His homosexuality was rumored before I heard it from him personally. I passed it off as confusion — he was too religious to be gay. He didn't even read Harry Potter or watch Cinderella because magic was unreal and entertaining thoughts of magic was blasphemous. Maybe he was bisexual. He always asked me who I thought was hot in class, and he always contributed a response, too; they were always male, but he still wasn't gay to me until,
"I'm gay," he said, unqualified and decisive.
"I am not supposed to be here!" she shouted. "Death is not for me."
And in fact, she didn't have death. She breathed, she felt, but she did not know what she felt. She did not know. And in doing so, she may as well have been dead.