Remembering Zak: My Brother, My Friend, My Ghost

A raw, personal tribute to my childhood best friend, Zak Conine. This is the first time I’ve shared our story publicly. For anyone who knew Zak, or wants to understand the bond we had, this is for you.

If you are coming here from Zak’s memorial page, or if you were part of our lives during any chapter of this story, thank you for reading.

This is the most honest and complete account I have ever written about him.

If you want the raw truth of our brotherhood, this is it.

There are people who walk into your life and it feels like they were written into your story before you ever met them. They show up when you are too young to understand the significance, and years later you realize they changed everything. For me, that person was Zak Conine. My childhood best friend. My chosen brother. The person who made my world bigger and brighter and more chaotic than I ever expected.

He died in 2020. I never wrote about him until now. I couldn’t. There was too much pain and guilt and unfinished business inside me. But his birthday came around again, and something in me said it is time. Time to honor him. Time to remember him. Time to give his story the space it deserves.

This is the whole truth.
This is our life.
This is Zak.

The Day Everything Started

I was about eight when Zak moved into our neighborhood in Georgia. My friend Garrett mentioned something about a new kid across the street, but I was shy back then and didn't think much of it. Then one afternoon my parents yelled from the living room, “Brandon, it’s for you!”

I walked to the front door expecting Garrett. Instead, there stood this pale kid with strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and the biggest stack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards I had ever seen in my life. He looked awkward and excited and nervous all at once. He asked if I wanted to see his cards. That was his entire pitch for friendship. Something about it felt pure. Honest. Like he was asking for more than just a card-trading session. And somehow I understood that even then.

I sprinted upstairs, grabbed all my cards, and ran out the door with him. We walked down the street pointing at artwork and monsters like it was the coolest thing in the world. By the time we reached Garrett’s house, we were bonded. Two kids who had just become brothers and didn’t even know it yet.

That moment is burned into me. Zak knocking on my door with those cards changed the trajectory of my life.

His House, His Family, His Storm

Zak’s house became my second home. His mom, Robyn, welcomed me like I was her own son. She was kind, gentle, always working, always exhausted, always trying to hold everything together. She fed me dinner like I lived there. She let me stay on school nights and weekends and basically any time I needed somewhere to be.

But behind that warmth was a storm. His dad, Joe, was unpredictable. He didn’t hit anyone as far as I knew, but his temper controlled the entire atmosphere of the house. Loud fights. Sudden outbursts. The kind of tension that makes you instinctively step lightly and breathe quietly. If you were in his path on a bad day, you were the target. Guest or not.

Zak was used to it. He shouldn’t have been.

Whenever Joe started yelling, Zak would close his bedroom door with this practiced calm and we would disappear into our own world. Action figures. Legos. Anime on Toonami. We built universes on that carpeted floor, and those universes were safer than the one outside.

I didn’t realize it then, but those hours were more than playtime. They were survival.

The Neighborhood Boys

Garrett lived down the street and Stephen lived around the corner. We became a little crew. We played manhunt for hours, sprinting through yards and hiding behind bushes, using every inch of the neighborhood like our personal battleground. We rode bikes under the powerlines behind my house, climbing dirt mounds and pretending we were characters in whatever show we were obsessed with at the time.

Zak was goofy. Clumsy sometimes. Soft spoken until he felt safe. But once he opened up, he was hilarious. He had this way of committing to a joke that would make everyone around him break down laughing.

Even now, when I picture him as a kid, the first thing that comes to mind is that mix of nervous sweetness and sudden boldness.

The Early Hurt and the First Big Shift

I wasn’t always kind to Zak. I had older siblings who bullied me and sometimes I took that out on him. Shitty kid behavior. Stuff I regret deeply now. There was a moment when I accidentally smacked him in the face with a spring-loaded umbrella handle. It hit him in the mouth. He got a fat lip and cried hard. Something in me broke when I saw that. I didn’t want to be someone who hurt this kid who showed me nothing but love and loyalty.

That was the moment I stopped treating him like someone beneath me and started treating him like a brother.

The Middle School Years

Middle school hit and everything changed. We moved from Legos and action figures into video games, music, and girls. We played RuneScape nonstop. One day Zak logged into my account and stole all my gold and loot. He was terrible at hiding it. I was furious, but not enough to stop loving him. We laughed about it years later.

He dyed his hair black trying to look like Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance. He loved that band with a passion. We listened to AFI, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down. We blasted music and felt emotions too big for our bodies.

