What do you want to be when you grow up?

Mrs Smith had once asked us that question in an English lesson a few months ago, before the incident. She handed round plain pieces of paper and told us to write down our career path; our hopes and dreams; and the kind of person we wanted to become.

I wrote: I want to be a writer, perhaps. Maybe a journalist. But I would also like to make a difference in the world if it is truly possible to do so. And I'd like to have a big family and live in a big house and be happy.

I wrote that down at the time because I could see that future for myself, and I sat back in my chair once I had finished writing and I scanned the room to see everybody else scribble their dreams too.

Until my eyes fell upon Johnny Turner. His pen remained beside his still-blank piece of paper. His eyes fixated on it, like it was the hardest algebra equation he'd ever seen. Like it was an impossible question.

Now, Johnny is dead, and I am simply lain in bed wondering how that can be.

I hate to begin on such a solemn note, but I am afraid that is simply how it is. You are only alive until you are not, and for some people, the not comes quicker than you would ever expect it to.

It is not my bed I am lain on. At least, it is not a bed I have called my own in over seven years. It is the bed in my aunt's spare bedroom.

From a very young age, I would often stay at my aunt's house on a Friday night, while my father went to play poker at his friends and my mother had a night in to herself. Quite frankly, it was the highlight of my week. My aunt was not anything like my parents - she was happy.

There was a computer in 'my' room – that is what my aunt always called it - and my uncle and I would often play cheap looking video games together and, when he would go to work the night shift, I would write poems all evening until it was time to go to bed. My aunt always told me I was born to write, though I think the poems I wrote back then could put my more recent work to shame.

My aunt would put me to bed each Friday and read me a story, and without fail every time, she would take the fold away alarm clock from the bedside table and place it in the draw so I could no longer hear it.

The first few times I stayed, that rhythmic ticking of the clock kept me awake.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

When my father and his friends stopped talking due to reason still unknown to me, I did not go to aunt's house anymore. In fact, by the age of 9, my mother and my aunt argued, over further things I do not know, and they stopped talking subsequently.

I had not spoken to my aunt since then and yet, when I ran away from home nearly a month ago, I ended up on her doorstep. I was not even sure she still lived there, but it was the only place I could think to run to. She was the only person in the world I knew had once truly loved me, and I hoped a part of her still would.

I never stopped thinking about you, Harry, she had said as we sat at the dinner table the first night. I tried to call a few times to speak to you, but your parents decided it was in your best interest for us not to talk. However, the truth is, it was only in theirs.

Everything about her house had changed. The old computer had been sold and an Apple laptop sat in its place. The racer bed sheets from the once-was-my-bedroom had been traded in for one with a floral pattern. And although various things of my uncles remained within the house, he did not. He had been dead for 4 years, but I had only known for 4 weeks.

The clock on the bedside table of the guest room had stopped working, too, and my aunt had thrown it out many years ago. She had not replaced it. And yet when I first entered the room, I could still hear it.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

I move to sit at the desk in the once-was-my-room and open the laptop in front of me, finding the newest version of Microsoft Word, and I simply stare at the blank page.

I want to write. I want to try to describe the events that have recently both brightened and burdened my life, and yet I cannot find the right words to begin. I have never really struggled to write before. Ever since I began writing those poems in this exact room when I was a child, I never seemed to be able to stop writing - poems and stories alike.

And yet, today I cannot find the words to say anything at all.

Normally when I write, I do so fictionally. I can write fairytales and adventures about all kinds of interesting people that exist only in my mind. Perhaps that is why I cannot write today. I have never written about reality before and explaining something you feel and think, as a pose to something you imagine you could feel and think, are two completely different things.

How can you even describe a feeling?

Like when Hadley Brown broke my game boy in year 3, I was angry. And there is no other way to describe the way I was feeling other than to say that I was angry. And people can only understand what I mean by saying that I felt angry because they have experienced the emotion before. . .

You cannot explain what anger is. You can only feel it.

So, trying to explain what I felt when Johnny died, it is improbable. I had never felt that feeling until that moment. It is like all those other emotions I had ever felt beforehand suddenly became less substantial, and unless someone has felt that feeling before, I cannot describe it. It is like trying to describe a colour to a blind person.

'Johnny was my best friend for less than a year but in that year alone he had managed to help me more than anybody else had my entire life.'

I type, and then I delete it.

I lounge back into the chair, allowing myself to relax for the first time in a while, and close my eyes. This was my first mistake. Ever since the incident I could not close my eyes without imagining it.

There Johnny was, stood on the highest point of the building with his arms spread wide and his jacket flapping briskly in the wind, his eyes tight. Then he jumped and, at first, it almost looked like he was flying.

Oh, how I had hoped he was flying.

