Today, I return to school. I was meant to start again a few days back, but I managed to push it for a little bit longer, but my mother reminded me that I had to return at some point and that putting it off would not make it any easier.

The corridors of the school feel bleak and boring, the walls a discoloured blue and the carpet a dismal grey, the large windows letting in a small amount of sunshine through the slanted blinds and the doors of the classrooms mirroring one another from end to end.

As I walk through the main building, I feel all eyes are on me. I had never even considered that things would be different when I got here. I just expected everything to continue as ever before, for the students to continue to pretend I did not exist, but instead they all glance at me – some less subtly than others – as if they are seeing a ghost.

I ignore them the best I can and concentrate on getting back to normal – the kind of normal before Johnny - not being late to class and getting on with my work and trying to be sociable and failing to be sociable and doing whatever it takes to make the day move faster.

Second and third period, double Chemistry, go quicker than first, mainly because our teacher is on parental leave and the substitute has no idea what we are meant to be doing, so the class just sit and talk.

The people on my table try and engage me in their conversation but after a while I pull a book of the bookshelf behind me and pretend to read even though my eyes will not focus enough on the words for me to see what they say.

At lunch, I head down to the cafeteria to find that Ricky and his friends are not sitting at the usual table but instead across the dining hall. I sit between Ricky and Jessica – the two people I feel most comfortable around – and all eyes are on me. It is the first day I have sat with them all since my return. Ricky had made me promise to try.

"You guys moved tables," I mutter as if to drive the conversation, so I avoided having to talk about where I was or how I was feeling.

"It's nicer here. Don't you think?" Jessica says. She was the only one at the table who did not seem fazed by my presence. I really liked Jessica. She accepted me.

"Dude," says Robert – Bob to those closest to him, but Robert to me. "You've been gone, like, 4 months. The police were asking us all these questions at first about where you had gone. What the hell happened?"

Robert's voice reminds me of a surfer from an old-fashioned film I watched once with my grandma before she passed away. Perhaps because the film was made in America and so was he – so much so that I often expect the word 'cowabunga' to follow up after he speaks. Though, he does not look much like a surfer. He has sleek black hair, which is spiked up with gel, and a defined, pointed face.

I shake my head at him as if to say that I do not want to talk about it but really, I mean that it is none of his business.

Jessica's arm finds its way across my shoulders. "Who cares where you were! It's just good to have you back," she says and flashes a smile at me, her large grin goofy on her impeccably skinny face, though she still looks beautiful, her eyes a glistening shade of blue and her hair a soft auburn.

"It's really good you're here, Harry," Hope says, and they all smile at me. I know most of them do not want me here. I am only here because I am the boy whose best friend committed suicide.

"I'm sure me not being here didn't disrupt everything that much, Hope." I used to like her name but saying it out loud now makes me feel queasy.

"Still," she says, and that is all she says.

Despite everything, it feels good to be back as I sit and listen to their rambling conversation, feeling as though I had gone back a year and everything that had happened since then was just an overly extended nightmare.

The conversation steers from parties and booze to exams and coursework. It all feels normal – like the kind of problems a teenager should have, not the kind where your best friend commits suicide and you must find a way to keep yourself psychologically stable, or the kind where you fear going home in case your father and his belt await your arrival.

I blink slowly and my father is gone from mind. I often wish it were that easy to blink him away in real life.

"Have you spoken to Lizzie?" Hope asks. I tell myself she asks because she cares, not because Lizzie is always the focal point of school gossip.

"Not yet. But I will." I knew she was with these walls somewhere, but the year 10's lunch break didn't often overlap with ours Year 11's. Not that it ever stopped her and Johnny from ensuring they had lunch together at least once a week.

"It that a good idea?" Ricky asks, though I was unaware he was listening, and I note that it is the first thing he had said since I sat down. I glance at him, but his eyes look away from me. He looks the same as always – smart and clean cut.

Jessica suggests getting Lizzie out of the house with some friends to cheer her up. "I could take her shopping," she adds, and I nod, despite knowing that Lizzie will not go anywhere with Jessica. She knew Jessica did not like her very much.

Again, prom becomes the topic of conversation. I learn that Hope and Calvin are going together, who have apparently been dating for two months, and the others are getting a posh car together, which I would not fit into with them. They apologise for it, but I have no intention of going to prom anyway.

When it is nearly time for lesson, everyone else stands to leave and I go to do the same only to be dragged back down by a muscular hand on my arm. I turn to face the source – Ricky. His eyes are narrowed with concern.

"3 months, Harry," he begins, having to raise his voice slightly so I can hear him over the noise forming around us. "You could have been dead for all we knew. Just one sign of life would have done - anything."

I take his hand and place it over my heart. "There. I am alive. Good enough sign for you?"

He slaps away my hand from his and removes it from my chest and his frown is saddening, and I almost feel guilty for not ringing him while I was away. He was my first proper friend here and without him, I would still be sitting alone at lunchtime in the stalls of the bathroom.

"You've changed into a right arrogant sod. Do you know that?"

"I'm sorry," I mumble out as sincere as I can manage. "I just didn't know what to do after, well, you know. . ."

"I know but we could've helped you. I could've helped you."

I shake my head. "Nobody could have helped."

"How are you, Harry? And do not lie to me. I know when you're lying."

"Honestly, I'm not great, but then again neither is half the population."

"I don't care about half the population. I care about you."

"Johnny killed himself." I say it as a cold-hard fact to stop myself from falling to pieces as I say the words. "How do you think I'm doing?"

The late bell rings for next period and we both say nothing else but instead move into the crowd of people that are making their way into the corridor. Fourth period would be Design Tech, but I decide not to go. Instead I go to the bike sheds where Johnny and I used to smoke whenever we skipped lessons.

The usual group of smokers are outside laughing, and I ask one of the rugby players – Tony – for two cigarettes, which under normal circumstances would have gotten me a punch in the arm but today he gives them me willingly. I silently thank Johnny for being dead as me grieving seemingly gives me an unlimited supply of cigarettes but then I hope that, wherever he is, he knows I am joking.

I stand by the wall, one leg on the ground, the other against it, and light the first cigarette. I finish quickly, sending ringlets into the air but it does not make me feel as cool as Johnny used to look. Then I light the other immediately after and Tony glances at me from his group of rugby hollow-heads, bewildered by my actions.

"To absent friends," I shout across to him and I start to smoke the cigarette that would have been Johnny's. I smoke it for him and for a moment it feels like it connects me to him, even ever so slightly, and I take small puffs so that it lasts a lot longer than the last.

But eventually, like all things, it burns out.