balcony of my house and saw one of my neighbors standing there. ''I thought you and your family should know I found Mike in the canyon this morning. My sons and I were walking there and I saw Mike bowing as though he were praying. It didn't look too good."
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Our neighbor had held his young boys back as he investigated. Mike was dead. He had hung himself from a tree, and had died in a kneeling position on the ground, his head slumped forward. The news pounded my face as if a block of cement had struck. I thought I would pass out, but instead, I was sobbing. Within the hour, I raced up to Mike's to see how Tina was.
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She was sitting on her bed, just staring out at empty space. I would learn later that she was in shock. In a dull voice, she explained that she and her older brother, Gary, had known that Mike was dealing drugs. After Mike's body was discovered, Gary went into Mike's room and cleaned out Mike's top drawer before the police came. There, tucked underneath a few shirts, was every drug imaginable: LSD, cocaine, pot and an abundance of colorful pills. Soon after, Tina ran away. It took us hours to find her.
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My parents tried to explain why Mike died. But they couldn't. They didn't even know he was a dealer. They didn't know the ugly things we kids faced going to school every day. It was a trying time not only because Mike died, but because I was shocked to peel away the layers and find a Mike I had never known. Or maybe he was that kind, sweet boy who let his difficult life suck him into a world of deceit, fast bucks and danger.
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To this day, I always wonder if he really killed himself or if some other drug dealers helped him along the way. It was just too odd that he had supposedly hung himself from a thin tree limb but was kneeling, his weight supported by the earth.
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I will never know the answer. But I do know this: He
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