Under Pressure
By Ryan Wessman
High school, the glory days as most adults would call it, but high
school is really more like hell or at least hell for friendships. I have always
tried to be friends with everybody, my mom always used to tell me to overlook
the bad in people and just try to make them your friends. But I had a group of
best friends: Toby the smart kid, Steve-o the jock and Rhapsody the ladies man.
We have known each other since middle school, but high school has not been easy
for us.
High school puts so much pressure on kids. Getting good grades has
been a goal for a while but not until high school does it literally become a
need. I have always been an okay student, straight B’s year in and year out. I
really don’t care about school or what college I go to. But for my friends, it
has been a different story. Take Toby, he has always been the smartest in his
class, in the grade and pretty much in the entire school though recently he has
got a couple of B’s and he can’t keep it together. He has been studying 24
hours a day for the past week. Skipping sleep hasn’t done much for his life,
but his grades are back up. For Steve-o, he pretty much gets C’s and D’s in all
his classes, which would have been an issue, if he wasn’t the star baseball
player that would take are team to state. “Counting on a college sholarship”,
that’s what Steve-o’s dad always says. Rhapsody, or Rhap for short, cuts class
a lot. We do not even know how he is still in school. Whether there was a concert,
a date or even just a TV show Rhap wanted to watch, he would cut class. Rhaps
likes to say he “lives for the moment”.
Another hard part of high school is your social life, in middle
school you can learn during the day and text in the night. But in high school
most kids really have to choose between good grades or being popular. Luckily
for me, I am pretty much friends with everyone. For my friends, there interest
in social status is all across the board. There’s Toby who doesn’t give much
thought to his social life and, even with all those smarts, he does not try to
impress anyone. For Steve-o, he is the exact opposite, being the jock that he
is, equals instant popularity. Rhap is in the middle. He has not really been
popular amongst the guys, but amongst the girls he is everyone’s favorite. This
difference in social lives and priorities has really driven us a part.
In middle school, everything felt perfect. People would not
normally associate us together, the jock, the nerd, the ladies man, and the
average kid. But in middle school we had a school where four elementary came
together, and the first day of school we were put in a group together in our
first class, History. We were told to “meet our new friends” as these would be
our groups all year. And we took that literally and became best friends. In
middle school grades don’t matter, you always have time to socialize, and your
parents start to let you be free. Parents often say that they hated middle
school, but I think it’s paradise compared to high school.
Now it’s Senior year with just 4 weeks left and our friendships
were really tested. One of Rhap’s cousins was having a party at his house and Rhap asked us to
attend. Once we got there, Rhap’s cousin, Josh’s house was already trashed and
it was just 8 pm. He told everybody that his parents were gone and to go crazy.
Steve-o immediately left us to talk to his jock friends and Toby told me he just
wanted to go home. I told him we have to meet up with Rhap first, so we went up
to the second floor to find him. Once we got up there we found him in Josh’s
bedroom smoking pot and drinking beer with some of the stoners in our grade. Rhap
asked us if we wanted a hit off his joint and Toby went into a lecture about
his parents telling him that pot is a form of poison and if you even try it
once you could die. But we knew that was a lie. I told Rhap “no” because if my
parents ever found out they would literally kill me. He told us that there was
no way our parents would ever find out. Toby told Rhap he had to leave to study
for a test he just remembered. Toby was never good socially and this scenario
really had him running for home. Rhap then handed me a joint and I then handed
it back to him and told him I was going to study with Toby. We later found out
the police showed up, and arrested Rhap.
The next day at school, we had our college meetings that’s when
college representatives come to try and convince us to go to their college. You
get to miss all your classes as long as you are meeting with the college reps. Toby
told us he was going to the Princeton meeting. He had been dreaming of
Princeton and wearing the sweatshirt ever since he was 6. Steve-o said he would
go to the Florida State meeting, because they were the best college for
baseball. I told them I didn’t really know where I wanted to go, and I really didn’t
care. The police let Rhap out of prison on a warning because he was a minor but
he didn’t really need to be there as he told us he was not going to college,
Toby then asked him if he was kidding and Rhap responded “no, college is stupid
and there is no need to go”.
Because the party was such a disaster, Toby and I thought it would
nice to invite Steve-o and Rhap to the movies. Soon we’d have the defining
moment of high school success, Senior year finals and college acceptance
letters. We decided to go to Spiderman, but we didn’t really pay attention to
the movie at all. Toby told us that he might not be able to go to Princeton and
it was the only school he applied to. His parents both attended and he was
certain he’d get in, so why waste those other applications fees. He explained
he was getting a “B” in Spanish and then he started to cry. We tried to
convince him that it would all be okay and that he would get in. To help Toby
feel better, Steve-o said he might be home next year too. Florida State did not
offer him a scholarship, but they said he could join the team as a “walk-on”.
His parents hadn’t save a dime, so Steve-o was frantically emailing coaches of
other schools worse at baseball. Rhap said he cut the college meetings and have
an amazing day hanging out with two girls. Toby and Rhap then got
into an argument about who was screwing up their life more. Toby told Rhap that
he “was making the biggest mistake of his life”. And Rhap responded with the
same message to Toby followed by yolo.
Two weeks later, everybody in the school got their college
acceptance letters, so I decided to have a hang out with the guys to see where
everybody got in. Steve and Rhap showed up both pretty happy with their plans. Steve-o
then told us he got into Vanderbilt on a Baseball scholarship. Rhap said he
still was not going to college and looking forwarding to traveling around the
world. I was the one kid who got into Notre Dame without wanting to go there my
entire life. It was so great to hang out with my best friends who I barely saw
anymore, but we were worried about Toby, who never showed up.
A couple days later Toby was still missing, so we decided to go to
his house. When we got there, no one was there. Toby’s parents were traveling
in Asia. Luckily, Toby gave me his spare key to his house just in case I ever
needed it. We went in and no one was on the main floor, so we went up to his
room. Rhap fainted upon seeing him, Rhap was never to good around blood.
Steve-o started to cry, and Steve-o would always tell us he never cried. It was
Toby, he was dead. There was a letter next to him it said,
“the world is not fair. I tried my entire life for one goal, and
it was for
shit. I loved Princeton, so much. Why do bad things happen to good
people?
I do not want to live in a world where one letter can ruin your
life, but I do.
So good Bye Luke Rhap and Steve-o you have been more like a family
to me than my parents ever where, and for that I will always be grateful.
In complete
shock, all I could think was “Toby was always a great writer”.
Our high school had a day off for Toby’s funeral and hardly any
kids from school came. But in the final couple days of school, everyone in high
school treated us like babies, “are you okay?” “Do you need any help?” And
other shit like that. We stayed at my house everyday that week, it felt as
though as bad as this tragedy was it finally brought us close together again. Rhap
and Steve-o and I will be friends forever. But it won’t be the middle school
fun that glues us together. It will be that moment in Toby’s room – the sight,
the smell and quietness. It will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
