He tries his best, following friend’s suicide

“We lived in a house in Spring with no neighbors around us. We were there since I was born, so a good 16 years. It was me, my mom, my dad, a younger brother and a sister.

“We were renting from this company, and they shut down. All of a sudden, in the middle of my sophomore year at Klein High School, they told us we had to move out. My dad asked if we could wait until the summer so that we could finish the school year. Luckily, they agreed.

“We ended up moving to Dayton near my grandma. She has a lot of land, and she gave us like half an acre where we built a new home. It was a culture shock, moving away from my hometown, starting over at a much smaller high school, and living out in the country. I really missed the city and all the people I knew. One of them was a childhood friend, all the way from kindergarten until I left.

“Back in January, I was on the phone with someone. We were just playing games or whatever. It was really late, like 4 a.m. And I got this call from an unknown number. I answered, and it was the mom of my old friend. She wanted to let me know that he had committed suicide.

“It was such a shock. It came out of the blue. I had never heard of any problems he was having. I thought he was doing fine.

“It was pretty hard to deal with. It’s like, you feel so sad, and you don’t really want to do anything. You don’t want to go to school. You don’t want to go to work. You just want to stay in your room 24-7.

“Then one day I woke up, and I was just kind of talking to myself. I don’t remember exactly what I said. But it was like, ‘Hey, if you can hear me, know that I will never forget you. And I’ll do my best to impress you.’ So when it comes to work or college or anything else I’m involved in, that’s what I do. I try my best. I try my best.”

— Christopher Hernandez

Christopher is a freshman at Lee College. He is studying business, and he hopes to become an accountant.