A few weeks ago, a Friday morning promised an easier day at work than usual. I was basically done with my work for the week, only needing to do some edits on a report. I was in a goofy mood. We'd been having a tough time with a major client because the results of our work was not good news. It was, in fact, rather abysmal. Giving bad news to clients is never fun, although I tend to like it better than giving overwhelmingly good news. Bad news shows we're being somewhat objective.

When a few people on my team were called into my boss's office, I joked that our client had decided to fire us. Interestingly, my joke constituted better news than what awaited us. At first, my boss couldn't say much of anything. I thought, in those few seconds of pause, that maybe someone quit or was fired. It's been a rough fall for us. Lots of turnaround in staff, along with other ups and downs. But the news was worse than someone leaving the company as well.

The fifteen-year-old son of one of my co-workers shot himself. Killed himself. Took his own life and left the mess for his mother to discover.

His mother was a single parent. For as long as I've known her (two and a half years), the father hasn't been around. I don't know how long he's been out of the picture, but it seemed like it'd been quite a while.

I'd met the kid a few times. Brief encounters when he was at the office with his mother and longer (although not really long) conversations at a few parties with co-workers. He was always an upbeat kid when I saw him. Very excited about everything around him. He listened to lots of music and kept up a friendship with a former Albuquerque DJ who was the boyfriend of another of my co-workers. I'd always thought he'd be able to see my band play sometime--that it might be music he could get into.

I'd said for the last few weeks I wouldn't write about this. And, possibly, this isn't what people want to hear about at this time of year. Christmas is next week, and most are in the mood for celebration. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to say something.

I've lived over twice as long as Harrison Black. I made it through some very dark times, usually through friends and music and other comforts.

There is a part in Bowling For Columbine where Matt Stone (co-creator of South Park) talks about how much high school sucked. He expresses what I've been echoing for the last couple of weeks: kids live in such a small world--if they'd just been able to look out and realize their world isn't the whole world, that all the pressures and crap of school will not last forever, they'd be able to get past the immediate and graduate to the rest of their life.

I watched Pump Up The Volume the night after I found out about Harrison. In the film, a high school kid takes his life (with a gun). The main character DJ says, "Being a teenager sucks, but that's the point. Surviving it is the whole point." The next day I saw Elephant, a film which echoes the events of Columbine. I think, for obvious reasons, I wanted to immerse myself in the world of adolescence again.

The perspective of time tends to soften the hurts of being a kid. The expansion of the world you live in makes that circle seem very small.

I write these things knowing they can't do anything to bring back Harrison. They can't bring comfort to a grieving mother and family. They can't explain why someone who has just begun to taste life would choose to snuff it. And I know these thoughts, which are recycled from many sources--all available to the boy if he knew where to look--probably would not have stopped the inevitable chain of events. The mystery of why will, most likely, remain a mystery to most, if not all, of us.

So maybe all of this is for myself, just reminding me of the road I and others I know could have gone, but ultimately didn't.

And, hopefully, if it reaches others who are on that dark road, maybe they'll pause and realize the truth: you only get one life. But along the way, you get many, many, many chances to change, fuck up and improve. Death is the only change you can't truly recover from.

In death, you are a cautionary tale. And no one wants to be a cheesy after-school special.

Matt Worley wants to be more like 24-Hour Party People than Pollock.