Melinda ran home, claiming that she needed to feed her dog, the same old excuse she always used. I sometimes wondered if she fed her dog four or five meals a day.

Kim said that her mother was calling her for dinner. No one else heard her mother, but I knew she would just pretend she had “super-sonic hearing” or something, so I just let her go.

Carl and Jim were little. They got scared and begged us to take them home; Lisa quickly volunteered to do so.

Ben and I remained, Ben standing far behind me, still whistling the Star Wars theme. He was to the part that was always played for the Sith whenever they did something really evil. Wether by coincidence or not, Ben always seemed to whistle that part when Shane was around.

Standing all alone in the face of inevitable danger, I began to think just how easily Shane could crush my tiny bones. I had foolishly believed that my comrades would stand with me. They say there’s safety in numbers, but one is a number and I know there’s no safety in this.