Sometimes I think that if Sam had actually made his peace with god none of this would have happened. But I can’t bring myself to let him go. His funeral was on a bright sunny day, it was fall and if it hadn’t have been such a terrible day I would have said it was beautiful. I remember the same night Sam was bleeding in the park; I was lying in my bed. I couldn’t get to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. In my minds eye now I can see his blood running down to the gutter, trickling over the curb, running along that long groove in the road until it reached a storm drain, then it would stain the metal grate red as it slid into eternity. I couldn’t bring Sam back, no one could. Daron and Elias sat in my room with me, and we just sat there, for three hours we thought about our friend, dead.

I mentioned earlier that Daron was in love. Alexis was her name, and he loved her more than he loved his own life. I think she, just by existing saved some lives. She was a friend of Evelyn’s. This fact bound Daron to doing nothing. If he wanted to stay in her good books, he could take revenge. He wanted it, I could see the anger in his eyes, some little sophomore stabbing his best friend, and he would have killed the entire sophomore class if he could’ve. But he didn’t he just sat there, staring into space, cursing the god that made him.

This is when things start to go insane. Our town was a haven for border jumpers, and not to be racist or anything, but drugs and weapons were not in short supply. I never dreamed that semi-automatic weapons would be so easy to find. But five of Sam’s other friends did, and they were nowhere near as peaceful as us.

Tane was coming home from school. His green jacket stood out from the red, gold, and brown leaves on the ground. Beams of sunlight pierced the canopy of trees that lined his block, and the sight looked heavenly. The beams came down, bathing the street in an iridescent glow. Shafts that came down through the trees looked like then were beams of heaven sent by god himself. If not or the tragedy that day, I would once again say that the scene was beautiful.

Even the most pristine beauty, it seems, was created only for the purpose of being destroyed. Tane rounded the corner, and walked with slow measured pace towards his home. His house wasn’t big, his family wasn’t rich. The kids who took his life weren’t gang members, they weren’t rich either, they were middle class normal high schoolers. The car didn’t scream around the corner like Sam’s did. He only heard its engine when it was too late. The sunroof of the obsidian car was open and a person with a bandanna on, old west style, covering his nose and mouth, was standing in the back seat. The two windows were open, and men with the same garb were leaning out of them. Each held an automatic weapon in hand. The car slowed, coming just parallel with Tane, and his head turned back, just enough to see the car. He blinked.

The boy in the rear window opened up first. His aim was a little off, and the tree to Tane’s left exploded with bullets, but before Tane could react to this, the boy in the sunroof squeezed his trigger. Rounds peppered the stone steps of Tane’s house, and Tane’s blood flecked the sidewalk, as the third man fired, his aim true, piercing Tane’s body. Eighty seven slugs in all. Between the three of them they pumped eighty-seven bullets into him.

I went to Tane’s funeral. Daron couldn’t, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. I remember the way his mother sobbed over the body, and I remember his face, arranged into the ghost of a smile by the funeral home, washed clean of the blood. His body, clothed in a plain black suit, with a blue tie, was smiling up at me. There was one odd thing about the funeral that I remember. His father never shed a tear. I don’t know if he cried when he first learned of his son’s death, or when he saw his son’s body, but I know that he didn’t cry when they lowered his son into the ground.

I remember his eyes though. The sight that will haunt me for the rest of my life, even worse than Daron being handcuffed, was Tane’s father, Rick’s, eyes. They were bloodshot, and looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. But they were also black, with bags of huge size underneath them. It looked as if they had shrunken into his head at least an inch. Those haunted, sunken eyes will stay in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

I wish I could tell you that it ended there. I don’t know how word got out, but somehow a rumor started about how the police had the four boys that were in the car that day in custody. I guess this filtered up to another parent, who told Rick. Rick was in a bad way. His pride and joy, football and track star was dead. He needed revenge, he needed something to make his son’s death go away, and, apparently, justice just wasn’t enough.

So he took his deer hunting rifle, and broke into the movie theater across from the county courthouse. He got onto the roof, and set his rifle on the stone. I imagine it was cold. I can feel the cold that his fingers would have felt was they brushed the cold bricks. Maybe it would’ve affected him if he hadn’t been completely numb; his son’s death had rocked him to the core. As the police were bringing the four boys to trial, he leaned his neck down, and sighted along the barrel, looking into the scope. His crosshairs crossed over first one boy, then the second, the third, and finally the fourth. It wouldn’t be until forensics examined the bodies that the world would know that the shots came from on top of the movie theater. But he dropped them, all four perfect kill shots. His son’s bloody green letterman’s jacket was found on the steps of the courthouse the next morning.

