Darkness Before Dawn (36 page)

“High school kids?” Heather replied ironically. “When I was in high school I blew
off anything that anyone over twenty had to say. How are you going to make them hear
you? Sweetheart, this is not going to be a picnic.”

“I know and I’m scared,” Meg answered. “Still, I’ve got to try. It’s important to
me. After all, drunk driving is the number one cause of death in people of that age.
If I don’t talk, then
they’ll get to watch a video or have a science teacher speak to them. And you know
that the kids won’t get much out of that.”

Heather gave in. She wasn’t going to get Meg to go home and rest, but she could add
a stipulation. “Okay, I’ll let you go, if you’ll let me drive you and stay with you.
I mean you might need a nurse!”

Smiling, Meg nodded. “Pick me up at six-thirty.”

A
FEW HOURS LATER, AS
M
EG LOOKED OUT AT THE PACKED AUDITORIUM
she was glad that Heather had decided to come along. These kids, brought together
simply as an extra credit assignment for school, did not appear to be a receptive
audience. They were there only because they had to be. It was a grade, no more, and
most of them were not going to give Meg either their attention or respect. It would
be the toughest group she had ever addressed, but it was the one that probably needed
to hear her words the most.

When the school superintendent introduced her, she couldn’t help but note only a few
of the kids seemed to be listening and even fewer responded with applause. The school
principal had warned her she’d be speaking to the party animals, as it seemed the
good kids didn’t need the extra credit. So it was as if her captive audience was really
made up of zoo animals and she was the raw meat. Most were talking and texting and
some were even tossing a ball around. The supervisors had given up even trying to
make them behave. Looking back at Heather for some support, she waddled her nine-months
pregnant body out to the middle of the stage, deciding the best way to try to win
the group over was by being honest.

Clearing her throat, she began, “You came here tonight to fulfill an assignment. I
came here tonight to reveal to you something I think is very important. Something
that I feel is a matter of life and death. Yet, what I’m going to say you have heard
a hundred times and so you probably are wishing that I would just hand out a few brochures
and let you go home. It’s too important for me to do that and I only hope that you’ll
give me at least a few minutes of your time.”

Even as she spoke, Meg could still hear the students—many of them talking to one another,
some simply shuffling in their seats, and many being outright rowdy, but few, if any,
were hearing her words. Silently, she uttered a short plea to God for some help. But
as she went on it became more and more obvious this was going to be a wasted cause.
The louder she spoke, the louder the noise made by those in the audience. Ten minutes
into her speech, she glanced back toward Heather as if to say, I’m not doing a bit
of good. I might as well give up.

Suddenly she heard someone in the back shout, “Shut up!” Even if they were rude enough
to talk and text and not pay any attention to what she said, she still was shocked
that anyone could have such gall to yell. Then she heard it again. This time the voice
was even louder.

“Just shut up!”

As the voice echoed through the gym, her heart sank. Now she was sure she might as
well give up and go home. Looking down at the podium, tears began to well up in her
eyes. Her past was coming back to haunt her.

“Shut up,” the voice shouted for the third time and suddenly the entire audience quit
talking and turned to look at a figure quickly making his way down the aisle from
the back of the room to the stage. Because of the spotlight directed at her, as well
as the darkened gymnasium, Meg couldn’t tell much about the young man, except that
he was very agitated and in a
big hurry to get to her. As he got closer, she was pretty sure she knew who he was.
Too stunned to be scared and too confused to continue speaking, just like the others,
she waited for the young man to do what it was he was going to do and that was humiliate
her.

He climbed the six steps to the platform two at a time. Then, as his feet hit the
stage and as his face was illuminated by the spotlight, Meg confirmed what she believed
when she heard his shout. It was Jim Thomas.

She was sure he was here to make a fool out of her. He was going to expose what she
was to the whole world. He was probably going to blame Steve and he’d make her look
like a vengeful, stone-cold monster. She wanted to run, but there wasn’t any place
to go. So she was stuck in one spot, in front of a silent and gasping audience just
as stunned as she was by what was happening.

