"Hey, is this seat empty?" 
It all started from there.
I looked up at him. We were like ten. I wasn't into Gothic culture yet and he wasn't trans yet.

He had an Irish accent and a sweet voice. Very small, narrow, blue eyes, slightly upturned nose, high cheekbones, olive skin and dark brown hair. I should have told him no but his eyes couldn't let me say no to him. Never.

"Yes, it is," I replied.
"Jammy!" He sat beside me and kept his bag on the desk, "Ryan is ainm dom. Cad is ainm duit?"
"Pardon?" 
"Oh, sorry. I forgot I'm not home," He laughed, "My name's Ryan Nolan! What's yours?"
"I am Malcolm Bevery," I replied.

Nolan was kinda, 

"Howya Malcolm! We've got shenanagans coming up, its time to pull your socks up! Not throwing shapes but I worked like hell and I'm upto ninety!"
(Tn// Irish slang: Hello Malcolm! We've got events coming up, it's time work hard. Not bragging but I've worked very hard and I'm about to explode!)

Kinda different from us Americans.

"That's my twin, Chelsea! She's just acting like a maggot as usual," (Tn// Irish slang: Acting foolish)
His slangs were different from American slangs and that made kind of a gap between both groups. At one side, there were the Nolans and I, and on the other side were all my American friends.

I liked Ryan more than those jerks.
"They are all cute hoors," (Tn// Untrustworthy) He would say. Him, Chelsea and I would spend a lot of time together. It was nice being with him. It felt like home. His mom baked delicious cookies and Irish dishes. We would take his dog on a walk together by the park, we would eat together at his place since my family usually wasn't there with me. I loved writing songs with him. I would sing everything he wrote. We entered high school together. By then, we both had grown. My voice was much deeper or as Chelsea called it "sexy"

Nolan's voice went deeper too. It wasn't gentle anymore, it was hoarse and crackly like any growing fifteen year old Irishman. We met Louise and MJ and started a band with them. Louise wasn't that buffed up back then, he was pretty meek and had a shrill fourteen year old white boy voice. MJ was super short too, like five two. Ryan was on bass, Louise on drums, MJ on guitar and Chelsea and I were the vocalists but I also played the keyboard. 

Then, slowly Ryan changed. He seemed distant. He wouldn't talk to me. We stopped hanging out. Chelsea told me he talked to her just like he usually did. Then, why be so distant with me?

I told him I felt lonely. We had a deep conversation but the beach at night. I thought that conversation would fix our marred bond but it wasn't like before. He did talk to me, but he only talked about me getting a girlfriend. He was trying to set me up with someone, so that I would leave him alone. 

But you know, when you have a crush on someone that you can't like, you set them up with other people and try to get them a girlfriend so it seems like you don't like them.

One day, I decided to talk it out with him. Because I was getting insecure of our friendship. I went to his place. Chelsea and his mom had gone for shopping so I thought it'd just be him and I which was good since that way we'd get some privacy. I entered his house and I found him in his mother's room.

I saw him wearing a brasserie and a skirt, standing before his mom's dressing table and applying makeup. He seemed happy but I was beyond disgusted so I decided to confront him.
"What the fuck is this, Ryan?" I asked. He dropped the lipstick and quickly turned towards me.
"Malcolm! What are you doing here?" He was not expecting me. I looked into his eyes and he looked down in embarrassment.

"That thing is for girls. Guys aren't supposed to wear that shit," I made no effort in conceiving my anger and disgust.

"I know."
"AND WIPE THAT SHIT OFF OF YOUR FACE, DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK! YOU'RE NOT A GIRL!"
"But I wanna be girl!"
"But you're not a girl!"
"BUT I WANNA BE!" 

"DUDE, YOU'RE A FUCKING HOMO?!" I shouted. 
"No, I'm trans," He looked at the floor.
I looked at him, "This is so disgusting,"
"FUCK OFF! JUST BECAUSE I LIKE YOU DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN BE AN ASSHOLE TO ME!" 

"Like me?"
"Ah— No, I— "
"Let's not talk after this," I left his place. 

You were right. I was an asshole. But the one who was a bigger asshole was that little shit who spread the rumors.
"HEY, YOU WEARING A BRA UNDER THAT SHIRT?" They would gang up on him and talk shit. I just ignored them and went away. I didn't know someone had spread rumors, I just thought he told it to them himself for clout and now he's just getting his karma for being stupid.

"So, how much you take for giving blowjobs?"
"DUDE! YOU'RE DISGUSTING! DON'T USE THE SAME BATHROOM AS US!"
"Yeah, you spreading your gay ass germs here!"

People started boycotting him.
You know what, I could've helped him.
But I chose not to.

