I never knew you. I remember, when I was 14, to see you in the school, with your long hair and your red woodcutter shirt. You didn't seem to talk a lot. Though once, I saw you at the decoration activity of school, where we were drawing Halloween decorations while singing Christmas songs. I also remember, at the "maple hut", where you were throwing snowballs with Simon.

And then one day, on April first, I learned you were dead. You killed yourself. What an April fool. As I said, I barely knew you. But I wanted to cry so much. Marie asked how you had done it, but I would have preferred not to know it. You hung yourself. Your father and your younger brother were the ones who discovered you. You were only 18 ! It's been a year and 7 months today.

I went to your salon, with other girls from the decoration activity. It was so sad. You wore your boyscout suit. I didn't know you were a boyscout. At school, people had written on a huge strip of paper and it was shown on the wall. I remember vividly reading a message that my friend Dave had written for you (I didn't know he knew you) : "There are days like that." And that simple sentence made me want to cry even more.

I also learned that Eric was your friend. He was my friend too, though I didn't know him very much. My friend Christine was close to him, though, and she was the one who told him about that. He blamed himself, because the final thing that made you do it was that none of your friends had celebrated your birthday. And Eric was the one who was supposed to organize it.

And now Eric's my boyfriend. For 3 months. It's only when I started going out with him that I learned that you were, in fact, his best friend. I know he thinks about you every day. He often mentions you in everyday conversations. I know he misses you deeply. And when he talks about you, all I do is to hug him and tell him I love him. I don't dare asking him questions about you, because I don't want to make him sadder than he already is. Though I know it's stupid, because he can't think about you more than he already do.

And since I'm going out with him, I also think about you every day. I wonder where you are, if you're somewhere. I don't know what happened to you. I used to believe in God, so it was easy, I only had to say "He's somewhere around us and he's happy". But now... I don't even know if there's something after death. A few months ago, I thought that after death, there was nothing anymore. That our soul and our body are the same thing.

But I don't want to believe that you're not anymore. I want to believe that you're there. That you're happy. That you listen to Eric when he talks to you. That you take care of him.

If you're there and if you hear when people talk to you, you know how I feel about Eric. It's so complicated I don't even understand myself. But please, do something for me : Take care of him. Protect him. He deserves so much than what I can give him. He's a wonderful boy, and I don't want him to suffer. Please, take good care of him...

Thanks. I hope you're happy where you are...

Elysabeth