On Thursday Lulu opened the paper.
Lulu~Burn down school
She laughed bitterly to herself. She didn't have anything to live for so why should she bother doing it. She didn't even have Joey anymore.
"I'm not doing it," she declared to the group.
"Do you want something to happen to you?" asked Mariette. In the course of a few days, little gray hairs had appeared at her temples.
"I don't have anything to live for." She glanced at the circle of faces. "I don't have a baby or a boyfriend."
Joey looked away guiltily. "I won't let you," he said.
"What?"
"I'll do it for you."
Lulu stared at him. "And what will you do for me when I'm in Column III? You never did anything for me when we were going out. Why should I trust you?" Joey looked away.
"Justin," Lance began, "Do you ever think about him?"
"All the time," Justin admitted. "Like if we hadn't hit him how life would be about two thousand times better."
"No. I mean about who he was. Like if he was married and had kids, what kind of music he listened to, personal stuff like that?"
"No," Justin said, looking at him oddly.
"Everyday since that night I've read the papers, just looking for some kind of article about him. I was so certain that there would be at least one person looking for him. But there wasn't anything. Nothing."
Justin shrugged. "We were lucky."
"No. It made me feel worse that no one cared about him. It must be lonely to be buried in a place where no one ever goes."
"I gotta get going," Lulu said, standing up. All this talk of the man made her sick.
"No! We should all stay together tonight," Chris said.
Lulu shook her head. "Nothing is gonna happen," she disagreed.
"But if it does. . ."
"Nothing will happen," Lulu stated coldly.
Her eyes seemed to blaze with an inner fire as she looked over all of them one final time, then left.