Ever since he jumped, I have been trying to figure out why he did it, and the more I try to think about it, the more I think I further from the truth. I have made a list of all the possible reasons but none of them seem reason enough for him to have done it. Perhaps it was everything. But in the end, I can only hope that the reason was not me.

'When Johnny jumped of the building, I felt...'

I type, and then delete it.

There are no words that come close to describing it. Of course, I could say that I felt sad, but that word does not do the pain justice. And I was angry - to much more of an extent that I was when Hadley Brown broke my Gameboy, but too much less of an extent when compared to the sadness.

The sadness consumed me.

I wish I could find a way to portray that feeling in a way those who have not felt it would understand, but I cannot quite find a way to put it in to words other than to say that it could have killed me. It felt like it did.

Ironically, I think the word for all of this is ineffable.

Perhaps it is only in my nature to write about made up events. To write about people who do not experience these unexplainable emotions because their lives are too magnificent for them to ever truly feel them.

I have a mountain of books back at home. Some of which are happy, some of which are sad. And yet, I have never found an author who has correctly put the pain into words. I wonder if, like me, they simply cannot describe it.

I hear my aunt's bedroom door open and suddenly I am all too aware that it has become light outside. I have been up all night.

Tick tock.

"Harry?" I hear her call from outside my room. The door creeks open, and she gently peeps round the door, her intention clearly to check if I had woken up yet. She looked baffled to see me sat in the chair.

"Good morning," I say. "Did you sleep well?"

"Have you been to bed?"

It is strange seeing my aunt try to fill the role of a responsible adult. Her hair is a dyed pale pink. When I was younger, it was a vibrant blue. She often wears paint splattered clothes too, or dungarees. She always looks the part of an art teacher, though she teaches English and Math, too.

"Yes," I state. I do not want to worry her, no more than I already have at least.

She gazes at me quizzingly. We have had this conversation many times since I had arrived here, each time slightly different and with less build up. She had become well-tuned to my trivial lies.

"I mean, have you been to sleep?" She tries to look stern, but her tone betrays her. Her voice always portrays her nature well: soft and calming. I shake my head no and she sighs noticeably. "Did you at least try?"

"Yes," I state, trying to match her tone. "I tried at 11, then again at 2, and gave up by 4."

She nods in understanding, and I know she truly understands. She has lost many people in this lifetime and, although she never explicitly said it, I knew she had been in a similar place.

"Do you want any breakfast? Or is it classed as supper for you?"

"Not today."

She has been trying so hard to help me ever since I had arrived on her doorstep. She cooked for me, and bought me new clothes, and listened to me when I talked. And not that normal kind of listening, but the kind where you truly hear every single word. That is why I tried not to say too much to her, because I knew she would truly hear it.

When I talk about Johnny, she looks at me with sad eyes, but I do not know if it is because she feels my pain or if she is remembering her own.

I wish I would have been there for her when my uncle passed. He was only 28 when he died, a mere few years after my mother lost contact with them both. My aunt had opened-up to me about it a few weeks back. They had argued before he had left over something 'barely significant' and then he never came home.

Two days later, she was called in to identify the body.

You like books, don't you? She had asked me. Well imagine reading the most epic story of all time, only to be let down by the ending. That is how it felt, Harry. Our story should not have ended that way.

Although her words did not describe the feeling, I knew exactly what she meant. When I think of the ending of Johnny's story, it was awfully tragic, and he deserved so much more.

I guess that is another reason I like reading and writing fairytales because I know that in those books, the ending was guaranteed to be a good one. I liked writing the first line 'once upon a time' because it meant that there would be a 'happily ever after'.

Once upon a time was a promise.

"I'm leaving for work in 5 minutes," she says to me. "When I get back, we will do a math session, and maybe some chemistry. I know you struggle with that one."

I nod. Not only had my aunt been kind to me and nurtured me these past months, but she also undertook my schooling. It is because of her that I can be away from school – away from a school without Johnny in it.

"Thank you." I have said those words to her every day since I arrived, and I hope they have not lost their meaning. I cannot thank her enough.

When she leaves, I hover my fingers back over the laptop keys once again. All I need is one sentence to get me started; one that was truthful instead of promising.

Tick tock.

The ticking has become like a background track to my thoughts. It is barely notable at times, but it is always there.

Tick tock.

It is like my own personal reminder that time is forever of the essence and that I do not have forever. Just like Johnny did not have forever.

From the day we are born, death starts his steady approach towards us. For some people, he walks faster than others and for some people, he finds alternate routes.

When my uncle died, that day death drove a car.

Here, we do not get forever. I am a simple sentence in the story of the universe. And although that makes me feel incredibly small, I must remind myself that sometimes the right sentence can change the world.

Final note: You will notice I did not begin this story with "Once upon a time".