[font="courier new"]The day started out so perfect. So normal. We walked through the halls of the school not expecting anthing to have happened. The day went on like any ordinary day. The bell rang for lunch, and the halls filled with all of the hungry students who had been waiting patiently in their 5th period class waiting.
After getting my lunch, eating it, and getting up to walk around the courtyard with a few of my friends, I felt my back pocket start to vibrate. 'A text message.' I thought. That was until I realized that it kept vibrating. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and looked at the caller ID. Chance B. He was one of my friends from Alice. A town about an hour away from mine.
I didn't answer. I figuered that I would call him back later, when I had an oppurtunity. The voicemail vibrated so I thought...'Wow, Chance never leaves me voicemails unless I beg him to. I wonder what's up?' Slowly I press the button to call my voicemail.
"Hey. It's me...Chance. Uhm..yeah...I was just calling to see what's up. Love you. Bye.''
He sounded different. Drained. I couldn't quite tell what was different about the voice of one of my really good friends, but I knew something was wrong. The bell rang to go back to class before I could call him back. I figuered, hey I will call him back when I get home. No big deal.
I went through all of my classes, bored as usual. I stayed for a little bit after school wondering what friends were going to be doing what during the weekend. I needed the inside scoop...after all, it was Thursday already and I had no plans for the weekend. Little did I know I <i>did</i> have plans for the weekend. And it was to be going to memorial services.
I get home and get on the computer, like normal. Checking my emails and everything. Myspace, the works. It turns to 5 o'clock, so I turned on the news. They started off talking about the weather then went into the stories for Thursday, October 5th, 2006. They said ''Football player in Alice Texas takes his own life. . .'' That is when I turned around from the computer to look at the tv.
Chance had taken his own life only a few minutes after leaving me a voicemail. The police had found weed seed in his car that wasn't his. It was his friends, but he didn't want to rat them out. They had kicked him off the football team and out of school. October 5th would have been his last day of school. He lost his scholarship for football, and he wouldn't be able to graduate early like he had planned. He went home during lunch and shot himself in the mouth. His step brother found him and called 911. Chance was still breathing. He died when the ambulance was on his road on the way to save his life. [/font]
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That wasn't the first of my friends to commit suicide, and it wasn't the last.
My friends told me that things would start to get better. I was hoping that they were right. But on December 17th, two days after my birthday, another one of my really close friends killed himself. They don't know why, but he did.
Sometimes I still wonder if maybe I would have called Chance back, or answered he would still be alive. Maybe that I could have talked him out of it. But we will never know, and God works in mysterious ways.
Not to make people think I'm crazy, but after a while I started thinking I saw Chance. I would look around and there he'd be. Right there, letting me know that things were okay. I went to a football game in Alice. My town was playing a different town for the district games and they chose Alice's stadium. I was walking around and taking pictures of the football players, then I took a picture of the locker room door. They had painted a #8 on it in memory of Chance.
When I got home I put the pictures on my computer and I had to take a double look at the picture of the locker room door. There it looked like there was a football player wearing the Bobcat orange jersey, holding the helmet at his side, looking at the camera. There was a dove next to his head, a devil on his shoulder, and a skull faintly in the background. You could still see the #8 in the background through the ''mist'' or the ghost.
I know what that picture is. I know what I see in it. It may be a way of Chance saying that he is watching over the Bobcats. R.I.P. Chance B.
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