Jim covered the fifteen feet to the platform in four more steps and suddenly he was
standing beside her. Looking down, he demanded she move to the side. Meg responded
by walking across the platform and toward the exit, almost as if running for cover,
but as he began to speak, she stopped.

“You know me. I’m Jim Thomas. I’m the guy who was voted most likely to succeed last
semester. I was the captain of the football, baseball, and basketball teams. Some
of you considered me Mr. Cool. But I’ve changed a lot since I graduated and I think
all of you need to hear about it.”

The crowd was now completely silent. All eyes were on the young man and no one made
a move to stop him from speaking. He had everyone’s complete attention.

“Listen, because these are the facts,” he continued. Then, pointing a finger at himself,
he said in a strong voice, “I killed this woman’s husband. I loaded myself up with
some booze and killed him with my car. You know what, I was less drunk
that night than I’d been at least a dozen times before. I used to get so wasted I
didn’t even remember driving home. But I remember that night in detail. So I was a
lot less drunk than most of you are every Friday night. But I guess how drunk I was
or wasn’t didn’t matter much to Mrs. Richards’s husband. I was gone enough to kill
him.”

The boy’s words were now rushing out at rapid-fire rate and he knew what he had to
say.

“This is no joke. Since the time this meeting has started three people in this country
have been killed by drunk drivers. I don’t know how many more have been injured. But,
to put it into perspective, if each of us—and you look around, there are a lot of
us here tonight—starting at this very moment took the place of a victim, it is amazing
how fast we would fall. By midnight, the whole first two rows would be dead. By tomorrow
night, all of you sitting in the first nine rows would be lying in a morgue somewhere.
By next week at this time, all of us, everyone in this room would be dead. Kind of
frightening, isn’t it?”

Meg took a few steps away from the exit back toward the stage. She didn’t want the
young man to go through this alone. She was going to join him. As she made her way
back to the platform, he continued.

“You know, I killed someone. Do you know how hard that is to say? Well, it was real
easy to do. Nobody here can afford not to listen to what this lady has to say. If
it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t know anything about this. Each night I pray that I
will wake up from the nightmare that I created. But I can’t change that now. It’s
too late! But you can. Don’t let yourself make someone else as well-informed on widowhood
and alcohol statistics as Mrs. Richards. Listen to her now.”

Thomas looked back toward Meg. It was time for her to talk, his eyes said. They would
listen. Meg took the few steps
back to the podium. As she did, he started to leave, but she caught his hand.

“Please, stand here beside me,” she asked. Then she turned toward the now quiet crowd.
“It took a lot of courage for Jim to come up here and talk to you and it shows just
how important he thinks this subject is.” Glancing to her left, Meg said, “Thank you,
Jim.” Then, she continued.

“What Jim has to live with none of us can imagine nor would we want to. You see, as
he said, he can’t go back to fix the mistake he made. But, if you haven’t made that
mistake, you can change it before it happens.

“If a whole high school class were killed by drunk drivers, then something would be
done. But the kind of abuse and death we are trying to tell you about doesn’t happen
that way. It happens one person at a time and usually the story is buried on the back
page. We never see the ruined lives. Never feel the pain of the survivors.

“Kids, I’m not asking you to plead guilty for what you have done in the past. What
I’m asking is for you to find something to replace the drinking and the driving. For
me it is faith and a belief in God. I don’t need to search for my highs anywhere else
or by using anything else. I think that this would work for you, too. But whatever
it is you choose, you need to find something to take the place of booze. You strive
so hard every day to make adults think you are grown up. Well, booze controls you
and your actions. The sign of real maturity is for you to be in total control.”

The crowd was stone silent. They were taking in every word Meg said.

