On the afternoon of April 25, 2007, Sarah Walter opened an e-mail from classmate and close friend Ryan Venys.

She was expecting a typical goofy missive or a gripe session about their literary terms test in English class at Stivers School for the Arts. Instead she was stunned by a letter darker than any she had received from the gifted artist and musician who often made her "laugh so hard my cheeks cramped."

Ryan said that he felt he wasn't good enough and he was tired of trying, tired of dealing with people. He was sorry, but the life he had wasn't what he had in mind.

He wanted more.

Surely Ryan was playing a cruel joke, Sarah reassured herself, dialing his cell phone. No answer. Suddenly his remarks earlier in the week - "I'll be dead by Friday" - no longer seemed like a joking reference to their math test.

The night passed in "just a ball of anxiety, hoping it wasn't real."

Sarah heard the news at school the next day: Ryan, 17, had shot and killed himself at his mother's home in Huber Heights. Two years later, as the K-12 Gallery for Young People opened a monthlong exhibit of Ryan's artwork, his friends still struggle to deal with his suicide. "I think of him every single day," said former girlfriend Danielle Snyder.

At the June 5 opening, longtime close friend Desmond Winton-Finklea noticed something about one of Ryan's final self-portraits, something he hadn't noticed before. In the middle of the painting, between the eyes, he spotted a smudge the size of a bullet hole. "I'm pretty sure that was an encrypted message," Desmond declared. "We did that all the time in grade school when we were passing notes. He made up this whole code."

"It was his farewell message," Ryan's father, Jim Venys, said. "Nobody saw it."

Ryan's parents wish they had seen some other message that might have saved the life of their only child. They're speaking openly about their loss because they want other teens to understand suicide is never an option.

"Suicide is a big dark secret," said Ryan's mother, Joyce Venys. "It's time for people to talk about it."