There are three small squares of cork-board mounted on the wall by my bed. Originally, a fourth hung with the rest, but twice now it has fallen and as I am a man who prefers to pick his battles, I concede this one to the cork-board.

Pictures of family and high school friends are tacked to the squares, a few sketches and postcards, and a giraffe my sister drew for me when she was five. I wonder, always, how it is I still have that.

On the square hung highest on the wall (next to an old poem written me by a middle school crush and a group photo from a Halloween piano recital, in which a scowling fifth grade Andrew is dressed as Count Dracula three years running) is a program from a play I had been in, A Christmas Carol brought to you by the Masque circa Winter 2002. On the back, amongst a few scribbled signatures, in nearly illegible writing I have signed "Andrew Haynes, Scrooge. To that punk kid."

Clipped to this is a note:

Andrew,
This was on Mitch's bulletin board in his room. Please keep it and know you're a good role model.
Thank you,
Kim.

Next to this on the highest cork-board square is a program from a funeral.

Mitchell James Henderson

July 15th, 1992 to April 20th, 2006

2006 was the year I graduated high school. It was the year I finally had a social life outside of the Masque Theater. It was the year I finally had a girlfriend. It was the year I finally got out of Rochester.

I was a relatively active kid, far more so than I am these days at least, teaching classes and acting in shows at the Masque, taking Century High School by storm with my boyish charm and laid-back-cool-dude attitude (right guys?), and serving as a senior high representative on my church's youth committee. I wasn't a particularly religious guy, in fact by my senior year I was fairly certain I could call myself an atheist, but the church was an important place to me. I had a fair number of friends there, a great relationship with the minister and her husband, and the youth group was genuinely fun to be a part of.

Mitch was a junior high representative on the committee. He was in 8th grade, angsty but good mannered and the funniest fuckin' kid I have ever met. The monthly committee meetings were jokes to him and I, the two of us scolded on a regular basis for throwing pennies at whoever wasn't looking and trying to sneak out the smelliest of farts.

I didn't see him often. Once every week or so for church, the monthly meetings, and whenever the junior and senior youth groups would embark on joint adventures, but he was a genuine friend of mine. And I knew he looked up to me in a way any young boy looks up to an older boy who is a little bit cynical but also makes fart jokes. I would give him the occasional ride home from a meeting and he would talk about the latest R rated movie he had seen or which swear word was his new favorite.

I remember the moment my mom told me what happened. She had picked me up from school to take me to the doctor's office on my lunch hour. There was a small chance I might have lymphoma, so we thought it best to find out for sure. Turns out I didn't. But right as we got to the doctor my mom parked the car and turned to me. Mitch was dead, she told me. For some reason still relatively unknown, he had gotten a hold of his father's gun and shot himself in the neck. His younger sister found him bleeding out in the study. His mom was gone, off to his school to pick up homework or a book, something he had absentmindedly forgot but needed that night. They had gotten into a brief fight before she left, him and his mom. And the last time she saw him, the one time after she had chastised him for being lazy or irresponsible or whatever it is moms say to teenage sons who don't really feel like getting their shit together, was with a hole through his neck and his eyes rolled up into the back of his skull.

I was devastated. And I was furious. And I was sobbing. And when the doctor told me I didn't have cancer I didn't really care. And I didn't go back to school. And when I went to see Sara I didn't say anything, I just held my eyes shut and pushed my head into her belly and tried to think about something else.

I didn't understand it. I don't understand it. And I missed him immediately. I missed the goofy man he was going to be. And that was the moment I finally decided that, no, I do not believe there is a God. Not because he let a 14 year old boy die. Not because I was mad at him. But because as I sat in church and tried to grieve I felt nothing. No comfort. No understanding. No invisible pat on the back. And I know that the power, wisdom, and glory of God is more complex than that. I know that there is more to faith than seeing those selfish, human moments of need met with some divine intervention. But so was there more to my grief. So was there more to the emptiness I felt in that sanctuary. And I am sorry that I cannot find the words to fill that emptiness, but my rejection of the Heavens was not a knee jerk reaction made out of spite and rage. It was the declaration of how I had felt for the better part of my life, now reaffirmed.

I have not been back by choice since.

Mitch's mother, Kim, gave me the program at my graduation party less than two months after he died. Her eyes were sad as was her smile and she hugged me for a moment before leaving.

I see it everyday, the program. Hanging in my room always since June 2006. And still three months until it has been with me as long as it had been with him.

I stare at it sometimes, think about how old he'd be now, what he'd look like. I try to imagine how he'd talk, what fads he'd have fallen for, what he would be wanting to do with himself now that he'd be graduating high school so soon.

But sometimes, most times, I wonder... if he were still alive today, if he had never gone, would I still know him? Talk to him? How often would I see him?

And, really, would he still mean so much to me?