We got our first girlfriends around the same time. Mine was named Taylor. His was Amanda. I still remember hyping him up as he tried to hold her hand for the first time. He was awkward and sweet and so damn nervous. But he cared deeply, even then.

There were nights we stayed up too late watching Family Guy or Celebrity Deathmatch. There were mornings we got on the bus together half-asleep, laughing about dumb jokes no one else would understand.

Those years feel golden when I look back. Everything was loud and colorful and innocent.

The Xbox Christmas

There is one memory from middle school that has stayed vivid all these years. One Christmas, Zak wanted an Xbox more than anything. He talked about it endlessly. His dad insisted he wasn’t getting it. Made him cry. Mocked him in front of us.

On Christmas morning, Zak opened all his gifts and one of them was just an Xbox game. Joe repeated that he wasn’t getting the console. Zak cried again, quietly, heartbroken. Then Joe walked into a room Zak wasn’t allowed in and came back with a big wrapped box. Zak tore the paper off and there it was. The Xbox.

He cried again, harder this time. Joy and confusion tangled together. That moment captured everything about his relationship with his father. Love mixed with cruelty. Hope mixed with fear. Happiness always shaken up with emotional whiplash.

Zak Finds the Guitar

At some point during seventh or eighth grade, Zak got a guitar. A black knockoff Ibanez. At first he messed around with it, then got bored, then sold it. Later he bought another one. And this time it stuck.

He played for hours. He learned tabs online. One of the first bands he obsessed over was the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He learned By The Way and Californication among others.

He was obsessive about it. Focused in a way most kids never are.

And holy shit, he was good. He had that rare gift where he could hear a song once and play it from muscle memory. His fingers moved like the instrument was alive in his hands. He became a musician before he even realized he was one.

Sometimes I felt like I was losing him to that guitar. But in reality, he was finding a piece of himself.

High School Chaos and the First Dark Turn

High school was wild. We smoked weed together for the first time using scraps from Joe’s stash. Smoked it out of a crushed Coke can like absolute idiots. We sneaked out to parties. We lied to our parents. We drank cheap alcohol and thought we knew everything about life.

One party stands out. A senior was throwing a massive house party. We lied to our parents and said we were staying at a friend’s house. We were caught. Zak’s dad found us and called the cops. A senior pulled me into the woods and saved my ass from getting arrested. Zak somehow fled too. We both got in deep shit afterward.

Looking back, that moment foreshadowed everything that would come next. The pushing of limits. The flirting with danger. The experimentation with substances. The feeling of invincibility that never survives adulthood.

The Drama That Broke Everything

Zak had a charisma you couldn’t teach. Girls loved him. He loved them back, intensely. Too intensely. He crossed lines. First Stacy, then Mary Jane. Then eventually Kimmi, who was dating my close friend Jimmi.

Zak wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t trying to hurt people. He was just a super-empath who gravitated toward people who felt unloved or unseen. He filled emotional gaps. He felt deeply and acted impulsively.

But those choices damaged friendships. They damaged trust. They damaged my bond with him.

Living Together, Falling Apart

Years later, when life pushed us into adulthood too fast, I ended up renting a house. Zak had nowhere to go. Robyn had moved to North Carolina after divorcing Joe. Zak stayed behind. I let him move in with me because I wanted to protect him. I wanted to be the brother he needed.

But then it happened again. He crossed a line. This time with Kimmi. And it happened in my own house. I felt betrayed. Torn between loyalty and morals. Jimmi, who had been planning to propose to her, came to me and I snapped under the weight of all of it. I told the truth.

I told Zak he had to leave.
I thought I was teaching him a lesson.
I thought tough love would help him.
I thought it was the right thing to do.

It wasn’t.

It pushed him back into the only place he had left. A place full of darkness and addiction. A place where he became a courier for his father’s drug use. And a place where heroin found him.

And eventually, heroin killed him.

The Final Phone Call

The night he died, Zak called me.

I didn’t answer.

I was too busy. I figured I would call him tomorrow. I figured whatever he wanted to say could wait.

It couldn’t.

He overdosed on the floor of his Dad's bedroom in a house he was never meant to call home. He choked on his own vomit. He died on the floor, and Joe had to wake up to that.

There is no poetic way to say that.
It fucking hurts.
It has always hurt.

That missed call haunts me. It probably always will.

To Zak

Zak, if there is any way your spirit can see this, I want you to know the truth.

You mattered.
You mattered to me more than I ever said.
You shaped my childhood.
You shaped my heart.
You shaped the man I became and the man I am still trying to be.

I’m sorry.
I miss you.
I love you.

Happy birthday, brother.
I hope you found the peace you never got here.