Today was probably the worst first day of term ever. I made a post about it earlier but I don’t think it posted for some reason. I want to make another one a) as a way of collecting my thoughts and b) as something to look back on and read over later.

A kid in my grade died last week. We were taken into an assembly this morning and told he was in an accident and he passed away on Thursday. We don’t know what kind of accident, we don’t know any details. His family has requested privacy and all the details they’ve given the school are “he was involved in an accident.”

So that’s it. Just like that. He’s gone. No-one was told before today, not even his friends. It was horrible, our whole grade just sat there when our principal told us. We were all in shock and I was crying and everyone else was crying.

Our school has this amazing way of dealing with tragedies like this. They happen a lot more frequently than they should but whenever they do I am so proud of the way our school handles it. No-one had to go to classes if they didn’t want to. I didn’t go to first period, I just sat in the hall with Hannah and Meghan and Tim, and Kelly, Sally, Atalaya and Erin were there too. Rebekah was there with Lizzie and Harriet and Katherine and Hansi were crying. It was weird because some people I didn’t even expect to be affected were crying too but I guess when it’s someone in your year group everyone feels it. In second period I went and sat in Dr. Lane’s English class. That’s the class he should have been in at that very moment. Mr Gannan and Rev Wilson are so great at handling situations like this and it was nice to have Mr Heath around too. He has a sister in year eight and I cannot imagine what it will be like for her coming to school every day without him.

Everyone felt sort of numb today. He was the nicest kid and he was so, so amazingly clever. He used to be in my tutor and I just remember him and Vinay always talking about maths and stuff. He was really funny. He’d always make jokes with Blastoise and it made my mornings really enjoyable, even though last year there was a lot of times I showed up to tutor feeling awful. I always felt better after sitting with them.

I reacted kinda differently to his death than I have to people’s deaths in the past. I think it’s because I’ve never lost anyone that close to me up until I lost my great grandmother a few weeks ago. I mean, Josh and Roslyn, stuff like that hit me pretty hard, but this is a guy I saw every single day and regularly talked to and now I will never see him again.

It kinda hit home that it could have been anyone in our grade. We don’t know the specifics of his death but a lot of people are assuming car accident. He isn’t the kind of guy to be involved in drugs or alcohol so it’s really unlikely it was anything like that. He seemed happy enough so it probably wasn’t a suicide but then again the stress of year 12 gets to everyone, so who knows. Regardless, he was just a normal 17 year old kid, like everyone else in our grade. When Josh died I realised it could have been anyone from that grade and that was super difficult for me, thinking about how it could have been Glen or Kyle or Lauren or Emma or Chloe or Kunwar, or worse, Rhys or Ashleigh. But someone in my own grade really scared me. If it was a car accident, fuck. The amount of times my friends have been speeding or doing stupid things in their cars is ridiculous. A couple of them have lost their licences. I’m so thankful nothing worse has happened.

And I’m not usually superstitious, but this happens every time my grade has an exam block coming up. Every time, someone dies, and it is a school wide tragedy. It’s never been someone in our grade before but two weeks out from our trials, here we are. I am terrified something awful is going to happen right before - if not during - our HSC/IB exams.