Love. Hate. Nothing in between.

During my junior year in high school, there was no shortage of people who would join me in my endeavor to destroy myself or take advantage or it. This was the 'smoking lounge crowd', back in the days when you could go out between classes and smoke what were most often cigarettes in the courtyard and exterior stairwells of the building. It was the only crowd I fit in with at the time, simply because it was the only one that did not reject me. There were plenty of people here willing to skip school, get drunk, get high, trip with, or screw me. Looking back, I know there was a lot of pain here that was being numbed.

Ron was different than the rest, and I knew it even then. Around him I felt not just lack of rejection, but acceptance, appreciation, and respect. He treated everyone this way. He didn't judge or put down or have a mean word to say about others. He didn't want anything from me, and was the only person at the time that I think saw me solely as a person. A person worth talking to and laughing with. I felt safe around him, a sense of peace. He was just "that kind of person".

I hung out with him in the smoking lounge, shared a history class with him, and saw him at a few parties outside of school. I was attracted to him because of this, in a way I've never been attracted before. I was attracted to him as a person. It had not reached a physical level, because that's not how he was, and because I didn't know him that long. But to me he became a good friend, probably more than he probably ever knew.

In history class, Ron was the cut-up. He made everyone laugh with some sharp, relevant, but nonetheless class-interrupting quip. The teacher laughed heartily, too. It seemed like a goal, sometimes. It relaxed everyone, put us all on the same level, made things more interesting. Once she regained her composure, you could tell she resented it. He did not do it often, or with cruelty toward others. Just enough to make class interesting a few times a month. Otherwise, he was a low key, sort of just blending in, do no harm, just being himself kind of person.

Ron left late that school year. He got his GED so he could work full time because his family was struggling financially. I would still see him at friends houses from time to time. In May of that year, me and a few others, including Ron, were hanging out at a friend's house on a Friday morning during finals. I did not have a morning final, and went to my car to return to school for my afternoon history final.

My nemesis, a sociopath who played a huge role in ensuring that the entire school thought the worst of me and treated me as such, sought fit to show up earlier and remove the coil wire from my car without my knowledge. By the time we figured it out, I missed the final and was not allowed to make it up, causing me to fail the class and have to repeat it my senior year.

Ron died the next day after being in a car accident that Friday afternoon, hours after I saw him. He was a passenger in the back seat of a car traveling down a two lane road to go pick up his paycheck. An oncoming car crossed over into their lane and hit them, causing the car to roll into and for Ron to sustain massive internal injuries. No drugs, alcohol, or speeding were involved, and the driver of his car was not at fault.

I was numb. I felt a strong connection to Ron because he was the only person who made me feel worth as a human at a time when I felt nor received feelings of worth. It was like a small beam of hope that I was only beginning to see. I was not in love with him, but I think he was the first person I loved for who they were and how they treated others. He was such a rarity at that time in my life. I felt a great loss inside, and the loss of a great person. But I couldn't go to his funeral. I didn't know anyone else who would be there, I'd be alone, and I was scared of somehow being judged or rejected because that was what I was used to. My connection to him was personal. It was like that with a lot of people. In a world where friendships exist in groups with strict boundaries, he appreciated people on an individual level no matter what group label you had. And no one who knew him disliked him.

In school on Monday, the last day of school, I knew that this news would not be the kind of thing that they'd announce over the loudspeaker with 60 seconds for a moment of silence. Ron was not a popular person, just a person. He left school a few months earlier. And he was part of the "smoking lounge" crowd. I turned out to be right.

In between classes, I walked over to the office area, where I saw our counselor and one of the teachers I knew he had outside the teacher's lounge. I asked them if they had heard about Ron, and they said they did not. I told them what happened, and they reacted as one would expect. With sadness, seriousness, concern, and silence as the news was absorbed.

During this time, our history teacher walked up to listen in. When I was done speaking, she said, "he deserved it" and walked away.

That is not a misquote. That is exactly what she said, as straightforward and emotionless a statement as could be. Just three words made me feel such pure hate for a so-called human being more than any other person I have ever met before or since. Three damn words.

Ron was the best person I ever knew at the time, and perhaps one of just a half a dozen such people I have known like that in my life. He didn't have a mean damn bone in his body. Then this bitch, yes bitch, has the audacity to say to a sixteen year old student that he deserved it. That he deserved to die.

I was too shocked to do anything. I suspect the others were also, as I didn't hear them say anything, but I wasn't paying attention to them. I was frozen.

Sometimes I wish my shock wore off just enough so that I could have literally tackled that sack of shit right then and there and beat the living crap out of her until 10 people had to pull me off. And I would have had every damn right to. And get her ass fired, and her vile inhumanity exposed for all to see and judge with venom.

But I just stood there in stunned silence and watched her walk away. Later that she seemed to take great pleasure in telling me that she would not allow me to make up the exam, I got an F, and that I would have to repeat history next year.