The first one to volunteer was a young man who had had shoulder length hair and it was colored in faded streaks of rainbow. He wore John Lennon-esque glasses and he looked like he had seen better days…

My name is Spencer Logan and I’ve been all over America, but I chose here as my final destination and yes, I use that to its literal interpretation. I was told I was being selfish and that I should have thought about how others would feel. How I would leave people in a lurch and longing for something they would be missing. The funny thing about that is, that it was my agent who told me that and he was referring to my publisher and all the readers out there who bought my books. That by denying them of future books would be criminal.
I wasn’t being selfish; I was at the end of my line. I didn’t want to take the slow method of liver poisoning or some other organ failure, I wanted it to end at that moment. You see, I waited years to find answers about a death. One death that never should have occurred. And you know what happened? The answer never came. It didn’t come from God, it didn’t come the state, and it sure as Hell, pardon, come from the person who caused it. She just looked at me from beyond bullet-resistant glass and smiled. I so wanted to kill her at that time. It should have been her dead, not her sister.

Her face, her sinister grin, haunted me for months as I went to different cities to speak about my, I had decided at that moment, final book. I had dedicated it to Skylar, the sister who was killed and I wanted her face to be the last think I thought of, but it wasn’t...it was her sister, Katie. I feel nauseous trying to even say that name. I stood on the side of the bridge and thought back to the first day I saw her on the beach and tried to hold onto that feeling of seeing her eyes but the last thing I remember seeing was Katie. The last thought running through my mind was her grinning face.

It wasn’t fair!

And no, I’m not talking about how I was cheated out of a possible life. Okay, yeah, well, maybe I’m talking about that too but more of the life that was taken for no reason. It was so empty. You know those movies, those mystery books where we find out the "why”? We learn the reason that the villain did it. They say it’s an escape form real life when we can put evil and pain into these little boxes, books and DVD’s and know why they did it. Man, you do not know how much I wanted to play into that. I went to the sentencing, and it wasn’t anything. They placed her into a psych ward where they allowed her to express her concerns and talk about the trauma she experienced growing up with abomination—her words—of her sister.

Abomination, she called her sister that and no one called an objection. I had already said enough that I would have been thrown out of the court and had I known that K…k-kat-Katie wasn’t going to spend a day in jail or a second at the end of a noose then I would have killed her right there. I would have jumped out of the gallery and put my hands around her damned neck.
She would have deserved it!
She threw Skylar down nine f’n floors to her death and no one noticed until morning!

And there was nothing I could do.

I lived with Skylar’s grandparents while waiting for the day that I could speak with her murderer. They spoke so highly of her but regretted of the limited time they had with her. They had met the former shell their granddaughter tried to break from and, they told me, that they first me her when they met me. A part of me loved hearing that, but the other side was crying because, if I hadn’t met her, then she would still be alive. I thought, for a split-second, that it was my fault but that was what her sister and parents wanted to me think.
I paid for Skylar’s funeral. Her parents wanted to keep everything, as they stated, “normal”. The announcements were to go out about the loss of their son. They even had a suit picked out. I protested and so did the grandparents…and so the ceremony was kept private to the immediate family and anyone who knew them. The announcement did go out, but the suit was nixed and replaced with the skirt I bought for her during that fateful week.

The casket was open, but it was hard as the shell there showed no glow, no inner life, no sarcasm, snark or human-like quality that it once had. I know it sounds heartless, but I would have preferred to see Katie in that casket.

So, after being found by the police, sent to a few hospitals, an institution for a few weeks , and ultimately released only to have to come here, I had to come to the reality that dying won’t help anyone and that ones like Katie and her ilk would win if I drowned my sorrows in the river. I plan to go to Seattle and assist with an up-and-coming treatment facility. As long as I’m here, everyone will remember Skylar Aylesea Dorian

It took a few minutes before Steve or the rest of us said anything.
Steve’s only comment was, “Spencer, my friend, that was heart heavy.”
He then closed his eyes for a moment, nodded twice and then looked up to see another of the young men raise their hand.
This man had the look of rings under his eyes like he was ready to rip his heart out at any second.