"Can we just be friends again?" He lit a cigarette as we sat on the beach sand at night. He was dressed like a girl and had longer hair, dyed white. I didn't want to be there but he called me and I couldn't say no to those eyes. But I decided not to look into them again.

"I don't want to associate myself with you,"
"PLEASE!" He threw away his cigarette and grabbed my collar. He pinned me on the sand and looked into my eyes, "PLEASE! YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME NOW! WHATEVER I HAVE DONE, I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I'M JUST FUCKING SORRY!" He cried, "I won't talk about being a girl anymore so please help me,"

"You brought it yourself,"
"NONE OF THAT WOULD'VE EVER HAPPENED IF AND ONLY IF YOU DIDN'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW!"
"What do you mean?"

"WHY DID YOU TELL THEM ABOUT ME?! I can't live peacefully anymore!"
"...What?" I was confused. Weren't you the one who told them about you being trans?

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! I GET IT THAT YOU DON'T LIKE ME AND I WAS FINE WITH IT! I DIDN'T FORCE MYSELF ON YOU, I DIDN'T EVEN TALK TO YOU AFTER YOU TOLD ME NOT TO THEN WHY?!" His voice held so much pain, so much anger, "I JUST WANT TO BREATHE!"
And I had no idea what to do.

I felt trapped.
How do I help him? I thought I'd figure it out soon.
I didn't know I had limited time.

A few days after that conversation, he asked me to play something on the keyboard. He gave me a sheet of paper. I thought maybe he was getting better. Maybe those people weren't bulling him anymore. Maybe we could be like before again. I decided to spend more time with him to help him heal faster. So, I played that music sheet on my keyboard and recorded it. I mailed him the recording.

Next morning, I checked my mails and saw that he had mailed me the finished song as a reply at 2:45 AM. He sang over that piano background I made. It was the first time I heard him sing. And the last time I heard his voice. 

I ran to school to tell him how good it sounded but he wasn't there. Chelsea told me he passed away the night before. That he left home at 2:50 AM, saying he's going out for a smoke. And in the morning, they found his dead body floating near the rocks beside the coast. He committed suicide.

"So, I was the the last person he mailed?"
I couldn't believe it. It didn't feel real. I just texted him last night. How can a person leave so quickly? In a blink of an eye, I had lost him. He was gone. He didn't tell me anything. I thought he was healing?

Chelsea couldn't bear him gone. She turned insane. She shouted and screamed for days until her parents finally took her to a therapist and they found that she had dysphoria. It is a condition in which you hate yourself to a point that you turn suicidal or hate people who love you. Her dad passed away in a road accident a fortnight after Ryan's death. It was too much for a fifteen year old to lose so much in such a less time.

When I first visited her, she ran at me with a knife in her hand but her mom and her uncle stopped her. I lost the Chelsea I loved. I hid inside Ryan's room. It still looked the same. He left a notebook on his table and a note inside his notebook, "Níl uaim ach análú mar chailín. Agus mura féidir le daoine glacadh liom, tá súil agam go nglacfaidh aingil,"
(Tn// I just want to breathe as a girl. And if humans can't accept me, I hope angels will)

I got into Gothic culture after that and picked up the bass. I used it as a distraction from the pain of losing Chelsea and Ryan together. 

I contacted MJ and Louise again. They had Jerome in place of Ryan by then and ran a secret club called rehabilitation club. Slowly, Ryan disappeared from everyone's memory and things went back to normal. At least for other people. MJ found those bullies and they told us what they had been doing with him. Harassment, blowjobs and all kinda disgusting shit dressed up as a girl, no wonder his voice had so much pain.

That was an end of their walking days. Louise broke the legs of each one of them. But that couldn't bring Ryan back. Nothing I do now will bring him back. I am too late. I don't know why I didn't do this before.

I heard that song again but this time it hit differently.
And I cried. But no tears, no prayers, no amount of guilt or regret would EVER bring him back again." Malcolm took out the CD from the cover and pushed it inside a DVD player. The music slowly started,

https://youtu.be/SbOBUcupRKk

Kate looked at him and he looked back at Kate, "So, do you still look up to me?"
He looked at the bass guitar, "I do,"
Malcolm was shocked, "Why?"
"I admit what you did was wrong. But what I still admire about you is that you changed for good. You helped so many people and you are still doing that. You had the courage to keep you going and help the hurt from hurting even when you were in pain yourself. That is something I want to do too, senior," Kate smiled, "I love you for who you are right now, not what you were in the past. For me, you are perfect, Malcolm," 

Malcolm looked at him, "Thank you for saying that, Kate. I've been wanting to hear this for a laughably long time,"

-To be continued

Ryan Nolan
All I Want is you baby