My drama class was taking place in a competition and we were all meeting at another high school for the competition. I got there a few minutes late but that wasn’t a problem. Despite the excitement that I felt about the upcoming competition, I instantly could tell that something was wrong with a friend of mine. She was quiet, which knowing her is strange enough and she wouldn’t talk to anyone. I went all morning wondering what was wrong with her.

But when I did find out what it was, minutes before we were to go on strange, it hit me heavily. A mutual friend of ours had been killed early that same morning, not but ten days after she turned eighteen. It explained everything. But despite the news hitting me, it didn’t sink in just yet. It only really hit me when I was home, checking my Facebook and all my updates were photos of that friend that died.

Then and there I started to cry. The knowledge that she wasn’t coming back slowly creeping into my mind. That it wasn’t a joke, that it wasn’t something that happened to someone else. This was happening to me and my friends and her family. It was something so personal and close that I didn’t know what to feel. How could something like that happen? I had just seen her the day before, heard her laugh the day before.

At her funeral all my friends broke down. No matter how much we said that we wouldn’t cry because we were celebrating her life, it didn’t go but a few minutes into the service that we were all crying our eyes out. This new realization hurt so much that I couldn’t take in anything else but that pain. Even more when I learned that it was a drunk driver that killed her while she was walking home late at night. After refusing to get in the car with a drunk friend. The irony of it all hurt that most. She died doing the right thing.

It’s only been two months since her death and it still hangs in the air between all of us at school, is still a constant thought in all of our minds. Finally coming so close in contact with death taught me that every moment is precious, that no matter what our choices are, there are still unfavorable outcomes and not knowing when these would happen we need to love everyone around us and treasure every moment we have with them. We need to live life to its fullest and in place of those that weren’t suppose to die yet.

Jasmine D.

He would read it just because someone had given it to him, if nothing else. He’d struggle through the small print and tedious scenic descriptions because he wouldn’t want to waste someone’s kind intentions. There was a pleasant pause in our conversation, and he sat rocking in his chair while I flipped through a magazine that was sitting on their crystal dining room table. That table always seemed so impractical to me, but it made my grandmother happy because it sparkled and made my grandfather happy because it made my aunt happy who had bought it for them. My grandfather’s arm shot up (in slow motion) and he shook his finger in the air a few times. “I have something for you baby…” he said. “I thought maybe you’d like to read it. I found my great grandmother’s journal. We were hiding it until her daughter died—she wrote some things about how they didn’t get along…Let me go get it.” I smiled. I smiled because I was genuinely too excited not to smile. “Oh really?” I said as he made his way out of the room. I was excited. I was thrilled, really—to read someone’s deepest thoughts. To find treasures inside written memories or poems or even an old “To-do List.”

And I wondered, why is this so important to me?

Whenever I am at a thrift store, I look through the book section and on the shelves where they sometimes have old photographs and frames and half-used stationary. Because one time I found a girl’s journal. My sister glanced through it and told me I wasn’t allowed to read what it said. She told me, “Put it back, Rach” after I pulled it back off the shelf again. She said the girl talked about sex and stuff. I didn’t care. I just wanted to read what someone had taken the time to write down in a place they knew no one else would see. I wanted that privilege—to be let in. I wanted to read it all and imagine what the person must have been like, and then to wonder how their journal ended up in a thrift store. But first to wonder about what they must have been like.

I under-dog-ear pages in books. I do it so I can go back and read whatever it was that I found so profound. But sometimes I feel self-conscious about who will see what I’ve marked. Sometimes that seems like it could say more about me than my own journal could. Of course, no one even notices things like that. But I do. I watch for what people underline. I had an old Bible that I’d underlined to death. I mean it—my friend told me one time “You may as well underline the whole thing.” That made me mad because I was only underlining what I thought was really important. What I thought was really important just happened to be almost everything….

I wondered one day, “why am I underlining all of this?”

God told me a few months later. Now a homeless man named Joseph who lives on San Julian street in downtown Los Angeles keeps it in his pocket. Now I’m glad I underlined those verses that preachers speak to me over and over again in church and that I knew already from my days in AWANA. Now a man who knew nothing about God has a little path lit up for him. I felt silly underlining John 3:16 because, how could I forget it? But now I don’t. Because Joseph’s eyes will go straight to it.

Maybe I’m not the only one who notices.

Yellow curb. Means park somewhere else.

Looking for a free lunch, perfect pitch, the holy grail, or a parking spot in front of the courthouse, which for this truck means a 35 foot slot in the lineup.

Not only are they parked on yellow, aCROSS from the sheriff’s office, they hadn’t the decency to close up the gaps. Between every bumper and fender ekes a tantalizing 30 feet, as if they only had so many cars to lock up all the parallel spots so they had to space em out.

Ever since the arraignment for one Charles Haught, middle-aged life drop-out, rapist and murderer of one Wesley Campbridge, seven year-old, ever since every mobile news unit from three surrounding counties had converged and taken up residence in front of Bourbon County Circuit Courthouse, people had ceased fudging the customary ten to fifteen feet of yellow, and now strung all the way across it in the spirit of the old adage about forgiveness and permission.

If Action News 36 can do it, well by George. . .

In my mind I know it’s 9:43 and in my DIAD are 8 uncompleted 10:30 commit stops, two of them bulk, and one of them across town.

Without looking, I sense a looming diesel presence in the fold-out sideview mirror, the same white Ford dualy that’s been dogging me from 10th Street, edging out from behind just enough to make sure I know he wants around.