I was told life is the dance you choose.
I will tell you that, for a long time, I stood on the side of that dance. I could count on one hand how many girlfriends I have in life. Sure, that’s a sign of some form of gallantry. That I wasn’t just looking at every girl I could see and asking them out.
I could barely talk to them for most of my life, just didn’t connect I suppose or I felt I couldn’t pretend hard enough to be someone else to them. Anyway, I mentally cheated on my first girlfriend by doing exactly what I just said I didn’t do: I looked and envisioned them to be mine. Because, the girl I’m tip-toeing around mentioning, went to a different school.
No, I wasn’t jealous that she may have been flirting with other guys—that thought never entered my mind, to be honest. I was angry at myself for allowing those thoughts to get into my head. Yes, I would look at their bodies. Yes, I would imagine things that one could only know about by seeing late night movies on Showtime. So, yeah, I was a big hypocrite…but I hear that club has a wide membership, so I was in like company.
We would meet every Sunday and Wednesday—we had met through the youth group at Church—and talk on phone about everything but we never went past a certain point. Partly because I didn’t know what I supposed to do and the other part was that I didn’t ask.
So, after some time, we broke up. It was kind of amicable. No screaming or fighting but Sunday mornings, which were usually lively with conversation with the two of us sitting next to each other, changed to a silent and cold affair. For a Southren Baptist Convention church, our particular youth group class appeared to be a monastery with everything taking a vow of silence.
It took a our teacher a bit of time to read the room: with me at one of the table, her on the other side with her friends and the icy glares given by them and me trying to not look at her.
I admit, I failed at that.

So, a few weeks pass and I feel worse at school and every Sunday and Wednesday has turned into a ring in Dante’s Inferno until a reconciliation is made and we’re back together again, but the problems, with me, continued and were compounded by the thought that she could have anyone she wanted and who was I to keep her down. You ever heard of a self-fulfilled prophecy? I was successful at doing that and so, a few days after school started, I get a note from her saying she was moving to Colorado so I asked, or, rather, begged, my friend to drive me to the airport in order to talk to her once more. I missed the flight and so I missed the chance to talk to her.

The note was your basic “blah-blah” break-up letter. Delivered colder than a Dairy Queen Blizzard—including little bite-sized chunks of sarcasm galore. She was good with sarcasm. I took everything she wrote as the death keel was supposed to be and spent that first day of school as I was walking to the firing squad where everyone has live ammunition and they’re all aiming for my heart.

However, on that day, while I walked around the outside of the high school lamenting on how bad everything was going to be, I met my…well, as of right now, my fiancé. The problem, which I didn’t know at the time, was she in eighth grade and I was a junior.

Her name was Rebekah Anne Bettencourt and if she had not made the first move then nothing would have ever happened between us and I would have missed out on a year of happiness. Yes, we were going to separate schools—junior high and high school but there was less than two years between us and her parents liked me. Her sister, not so much. We remained civil at all times but I was sure that she wanted me dead or at least wanted to find something out about me that she could tell Rebekah and ruin it all.
I made a promise to myself to listen to Rebekah and to be with her whenever we could but, family had to move out of state. We refused to let each other go and I sent cassettes to her, since calling long distance was expensive, but she never replied to my letters. There were times that I tried to call, but couldn’t get a hold of her. Her sister, Jeannie, once answered but would then abruptly hang up.
I felt kind of abandoned and with 2,045 miles between us it wasn’t like I could just walk up and see her, but I did fly back up to stay Jason, the same friend who had helped me get to the airport for Samantha and told me to not yet involved with Rebekah. We went to one of the football games and the memories of when I first kissed her came rolling back to me at about the same time I saw her standing next to a long-haired guy, standing in what felt like sub-zero weather, while playing an electric guitar with the pep band.
Jason said nothing when I asked if he knew, he only shook his head as I turned around and wondered what to do about the situation. Well, “wonder” wasn’t the word. No, I didn’t feel like slapping her or doing anything at the time.
Maybe they were related and she was just there to give him support for playing a guitar in forty-degree weather…but the elongated kiss on the mouth cancelled out that theory.
I slammed by hands on a lamp post and looked in their direction once again and, at that moment, our eyes locked, but just for a second as she looked back to the guitar dude and then they both looked at me. Rebekah then took a step away and attempted to leave the stands but I put my hands in front of chest in the “X”, or “stop” sign, then turned and walked away from the field.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Eric,” Jason said as he followed me out of the gate.
So, I guess I need to ask…where did I go wrong?
Sure, tell me there’s plenty of fish in the sea. Yes, please, tell me that.
And the sad thing is, I still love her.

The next to volunteer was a guy dressed in a long flannel shirt with a crumpled pack of cigarettes in the front pocket. His hands were gnarled for such a young looking guy. He grumbled his name was “Joshua”

I’m just going to flat out say it…life sucks.
No, no, that’s not good enough. Life is shit.
Yes, I said it. Yeah, I’ve been swimming in it for seven years. I’ve had everything on my back while I tired to just stay afloat. I don’t deal, I don’t do drugs, but, if I’m going to be honest with myself and this group, I wouldn’t mind taking something very strong. Anything to take the strain of it all away. But, if I did that, then I’d never get to see my daughter. She was born six years ago, and I’ve seen her in person for, maybe a month.
Ever since her mother, Cherry, died.