the boys lost his arm. Another thing that was said was that the cops were called off and told not to keep following them because that might cause an accident. None of the things were confirmed on the news or anything, so we didn’t know whether or not to believe it 

It was obviously a very sensitive topic to speak about, so my teachers tried to keep it professional and not bring it up, but they still pitied us. My mom was pretty shocked about the whole situation, and we had a sit-down talk, and she told me this shows us reality, and just because we are young doesn’t mean we are invincible. 

I wouldn’t blame what happened to him all on his parents, because some kids act out even with a happy home, but I do think they play a big role in it. The day of his funeral, his dad came out and said he wished he were in his life more, but due to being in jail, he wasn’t really there.

A year later, I watched a video that was posted about the situation on WCVB. It took a full year for the information that the cops were called off, yet they still kept chasing them. Seeing how much stuff was left out when the accident first happened made me feel sad and frustrated. This bothers me even though we sort of already knew this was the case, because now it has been confirmed. Teens need to think more about what they are about to do. What would have happened if they were not chased?