Writer’s note
The end of high school can feel like the end of everything. Of course, they tell you it's the start of a wonderful journey in which you confidently face down the challenges of the future, etc. Not every kid buys it, at least in this story. I imagine that he looks back at his school years and concludes that the familiar is better than the unknown. It's the month of April, the very doorstep to post-high school. You have to cross the threshold. Or maybe you don't.
Suicide the Musical
The boys without love lose bad in the month of April - April in the senior year of high school punishes them forever. Craig gets a heavy dose of that particular month because he will never get the boy he has wanted all through school. Life crashes at 18; nothing remains for Craig but to slump in the last row of the theater, the dark, at the last dumb play of high school.
Craig is a sad boy at the end of his high school career.
Lots of numbers, some of them good... there's got to be one in there that you can dance to.
The beginning of the story…
Craig is alone in the back row of his high school auditorium. The big springtime play has just ended, Suicide the Musical.
It didn't do anything for him. It didn't change his opinion one way or the other, if he had an opinion in the first place.
They tried hard. All the girls and boys on stage sang their hearts out. Don't do it. It isn't worth it. You can get help.
Craig even tapped his toe to one of the numbers. And he is kind of singing it to himself on the walk home. It's not worth it, or something like that.
The play makes him think about this boy he likes, a boy that he has liked since they started 7th grade together. It isn't going to work out. The month of April puts them real close to the end of their senior year.
The boy is going away to college and that will be the end of what never was.
Craig has heard all the words. Some of them were in the musical he has just seen. They even addressed the topic of love and how you shouldn't kill yourself over it. They used the old line, there are other fish in the sea. As a matter of fact, it was one of Craig's favorite numbers. The dancing was pretty good and the tune was real catchy.
Craig has not had a relationship with the boy. They are sort of like friends but that's mostly because they know some people who know both of them. Yeah, they've talked more than once. Quite a bit if you add it up over six years. But they never came close to saying personal stuff, like who may have loved who.
Craig has got no idea how that boy feels. He has always paid close attention to if the boy had a girlfriend or something. That was never clear. The boy was always going to these social deals, like group dating. You couldn't tell from a distance who he really liked.
Craig didn't go to that stuff. He already knew who he liked.
And he couldn't ask him out. The boy's name is Dane. Craig likes the name but he would probably like it no matter what when you consider who it is.
Whenever Craig got into one of those short conversations with him, it was just phony stuff about school or whatever. And then you just said what you figured you were supposed to say.
It was never, I wanna go out with you.
Every time he thinks about any of this stuff, which is all the time, he can't believe it is all about to end. Dane is leaving, Craig is staying behind.
The calendar just runs out on him, is all. He can't go on without Dane.