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Mario Hernandez begged his mother to take him to Stephen Cannistraci's viewing. His sister had dated Stephen, and the two boys skateboarded on the same concrete tabletops and bowl at Moab's Swanny City Park.

Though the thought of seeing a dead body made her queasy, Sharla Lovato relented. She stayed just long enough for her son to glimpse the open casket. Mario cried.

"How could he do that?" he asked his mother.

"Please, Mario, don't do that to me," she told him on the way out.

Stacey Hernandez, 17, believes her younger brother tried to honor his mom's wishes. But the boy was competitive and took teasing and bullying hard, she says.

Maybe other kids didn't like that he won bike races and skateboarding contests. Mario was also a "ladies man," and lots of girls complemented his long eyelashes. Hernandez guesses maybe that made classmates jealous.

Whatever the reason, kids picked on him at the skate park. Friends turned on him at school.

Mario often was angry or sad, and that led to tears.

Life at home was also far from ideal. His mother battled methamphetamine addiction for much of her son's childhood, and the boy lived with his grandmother on and off. Lovato has been clean for five years, but there was still much transition in Mario's young life. He never knew his biological father, and in 2004, Lovato was divorcing a man Mario liked. Mario and the man had been building a clubhouse together on property in the nearby LaSalle Mountains the summer before he died.

"I would tell him it was OK to cry," Hernandez said recently, looking back at the end of her brother's life. "He would cry a lot. We would cry together."

His tenderheartedness showed in concern for others. He always urged his mother to stop to help broken-down motorists.

His family said Mario didn't act like someone about to take his own life. He had just started eighth grade. He opened a bank account with money saved from a part-time job. He bought a bike, an electric guitar and new school clothes. He wanted to attend military school.

"I had no warning," his mother said recently.

But Mario took his life in exactly the same way Stephen did. In a closet.

He wrote that he was sorry for doing what he did, and that he would see everybody on the other side.

"He had a big heart," Lovato said. "Probably too big for his brain."

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"Call my Dad ..." — From Brandon's suicide letter, found Sept. 13, 2004