Huffington Magazine Issue 46 | Page 39

BY MALLIKA RAO No one understood why a Santa Monica High School student killed himself one afternoon in early 2011, leaping from the roof of a 10-story hotel as his teammates from the school baseball team watched in horror from a field across the street. He wasn’t “the kind of person you would expect to have these feelings,” the boy’s rabbi told the Los Angeles Times. “Something went horribly, horribly wrong.” ¶ City officials fixated on that something. Where in the 14-yearold-boy matrix of hormones, classes, family and friends had the seeds of such sadness been planted?