Niles, Willy and I were walking home from school the first time we actually met Jack Knight. We lived on the outskirts of Palo Verde where modest houses quickly gave way to antiquated farms. We had no idea our lives would never be the same after that day late in the summer of 1968-our first day as high school sophomores. No matter how fast the world seemed to spin around us-the war in Vietnam escalating, the nation mourning the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Soviets invading Czechoslovakia-what was happening in our own meager lives in our own little home town seemed so much more important.

"Why didn't she just have it?" I asked my chums as the light changed at the corner and we moved along. We were talking about Holly Brunswick, a girl one year older than us. She came up pregnant one day, and she and her whole family just packed up and left town.

"Come on, Kelly!" Willy said and shot a glance up at me, her big eyes glistening, an incredulous grimace on her face.

READ THE FULL SHORT