        Right in the middle of our final run through, my high school’s senior class unexpectedly started filing into the auditorium and sitting down in the graffiti filled seats. The drama team and I abruptly stopped our rehearsal and we had to run backstage behind the musty blue curtain to act out a play barely written earlier that week and never fully rehearsed all the way through. Except I, voluntarily being the one in charge of this assembly, had to run everywhere else. I went to get those being the “cops” ready to go with their flashlights in hand, ran up to the balcony to make sure our newly informed spotlight person was ready to go, hopped over to the assistant principals to let them know of the small delay, jumped over the obstacles of chairs and our homemade coffin display, tripped over the cords for the strobe lights and nearly fell over the smoke machine that was supposed to start during the funeral scene – all of which happened in no more than ten minutes with the other students involved unfortunately just as pressured and chaotic as I was being.
        “Amanda, where is the sound tape that you made?”
        My jaw dropped to the floor and I went looking under the black blankets covering up the risers on the stage, rummaged through the fake flowers just bought the night before, ran back to the drama room down the hall to look inside the bags I brought, and even looked in the donuts’ box I bought that morning, just in case I had lost my mind. Somewhere, somehow, someone found the tape and my sponsor approached me saying it was time to start.
       So then I jogged around to everyone a final time to make sure that through all of the confusion, the cues throughout the play were set and known and while I ran down the hallway to get backstage, the lights in the auditorium blacked out. Four-hundred rowdy seniors began hollering and whistling, which was almost loud enough to cover up the pounding of my blood flowing and the steam roller inside my chest. The cued rave music began, with the strobe lights flashing and as the young actors began their dancing to show their presence at a prom, I hoped no one in the audience was prone to seizures. I snuck in through the side door on the stage as the crashing of a vehicle blared through the speakers and I could feel an eerie sense of shock within the students. The sounds abruptly ended, and the “cops” began looking for the victim of our staged car crash, starting from the back of the auditorium and running in between the isles with till they were supposed to reach the front stage, yelling to each other and shining the flashlights around in confusion. Right then I realized the “dead” victim would not have been covered up by a white sheet when the “cops” got there, so I crawled over the piano that was to the right of the stage, nearly flew to the left part of the stage in my all black clothing while I grabbed the white sheet. The spotlight and the flashlights unexpectedly found me as I covered up the body just in time.
        “Oh my god, it’s Susie” could be heard over the fading music and ambulance sirens that played in the background. Then another blackout occurred once again, and I had to get back over to the right quietly and quickly to be the accompanist on the out of tune piano for the next scene. The stage lights gradually faded on, revealing a funeral scene and the spotlight followed our “ghost” that came to watch her funeral, realizing that she was in the coffin while her prerecorded speech was heard slightly above my music. The funeral ended, without the smoke machine, and so had my known piano songs, but the skit was not over and another speech remained. So, using my improve skills, I had begun playing what I could but then I heard the next spokesperson trip over the coffin display and the audience laugh as the spotlight revealed him bent over the casket with his backside facing the audience. So I began to bang on the piano as eloquently as possible to hush them up, and soon the speech was over and the house lights were switched back on. Too stressed and rushed all morning to feel the embarrassment of this coming up moment, then, as I held the microphone in hand, it almost slipped through my moistened palm as I realized my prepared speech was not written down on the podium as I had planned to place it. I glanced around at the faces in front of me and rested upon the most familiar. I never noticed until then how many of those in my senior class I had actually known, but there were still so many that I had never met. The dusty high ceilings and walls were beginning to close in on me while the lights seemed to burn a hole straight through my courageous front, revealing to these friends, acquaintances, and even some unfortunate enemies how timid I really was.
        On the brink of tears, I dug deep down into myself to find the unknown ability to speak in front of this large crowd that had never seen me speak of what was important to me before. Somehow I remembered what I had written the night prior and my passion drove me to summarize the skit shown and to share the importance of not drinking and driving. I also explained the purpose of the new organization that I, with others helping, had created that semester named SADD–Students Against Destructive Decisions. When my speech was concluded, I breathed a sigh of relief as the students and teachers clapped and then I attempted to go back stage to prepare the screen for which the video next to be shown was to be played upon; however, the drama team and SADD members told me that the stage was not cleared off as I then saw the chairs and coffin that were sprawled out across the stage.
