ENGLISH CLASS

Please enjoy another beautiful piece of writing in our series of Heywire competition stories. 

For those who missed last week’s introduction to this series, these stories have been prepared by students as an English assessment and are being shared with you as they were submitted for assessment, (so, yes, there are some grammatical errors and spelling mistakes). As many are deeply personal, like today's incredible lament for a lost friend from childhood, students have chosen to have them published anonymously. 

We encourage you to enjoy them as they are meant to be: the amazing personal stories of our teenage students. 

Dr Margaret Henderson

Chocolate covered marshmallows

“Pass the ball Tom,” I’d scream 10 times in a row. Tom was a ball hog, I’ll admit he was good at basketball, but I would never let him know that, he knew it enough anyway. We would play basketball on a rusted, unstable three-legged trampoline until mum called us inside for a snack, our favourite thing, chocolate covered marshmallows. All that came to an end soon enough.

I look back and wonder where it all came crashing down, I remember the soul sinking feeling when Mum told me he was sick, I hated that feeling of uncertainty. Tom was my soul mate, souls tied, I couldn’t lose Tom.

Walking down those clinical halls made me feel sick. The air carries the strong scent of disinfectant, Nurses and doctors move with purpose, their expressions a blend of focus and empathy. That’s the thing I always kept in mind, people here were living but people were also dying, and that uncertainty made me want to faint.

I tried to visit Tom as much as I possibly could, each time shattered my heart some more, I watched the life and spirit of my best friend get ripped away from him bit by bit. He became unrecognizable to me, to the point I didn’t like making eye contact for too long. A part of me hated him for it, and it’s a part of me I’m ashamed of to this day. “Why can’t he just be healthy?” I would say to myself. I acted as if he put me through the pain like he didn’t have enough of his own, and I hate how selfish I was for that.

Tom’s body gave up on May the 29th 2023. I felt as if my soul was crushed in a vice, and part of me died along with him. Although I felt so strongly, I did not cry, I did not talk. I simply stood up and sat in the waiting room. I know it looked like I was a heartless person, but I couldn’t cry, it wouldn’t justify how I felt, I felt beyond sad, beyond devastated, I felt dead.

A part of me believes I haven’t cried about it because my brains put up a wall about it in my head, like I haven’t processed it properly. I don’t think I want to. To this the day I walk inside, praying two chocolate marshmallows will be waiting for me and Tom on my kitchen table, only to realise there will only ever be one.