a little better :)

“In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”
“Why didn’t anybody tell us?” Lujan’s mom asked from the podium on the stage of the funeral home, her voice barely discernable and unstable from the trembles of anguish and devastation. She stood there glaring at the crowd—like a judge looks down from the bench at a convicted killer—listening to the somber murmur of sniffles and gentle weeping that hovered like a dense fog, above the hanging heads of people who couldn’t bear to look her in the face. “This didn’t have to happen” she continued pointing to the casket, her red eyes still fixated spitefully at them. “This didn’t have to hap--.” She repeated, this time rushing of the stage, unable to finish, and unable to confront the silent, weeping crowd. The people who were watching her, observed her walking hurriedly down the steps of the stage, striding faster and faster until reaching her seat, where she collapsed into herself, and exalted an abrupt wail that decrescendoed into a wheezing sob. And aside from these weeps, the room fell silent again in anticipation for the next person to trudge up to the podium and grieve to the crowd. But no one else went up, and anticipation grew into awkwardness. And the funeral director looked at the crowd intently and anxiously until deciding to take the stage for prayer. “Dear Lord in Heaven, Let us bow heads together in grievance of the death of Dylan Lujan…”
After the service, everyone stood outside in front of the funeral home, and formed into about ten circles of about ten people each. Outside, the overcast sky retained the same gloom that the sniffling murmurs held inside the funeral home and some people joked that “God was weeping too”. I didn’t laugh, because I knew it was monsoon season, and storms had been occuring all that week. And after about ten minutes of forced conversation, the sky exploded abruptly—warning everything on Earth about the oncoming storm—with the type of thunder that seems to resonate with a low rumble long after the initial strike. From the circle I was standing in, no one was talking, so I was looking at everyone else that was gathered outside, and saw Lujan’s mom. Her question was ringing loud in my ear, but she should have known. How could she not have? His burn marks on his hands, his constant running nose, his constant droned expression, dropping out of school (ehow): it seems to obvious what he was doing.
“Kyle remember that fight a couple months ago where that kid got jumped?” my friend Andrew asked, interupting my focus on Lujan’s mom’s ignorance.
“Yeah” I responded, taking the deep breath that people take when transitioning from profound personal thought to social interaction. “Why?” this time sounding interested, and noticing the encroaching smell of rain and
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure” I answer, trying bring myself back to that day, trying to picture that kids face. But I couldn’t. I was standing across campus when I saw everyone in the court yard coalesce in a fury around a violent commation. I remember standing back on my tip-toes, trying to see over the silent crowds heads……