        “Improvise another speech.”
        My feet began to feel like pounds of sand were in my shoes, and I had become drenched with perspiration. My mind began racing through and I felt as if it was going to race out of my head altogether. I had never spoken in front of a large group before that day, let alone improvise one off of the top of my head. At least on the piano, my fingers cannot get that raspy sound when they play and when I swallow, I’m not pushing my heart back down into my chest.
        So I stood in front of the podium once again, with my sponsor on the edge of his seat, ready to catch my sentences if I started to stumble upon my words. I had begun stating that I may not be able to stop them from drinking, but I can implore them to not drink and drive, when I voice from the audience could be heard from where I was standing.
        “I will.”
        Anger overpowered my shyness and my embarrassment as it rushed out of my mouth when I demanded him to come up to the front. The drama team in the back, behind the curtain, stopped tossing chairs from one side of the stage to the other as the seniors started hollering and clapping. Those who knew me personally sunk in their chairs and the principals in the back stood upright, in full position to run to the stage to stop me if needed.
        I had known Brian for over seven years then, and I felt a sharp pain in my heart to know that, even if he was joking, that he would say such a thing. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do once he reached the podium, but I knew I had to do something. I randomly asked him if he had ever been to a party drunk and with his response I called up another that has witnessed such an event.
        “What is the stupidest thing that Brian has done while drunk?”
        “Well, actually he thought he was a bird and ate bread off of the floor.”
        The laughter was inevitable and even I may have chuckled a little, until a noticed Brian was laughing as well. A student in the audience surprisingly stood up and told the seniors to shut up so I could speak, and so I said to Brian, “What you don’t understand is that we are laughing at you – not with you.”
        The crowd got silent once more as the truth had been spoken, and I concluded my speech asking if, being seniors, do we really want to spend our last high school moments acting like an animal, not remembering, and then taking the chance of driving, putting yet another victim in the ground – because that will be something no one will ever forget.
        By then, the screen was ready so I sat down with my hand still clutched to the microphone as if it was the only thing grounding me. My sponsor looked at me with amazement and wouldn’t stop congratulating me, but I was still numb. That person was not me, and I don’t even remember what motivated me to do what I just did except for the passion in my heart spilling out. I stared blankly at the video that told about a girl who did not die in her alcohol-related accident, but was burned very badly and a sea of pity and shock fell upon the seniors of Sam Rayburn High School and moved every one them to be silent.
The assembly was finally over and with this need to do everything, I began running around everywhere once again to clean up. Yet this time students began approaching me, telling me what an awesome job I did and how what I said touched them. Some asked me if that last part was planned, and all I could do was shake my head in response, because I was still just as shocked as they were. Then came the principal and before I could even worry about what he was going to say, he shook my hand and told me that he had never seen a senior assembly with the students paying as close attention to the speaker as they had today, and that I had done an excellent job. He left and right behind him were my friends that I had known for as long as I remembered and the moment that they had hugged me, I lost it and cried for the first time that day. No longer could I hold in the hurt, the stress, the pain. I found out that these people, these friends, were my foothold in anything that I did. With my head on each of their shoulders, I finally became aware of who I was.
        After school that day, I sat in the auditorium, still awestruck on how the events took place that morning. My abilities surpassed anything that I had expected, and, even through all the complications, I couldn’t help but look up and thank God for helping me become who I was that day and for all the support given by those who held on to the same beliefs as I did. We knew that we all couldn’t have been able to change everyone’s mind for the upcoming prom event but the chance that we may have changed one mind–one life–was all the satisfaction that I needed. That Friday leaving prom, as my friends and I strutted off the dance floor in a line, I glanced around at the empty hall and held fast to this belief and prayed with all my mind and soul that I had made that one difference. However, whether I did or not, I may never know but what I do know is that no one was involved in an alcohol related accident that night, and no one had lost their life. That night I realized something that has and will always stay with me till the day that I am no longer living. I can stand up for what I believe is right throughout all my days here on Earth, mostly never knowing the impact, when or even if, I created but I can still live on with the contentment within myself, knowing that I have done all that I can, and that I might have made that one difference that changed someone’s entire fate for the better. This is all that I can do.