Please  

Don’t  
Ignore 
Charlie Khan:  
 
   
The Diary/Memoirs of A 
Dead Kid Who Was Too 
Far Gone 
 
 
 
 
A Small Introduction
My name is Charlie Khan, and I’m dead. This diary, I hope, will one
day be found by Vera Dietz, my best friend and first love. But for now, no
one (as long as this remains unread) is going to know the truth. This starts
while I’m still alive, a little before everything went wrong and I screwed my
best friend over for a bunch of people who weren’t even my real friends. Yes,
you’re going to hate me when you read some of what happens. I don’t want
your sympathy- I want the truth to be known. Vera, one day, will tell
everyone what really happened the night I died and everything leading up.
I was never really a good kid. Then again, growing up in a house where
day and night my father is using my mother as a punching bag, I’m hardened
and corrupted by the time I can walk, so I’m not going to be a little angel.
When I was about ten, I started smoking. I don’t really remember why. But I
never outgrew my addiction. Smoking got me into trouble in school, eventually,
which meant detention, which landed me into the mess known as Jenny Flick
and the Detentionheads. I always admired Vera. She was so levelheaded and
classy and a loyal friend. Even when her mom left when she was twelve, she
bore my pain along with me. I loved her so much. I’ll never be able to forgive
myself for what I put her through.
-Charlie Khan
Memories
When Vera and I were growing up together, there was a small,
sketchy looking forest that separated our houses. We spent a lot of time
playing there, and I created some imaginary spirit or whatever called The
Great Hunter. The Great Hunter was an Indian spirit who had once lived in
our wood, and he watched over us and he created a tree I called “The
Master Oak” for us to grow up in. When we were about twelve, the summer
after Vera’s mom left, my dad let us build a tree house. It took me three
weeks to “locate” the Master Oak, but we got to work the minute I finally
chose a tree. Once that tree house was built, I couldn’t leave it. I’d sleep there
for nights at a time. It was such a relief to fall asleep to the sounds of the
woods instead of the sounds of my parents screaming at one another. One
night, Vera even slept there with me. It was times like those that I feel
content remembering- times when, for once, there was nothing wrong.

