When I was 13 I helped the local burnout mow lawns. He was late 20’s and hung out with us teenagers from the same block. Got us weed, bought us beer. The 16yo guys I looked up to were friends (?) with him, he’d hang in the backyard fort of the lead 16yo, and he basically ran the local lawn mowing cartel of all us kids. I wanted money and it was easy and fun, hangin’ with the boys. We shoveled walks in the winter.

One snowstorm morning he wasn’t at the fort where we’d meet so I volunteered to run across the street to his house. Knock. Knock loud. Try the door, he didn’t mind if we came in his basement entrance to his parent’s house. It’s dark, light on in the bathroom. 13yo me saw his first dead body that day; full bathtub with slit wrists and neck.

E: oh, reason for suicide seemed to be that he had a DUI wreck a couple months prior where a young girl (like 7 or 8) didn’t die but wouldn’t ever be the same… like couldn’t walk or brain damage or something. He couldn’t handle what he did, I guess.