This High Schooler Told His Class He “Didn’t Care” His Bully Died, and the Room Went Silent

High school is a battlefield for a lot of kids, but for some, it is a straight-up horror movie. We all like to say that “it gets better,” but that doesn’t help when you are 17 and waking up every single morning dreading the sound of the school bell. One student on Reddit recently found himself in the middle of a moral tornado after his tormentor passed away, and his reaction was… well, it was honest.

Our narrator is a 17-year-old guy who spent his high school years being “horrendously bullied” by a classmate named Jake. Jake wasn’t just pulling pranks; he was targeting our narrator with slurs and relentless verbal abuse. Jake was popular and sociable, the kind of guy who charms the teachers and terrorizes the outcasts. Our narrator hated him. He dreaded going to school. He was living in fear.

Then, the twist. Jake unexpectedly passed away in his sleep. For most of the school, this was a tragedy. Facebook was flooded with RIP posts and heart emojis. But for our narrator? It was liberation. He didn’t feel sadness. He felt a massive weight lift off his shoulders. The source of his daily misery was gone. He felt relief.

The next day, the atmosphere at school was heavy. Kids were crying. The teacher, a 50-year-old woman trying to manage a grieving classroom, called for a moment of silence. Our narrator sat through it. But the second the silence broke, he decided he was done pretending. He said, out loud, for everyone to hear: “I don’t care that Jake died. He was a bully.”

You could probably hear a pin drop before the chaos started. The popular kids gave him death stares. People were muttering curse words under their breath. But then, something interesting happened. In the shadows of the hallway, other students came up to him. They thanked him. They whispered that they hated Jake, too. Our narrator wasn’t alone; he was just the only one brave (or reckless) enough to say the quiet part out loud.

Of course, not everyone agreed. Jake’s girlfriend—who the narrator savagely refers to as his “ex now lol”—confronted him, calling him every name under the sun. His response to a grieving teenage girl? “You need to calm down and relax.” Okay, ouch. That is ice cold. He even doubles down, judging her character for dating a bully in the first place.

This kid is absolutely unapologetic. He admits he is “f*cking glad” Jake is dead. He feels better about his life. And honestly? That is a valid human emotion. We put a lot of pressure on victims to take the high road, to forgive, to respect the dead. But why should he respect the memory of someone who treated him like trash?

Death does not automatically canonize you. It doesn’t erase the harm you caused while you were alive. Jake made a choice to be cruel, and that cruelty left a mark that didn’t vanish just because he did. Our narrator’s delivery was incredibly harsh—read the room, my guy—but his sentiment is real.

So, is he the ahole? It’s complicated. Interrupting a class mourning session to dance on a grave is definitely an ahole move socially. But feeling relief? Being glad your abuser is gone? That’s just survival. He refused to participate in the revisionist history of his own tormentor, and while it wasn’t nice, it was the brutal truth.