by Dale Chappell

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: September 16, 2008

As night turned to dawn, I was traveling down rural route 42 covered with blood in a pickup truck full of an unidentifiable soup of body parts. Cindy had survived and was eating away at her manicured nails. She didn't look over at me when I took a furtive glance. I had nothing to say, anyway. She had saved my life.

What the hell had happened? Who the hell was responsible? It didn't matter. Hell had come. She never let go.

Cindy was a stranger. Her and her family had just moved to our rural community. For weeks, everyone was talking about it. I don't think our somewhat backwards community was ready for their first black family.

They were all gone, with what was left of them dripping a trail of chunks and slime down this beautiful country road on a perfectly nice morning. It was me; I had decided to try to clean up the mess, although it would never be clean. After she had let go of my hand, she sat there rocking, hers arms wrapped around her knees. She stared at it. She stared through it. It was pointing to where I had been sitting.

It was the Friday before the first day of the new school year. We were all going to be seniors. We had been there before, many times. Some nights we built a big fire from what was left of the farm house. Other nights we just sat up in the loft of the old barn talking about what was to come. Last night was meant to be the same but different.

Josh and April had hooked up while serving desserts at the little ice cream stand. Josh bragged about their new relationship, claiming that he had breached the next level. April didn't deny it, but I wasn't convinced. Pete and his cousin, Alex, had scored two warm cases of beer and a six-pack of wine coolers. The girls, Carol, Denise, and Beth had been best friends since kindergarten. Beth had grown prettier. Carol, not so much. Denise, we weren't sure about, all draped in black and who just recently had added a nose picking diamond stud you could actually see up there. Still, they were tight.

It was them who had invited Cindy into our little group. We weren't misfits, just misunderstood. We dreamed together, cried together, and laughed together. We were excited. Our diverse little group had become more dynamic. Yet, here I was unceremoniously shoveling my social saviors out of the second-story hay door of an old barn down into the bed of my father's pickup truck.

My vomit had added to the pile. Our little circle of friends now looked like the results of a hand grenade and a chainsaw. Grey soft stuff,

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