When I was in 5th grade, Joey Stoy was a junior. I didn't know Joey personally, but i knew that he was on top of everything. Joey was the ideal student. He was the kind of college-bound, athletically talented kid that every parent wants to point at in the yearbook and say, "That's my son." He was a character, a discussion, a toast, and the embodiment of everything no one could get enough of. But it's not the life that i know about Joey Stoy. I only remember the day he died.

On that day, I was in class with his little brother, Jarred Stoy. My shiny desk rested adjacent to his, and we impatiently sat through a lecture about sedimentary rocks. I had moved my gaze to look outside, where birds flew uncaged and flowers bloomed upwards and above the grass. Beyond them lay the mountains that are walls to the small town of Cresson, reminding us that we will always be kept small under them like a puddle under tires.

I remember hearing that Joey's brother had bought a sports car, and on that day it was Joey's turn to drive it. He was driving around with his brother and two friends in the back, and they were all clamped down with seatbelts. Down the mountain Joey went, roaring down the straightaway, and rounding a bend that led them towards an oncoming schoolbus. When Joey saw the bus and tried to stop, it was too late; the car impacted with the bus and they swerved into a guardrail. Joey went unconscious then. His brother, Jon, tried to get Joey out of the car while others called an ambulance, but the seatbelt was in the way. Joey had just bled and bled, and there was nothing that could've been done, so Joey died there in his brother's new sports car.

At school, i shifted in my chair, uncomfortable at the boring lecture of sedimentary rocks. I listened to the click of approaching polished shoes on a wax floor. It was the principal, standing in the doorway, and i could tell something wasn't right. His face was drained white, and he tugged at his tie like it was choking him. I felt the air still, the teacher's words halt, and i could feel the mountains grow a little bigger. He called Jarred out. I didn't see Jarred for another three months. Jarred, the name recognizable, but the person not.

Now, you can drive by Joey's grave, as a cross rests beside the guardrail he died next to. There are always flowers there, and sometimes his friends decorate it for the holidays. Cresson holds a memorial run for him every year.

Sometimes i wake up in the night thinking about Joey right before he crashed. He must've forgotten about his state qualification for cross country, or the presidental arrangements he made for the German Club, or maybe that he would never leave Cresson. I think about how everything that could've come of Joey suddenly ended when he hit the bus. His parents, his friends, his future, and everything connected to him was the puddle under tires, and i often wonder how it could recollect after Joey. Though the guardrail is now straightened, and i am currently in high school, Joey's memory remains strong, and the things he never got to do stay undone.

In the years that followed his death, his name was decreasingly mentioned, but his legacy was not as easily forgotten. His existence was short but both necessary and meaningful. I realize now that the end of it brought the town and the people together in family-like way, renewing a common empathy and love that was once neglected. As i grew older, i saw that the way people felt about Joey never changed. No one ever became frustrated with the way the trees and flowers still bloomed every summer even though Joey was not there to see it. Most of all though, i learned to come to peace with the day Joey died. Life doesn't go on for how long a person wants it to, be it forever or only a few days. Sometimes it is brief despite the plans and expectations someone has for the future. Joey knew this, and that was why everyone loved and respected him; he saw the privilage of living each day knowing that it could end at any moment. When he died, it triggered the same appreciation in all of us, and people starting living with a new mindset. People came to peace with Joey's death and began to love life again because that's what Joey taught them to do. 

I never did know Joey Stoy. But if i could, i would thank him for teaching us to live above the mountains that surround us and not under them.