When you grow up in a small town you get to know the people around you really well. You make friends with kids your age and since hardly anyone moves away, you have the same people around you from the day you’re born until someone dies. As I sat outside the cafeteria and ate warm, …
Author Archives: josh
Why I Stayed – Part 13
I sat in my paper pajamas and stared at the little window which was set high in the door to my cell. The pain in my wrist had finally faded but my head began to throb. The wires embedded in the glass of the little window seemed to warp and pulse in time to my …
Why I Stayed – Part 12
I was finally a senior and I couldn’t have been more disappointed. I was a month into twelfth grade and I had realized that it was really no different from the previous three years of high school. It really wasn’t that much different from the eight years before that. Something poked me in the back …
Why I Stayed – Part 11
I suddenly remembered a line from some movie or police procedural television show, “It’s the guilty ones that sleep.” The words drifted into my head like smoke just as the lack of sleep and the excess of whiskey finally caught up to me. My eyes were drooping shut and the fluorescent glare of my surroundings …
Why I Stayed – Part 10
On Friday morning, the day of the homecoming game, I woke up to the smell of coffee and bacon. My father was almost never home by the time I got out of bed and my mother was usually on her way out the door by the time I made it to the kitchen. The delicious …
Why I Stayed – Part 9
Kiln Valley was not a large town and the police headquarters was not a large, bustling depot like the ones on TV. At night it was virtually deserted. Any officers that were on duty at this hour were guarding the house I just left or parked at an intersection looking for drunk drivers. I turned …
Why I Stayed – Part 8
I heard the sloshing of the schnapps bottle in Nicole’s pocket as she jogged across the front lawn to catch up to me. I stopped at the concrete steps that lead to the front door, which was completely open. While we peered into the entry way, two seniors wearing letterman’s jackets walked out. One was …
Why I Stayed – Part 7
I walked out the front door of the house and felt a hundred weary eyes on me. I took the three steps down to the concrete sidewalk and stopped. I turned and looked back into the entry way and watched Nicole tentatively walk out onto the concrete landing. She had put on a gray sweatshirt …
Why I Stayed – Part 6
I drove down the street and tried to figure out what to say. Her eyes were squinted part way closed and her lips were pursed together hard enough to displace their pink color. She was breathing hard and puffs of air came out of her nose like a cartoon bull about to charge. “Nic-,” I started …
Why I Stayed – Part 5
A burst of static and angry words erupted from the radio clipped to the shoulder of the uniformed officer posted outside the bedroom door. The young policeman poked his head into the room and cleared his throat. “Um,” he tried to look at me while he spoke, but his nervous eyes kept shifting over …