Knock yourself out, sweetheart. F’you can fit that monster in between my mirror and the half-lane that’s left, you’re more driver than I am. No doubt he thinks he is. More to the point, no doubt he’s been cussin me all the way down Main since I pulled in front of him.

Had to cut somebody off.

Watched twenty cars amble by with that same maddening gap precision. Twenty cars, a minute-and-a-half I ain’t got. The second I nosed out into traffic, he ghosted up to my bumper so close I could see the Ford oval on his grill in my rear camera monitor.

Yeah, now you’re in a hurry.

I can see his mouth moving, so I put words in it. Fool kid, pull out in front of me, and some other words that normally I would never think, were I not forced into providing captions for his thought balloons. It wouldn’t bother me so much if I didn’t feel just a little bit guilty. Guilt pressed in between time and stress oozes out looking like road rage.

A blue Caravan with a bandaged rear window and a bumper just hanging on for dear life pulls away from the curb in front of me, at about the same time the Ford gets the four inches he’s been wanting for ten blocks, and here he comes, loosening the reins of all 350 horses, and billowing acrimony from both 5 inch chrome horns.

The hapless grocery-getter dawdles on out in his lane. He hauls up on the reins, the whistling downshift an automotive curse. If I had time, I’d be laughing. Good thing I don’t. He’s up even with me now, looking right at me, distilling all his frustration with the Caravan and the world in general into the last minute spent staring at the back of a delivery truck. I can see his silent swearing indignance.

He’s a mouth breather. Unfortunate orifice, that. The gaps in between the parked cars should be so wide.
Still, he manages to impart more scorn through his NASCAR shades and the bubbled tint than Estella ever cast down on Pip, Chillingworth on Rev. Dimmesdale, or the parabled Pharisee upon the publican.
Turning my attention to the vast expanse of gleaming yellow curb vacated by the departing Caravan, I cut as close as I can and then back, dimming the luminous paint with my rubbing tires.

The stop I need is half a block back.

Shoving the truck into park, I fall into a habitual series of movements, park, brake, key out, seatbelt off, mirror in, bulkhead door; a succession so varied but seamless, a truly Faulkneresque regimen.
Dodging strategically positioned and scarcely mobile redneck sidewalk ornaments, I finally make it to the intended destination, a lawyer’s office, and pull hard on the door.

It’s locked, and the jolt shakes the glassed-in front wall.

The over-cooked, under-worked (minesweeper?) secretary jerks around so suddenly that her desk chair becomes a tilt-a-whirl, and she steadies herself with a what on earth expression. (oh help, another mouth breather) Sizing up the situation, she then laughs, slaps the desk so hard I can hear it out here, and puts her forehead down on her hand, big shoulders shaking.

9:46.

Odd seconds rush out into eternity while she has a good winding down laugh about how startled she was and how she forgot to unlock that front door again!

She gets up from the chair in hitches and explains the noise over her shoulder to someone in the back room, actually stopping mid-way and, what, turning to raise her voice because they can’t hear her.
When she opens the door, “Oh my land’s sakes, you scared me to death-” throwing her head down and slapping a meaty thigh, and sucking in the next phrase through a hearty laugh “I-I-I thought somebody ran into the building-ing-ing, and and Haley hollered up here and said, ‘What in tarnation is that, did some kid run his bicycle into the front door?’ Ooohhhh, I forgot to unlock it!”

I, am speechless.

Come in.

I would, of course, decline, but it appears she isn’t going to physically accept the package, possible germophobe, but no, she just stuck a pen in her mouth. The packages, including this 2 oz. next-day-air envelope, go on a table in that back room.

The one on the left?

No, down the stairs, to the right, through the gray door.

Returning from the dungeon, I offer her the DIAD to sign.

Oh no, Betty signs for everything.

Betty?

Downstairs, you didn’t see her?

Poor Betty’s been having indigestion all morning, she explains when she emerges from the rest room at 9:52. How fast can you empathize? My foot is one inch from the bottom step of the truck when a voice falls across my tense shoulders like a war club.

Hey, buddy.

Contemplation of feigned deafness tempts me for a second.

Sigh.

Yeah? Turning, sounding relaxed, helpful.

Oh no, it’s Jethro Bodine gone to neglected seed, Santa Clause’s Appalachian counterpart, except I don’t think he’s going to give me anything. The v-necked t-shirt stopped being white shortly after it stopped rying to reach down to the sweat pants. Chest hair, copious and curly, nestles in the plunging neckline. The grace of a beard has been weeded out to a mockery of sweat, oil and tangles. Sixty degrees and sweat beads his forehead and speckles his shirt. He hooks a thumb to the courthouse.
Can you tell me what that says? Over his shoulder my eyes focus on a computer-printed sign taped to the door of the courthouse. Forgot his glasses, I guess.

Hurrying around him, I’m almost there before I realize the print is three inches tall.

Behind me, I hear “I just. . . can’t read.”

Something jams into my spokes, locking up the wheels of time and task and what I call trouble.

Uh, it says the courthouse is closed-ummm, scanning the two lines as if it were fine print-uh, open. . . tomorrow. Turning to face him, Well that’s odd, babbling, wonder why they’re closed, no holiday.

That’s okay, he says.

All right, well have a good one, man.

Sorry-he looks me in the eye-just, can’t read.

Hey, no problem, no problem at all, have a good one, have a good day.

I thank ye’.

You t-no problem, have- we’ll see you.

Delivering next day air, I don’t have time to think about the flush that stains my cheeks, or the lump logging my throat.

natenrae