Rick did a good job, his wife established his alibi, and the rifle was never found. The tragedy should’ve stopped there. Six people had already been murdered. I wish I could tell you that it all ended here. I wish I could’ve done something to stop this vicious cycle, this sick carnival of killing. But it didn’t end. Police cars were on double patrol, the whole city was tense.

Rick wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t poor either Tane was only son, but he had a three year old daughter. . He had a nice car, a Mercedes actually. His Mercedes was nice it had leather seats, and push-button ignition. It also had a remote locking system, the little buttons you click to lock and unlock it. Well, it also had a remote ignition button, and he was walking to his car when he pushed it. His wife and daughter were already gone, and the morning air was crisp. The grass on his lawn seemed unusually green, and as he looked at it he saw his son running and playing on that lawn. He had watched his son grow from a little bundle of cloth, to a man. He had had those father-son talks, and had been looking forward to a few more. His index finger depressed the button. He was about three feet from the car, his body facing the lawn, when his world exploded into a giant fireball.

The paramedics arrived on the scene in minutes. Rick was badly burned, half his face was blackened, and half of his body was charred. It was only the fact that he had been facing the lawn that bought him a few moments. Rick’s charred body was lifted onto a stretcher, and hoisted into the ambulance. He would never see his daughter grow up to be the delightful young woman she is now. With his last breath he gasped out, “Tell my wife, and my baby.” That was all he managed to say before he shuddered for the last time. Tane’s father died on the way to the hospital.

It all seemed so over the top at the time, this small town’s quiet little life had been shattered by beatings and murders. Some days the high school was like a ghost town. The kids were there, but no one said anything. The teachers tried to teach, but some days they just didn’t, and the class would just sit there. Time seemed to slow down for a week. Just a week; then it happened.

If someone had asked me where I thought it started, it would have said the day Daron laid eyes on Alexis. He loved her so much, how can an emotion that is supposed to be good take a life and wring it dry, until all that’s left is pain and rage?

The boy’s locker room was to be ground zero for the end of all of this. A boy named Matt had class with Alexis, and then he had gym. No one remembers exactly what it was that he said, but it was something to the effect of Evelyn was a bitch, and Derek was an idiot, and he was tired of all of this bullshit. It doesn’t sound so bad when I put it in writing, but maybe it was his tone of voice or something that made saying that inexcusable. Well, Alexis was the only one of Evelyn’s friends in that class, and she was tired of cooling her heels. She ran up and gave him a punch, square in the chest. It was more of a statement than intent to hurt, but Matt didn’t see things that way apparently. He hit her back, in the face, and grabbed her by the ponytail. She struggled and the teacher hit him on the back of the head with a book. He wavered but did not fall. He punched her in the face again. This time a chair replaced the book, and he fell like a ton of bricks.

I remember telling Daron what had happened. I had heard from Elias, who had heard from the rest of the high school grapevine. I remember the look on his face. He didn’t say anything; he just turned and walked to his locker. I didn’t think anything of, but I was late for class. I yelled after him. “Hey Daron, you cool man?” he nodded his reply. I never saw the nine millimeter handgun in his jacket.

I’ve walked the route Daron would’ve taken from his locker to the locker room a hundred times. Time seems to slow for me when I walk that stretch of the building. I see the green lockers, washed clean of the blood that stained them once. I’ve only talked to Daron once since his incarceration, and it was to get these details. Matt was late for gym, so he was alone in the locker room. He pushed the door open; its hinges creaked just a little. He walked into the row, and looked at Matt. He had just finished changing into this gym clothes. His eyebrows furrowed for just a second, before Daron’s hand shot into his jacket and pulled the gun out. Surprise crossed his face for just another moment, before a round penetrated his chest. Blood flew onto the lockers staining the green paint red, as two more bullets broke through his sternum. Daron stood there, in a haze, until the police got there, and arrested him.

He was sentenced to ten years in jail for voluntary manslaughter. The message, I think behind all of this, is talk. All of this happened because Derek didn’t share his feelings; he bottled them all away, until he couldn’t take it anymore. Evelyn and Derek didn’t talk to each other after they broke up, and Daron never told Alexis he loved her. Until this is published, she will never know.