Junior Year-Beginning
Not sure if I mentioned this, but early on in my life I became a heavy
smoker. It was like a de-stresser for me- yeah, I know, smoking’s bad and I
shouldn’t be doing it, especially not so young. But I got hooked. As I got more
addicted, it became more and more difficult to hide. I’d get caught smoking in
school, which would land me in detention. Being in detention over and over
again, you’re spending a lot of time with the same people. These people included
Jenny Flick, a promiscuous “mythomaniac” as Vera would say, Bill Corso, the
most dim-witted (and illiterate) kid in the school, and a few of their loyal
followers. Vera never liked them, and I had never paid much attention to
them. Jenny Flick took an immediate liking to me, asking me repeatedly to
come over after school, even offering me something I ​definitely​ wasn’t interested
in. And she shouldn’t have been either, because she had a boyfriend.
Anyway, I started spending more and more time with the
Detentionhead crowd and less and less with Vera. I liked Vera- in fact, I
loved her. But I knew I could never have her. So, my seventeen
year-old-hormones settled their sights on something a little more within reach,
and that something was Jenny Flick.
I don’t know what made me do any of this. I barely even saw
Vera anymore, because she was working four to midnight every day over at
Pagoda Pizza. So I hung out with Jenny and her crowd, and I got roped into
a horrible relationship with Jenny. That was just the beginning of the
destruction of mine and Vera’s relationship.
Junior Year-Getting Worse
Dating Jenny. Again, I don’t know why I did it. I was growing further
and further apart from Vera. Jenny, little by little, started telling me all of
these things about Vera that I was dumb enough to believe. She told me that
Vera had told the whole school about my parents.
I should have known better. I should have known that Vera
would never tell any of my secrets. She’s always been such a loyal friend. But
Jenny had me under her spell. So I retaliated- by telling everyone that Vera’s
mom used to be a stripper. Vera was hurt enough as it was, and Jenny made
it worse with all her hatred of her. It was during this time I committed three
of the worst things I’d ever done to her, after telling the whole school her
mom’s secret.
1) One day, me, Jenny, Bill, and a few others were hanging out in
the woods between Vera’s and my houses. Vera had been walking, and she
walked past and noticed us. She tried to ignore us, but of course, Jenny hated
her, so she was prey. Bill catcalled her, calling her a slut. Jenny yelled,
“Better run, little Vera!” And me? It would have been better if I had just done
nothing. But no, I picked up a mound of dog feces and threw it in her hair.
2) A few weeks later, one of Jenny’s sick-minded friends recorded
Jenny and I in the tree house one night- well, I don’t think I have to write
here what he recorded us doing. Doing that was bad enough. It was even worse
that I did it in ​our​ tree house. The tree house I made for me and Vera- who I
loved, and I knew she loved me.
3) On May Day, Vera found me alone on the bleachers with a
bottle of whiskey in a bag. I told her there that she was too good for me. She
refused to listen, and as a result, I began to act like my father. I asked her
why she hated my new friends. She told me she just didn’t like how they were
corrupting me. I couldn’t admit that that was true. So I hit her. I became my
father, and I hit the girl I loved.
Summer Before Senior Year- Too Far Gone
After I hit Vera, I knew I’d never deserve to even be in the same
room with her anymore. So I gave up. But after awhile, I realized that I was
in a toxic relationship with Jenny, and I had to get out of it. What was my
solution? I decided to run away after breaking up with her.
Jenny went crazy. She decided she was going to burn down
Zimmerman’s pet store (where her stepdad forced her to work) with me inside,
killing me along with the animals. I tried to ask Vera for help, but she was
done with me, dismissing me. So I decided to use my last hope- a bunch of
McDonald’s napkins with the truth scribbled on them in my cigar box, buried
in our tree house, and the desperate hope she’d be able to find them in case
Jenny killed me. Which I knew she would. Then, I hopped on my bike and rode
away, as fast as I could, trying to get Jenny to give up chasing me. She
threatened me the whole time, saying that night she was going to burn down
the pet store and kill me.
But I didn’t ride away. I found myself on Vera’s porch, begging
her one last time to help me. She dismissed me again. I clung to the hope that
she’d still come to Zimmerman’s that night, but I knew she wouldn’t be able
to save me.

Summer Before Senior Year-The End

So, that night. The night Jenny fell off the deep end and officially
went from mythomaniac to just plain maniac. The night she broke into my
garage and stole gas and my Zippo lighter and made off for Zimmerman’s
pet store. I decided, rather than to face it, to just hide. I drank a whole
bottle of tequila and followed that up by swallowing way too many pills in
John’s car. I just wanted to get away from my life, the life that I ruined.
Jenny burned down the pet store, but she used my Zippo lighter to
try and make it look as though I had done it. And the police were ready to
arrest me too, had I not died on my motorcycle, choking on my own vomit with
a blood alcohol level of 0.31.
So I died, with no one quite sure if my death was accidental or not.
But I died as a kid who was too far gone. A kid who couldn’t handle dealing
with all the choices he had made. And I had died with Vera hating me.
September 1st- Charlie Khan’s (My) Funeral
You know how people come up with all these explanations for what
happens after death? They talk about the afterlife, and how people’s souls go
onto be in Heaven or Hell or wherever.
Really, I’m still here. I’m the napkin on the table, the bag of
Skittles from the store down the street, the pickle on Vera’s Big Mac.
Vera.
God, I deserved to go straight to Hell for treating her the way I
did. Damn it, I loved her. And she loved me too. Growing up, we were next-door
neighbors- which meant from the time she was four years old she knew what
went on in my house, even if she didn’t understand it yet. I barely understood
it. She was my best friend, and I still loved her, even when I said and did all
those terrible things to her. Even when I screwed her over. I don’t know what
made me do it. But now, I’m glad I’m dead and out of her life. She was
always so classy, without even trying. She deserves a life where she can love
and be loved and not have any trouble or heartbreak. And now that I’m
dead, I’ll always be by her side, to make sure that happens for her.
-Charlie Khan