“Right now, if things don’t change, in your lifetime, one in four of you will be seriously
injured or killed by someone who is drinking and driving. Don’t become a statistic
and don’t be the one responsible for continuing this sad trend. Stop your
drinking and driving, tell your friends to stop, too. Not for my sake or my husband’s
or Jim Thomas’s, but for yours.

“Thank you, and good night.”

Meg turned and walked to the side of the stage with Thomas following. When they were
safely in the wings, Meg looked up expecting to see a boy’s face, but a man looked
back.

“Why?” she asked.

“They needed to hear what you had to say,” he answered. “I only wish I’d heard it
a few years ago.”

“But you put yourself on the line,” she argued. “You knocked yourself. You didn’t
have to do that.”

“No,” he grimly replied, “I told it the way it was. None of them should have to experience
what you or I have. I wanted them to feel a little bit of both yours and my pain,
and maybe, just maybe, it will give some of the ones who need to hear it the worst
something to think about before it’s too late.”

“Would it have helped you,” Meg asked, “if someone like me had spoken to you back
then?”

“I don’t know if what happened tonight would have made a lasting impact, but what
you showed me in my hospital room after I tried to kill myself would have made an
impact no matter when it happened.

“You see, my parents gave me everything that I could’ve ever wanted, except for their
time and their love. They bought me cars and gave me money, but they never took the
time to give me limits or even care enough about me to respond in the right way to
my big mistakes. I guess when I tried to cash in my life I was crying out to them
and they still haven’t heard me. You temporarily saved my life with your CPR, but
it was the genuine caring that I felt when you came into my room the next day that
give me a reason to live.”

He paused a moment, ran his hand through his hair, and shook his head.

“You know, even when you were calling me and leaving those posters all over everywhere,
making my life a living hell, I could understand why you were doing it. Now I know
that you weren’t right, but you loved your husband so much that you were willing to
do anything and give everything to do something for him. That was real love, the kind
I’d never known. It may have been misdirected, but it was real. If I’d been killed
by someone like me, no one would have cared enough to give a second thought to punishing
my killer.”

“Jim,” Meg said quietly, “what I displayed wasn’t love, it was pure, selfish hate.
Real love would have reached out to you and seen your needs. I missed those. I’m not
sure that I knew what real unselfish love was until I had almost killed you.”

“Mrs. Richards,” Thomas smiled, his hand touching hers. “You didn’t make me try to
kill myself. I was looking for something, and if my parents or my friends had helped
I might have had the strength to make it through what you did to me. Being hated is
not that big a deal, but not being loved is. Now, thanks to you, I know that at least
God loves me. That’ll do for now.”

Nodding in approval, Meg turned and walked toward Heather. Thomas hesitated for a
moment before walking off in the opposite direction. Suddenly stopping, Meg whirled
around and hollered at her one-time enemy.

“Do you really think we made an impact tonight?”

He nodded.

“Would you like to work together—you and me?” she asked. “I think that by showing
both sides of this story honestly we could wake some people up. Besides, I believe
what God has been able to do in bringing us together is something people need to see,
too. So do you want to give it a try?”

Smiling, Jim responded, “I’d like that a lot.”

“Okay, then,” Meg replied enthusiastically, “I’ll call you soon. And I won’t hang
up this time.”

The boy waved and walked across the stage toward the steps that led to the floor.
But before he got completely out of earshot, Meg’s voice caught his attention one
more time.

“Jim,” she shouted. “God does love you, and I do, too. Don’t ever doubt that or forget
it.”

Thomas didn’t respond with any more than a small wave but she knew her words had struck
home. He would be all right from now on.

“Well,” a smiling Heather noted as the two of them left the school and got into the
car, “I’m proud of you, Meg. You’re something very special. I’m glad that I came along,
even if you didn’t need a nurse.”

“Thanks, Heather,” Meg answered, “but you are needed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been experiencing labor pains for at least half an hour, and if you don’t hurry
and get to the hospital, you may get to deliver this child yourself. So let’s get
moving!”