“Music is pretty shitty hey?”

            She shrugged, making the tall bunny ears on her hair band bounce.

            “It’s all right.”

            “Yeah, it’s all right.”

            I admired the fluffy bunny tail on the black spandex as she took a drink.

Nick headed for the door to the hallway.

            “Hey Nicky, what ya doin?”

            “Gotta grab some stuff outta my locker dude.” His words were hard to pick out through the stupid mask. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Mandy.

            “Hold on, I’ll go with ya.”

Looking back now I can see what tricks were played on the eyes, and what the eyes see the mind follows. The stormy wind that night casted flickering and imposing shadows. Tall waving grass, the bamboo stalks and the thick vegetation blown by wind and rain. The thrum of the air system coupled with the pounding rain on the windows. Helicopters overhead.

            We were trying to be as quiet as possible, we’d probably get detention if we were caught away from the dance. Nick was ahead of me, as we turned the corner.

            Nick hit the floor before I saw Wayne, his eyes wild. I yelled out as Wayne staggered back, out of the tunnels. Nick kicked and gurgled on the floor.

            We had been the booby traps that night. Nick had been silent as Wayne turned the corner of the hallway, left hand reaching out to guide, right hand empty, ready to follow.

            Wayne had struck Nick in the throat.

            My eyes recorded the scene for my brain to process later when it was capable; the reflection of the ambulance lights on the puddles in the parking lot, Wayne sobbing and clawing at himself as if to remove the past from him like a snake’s skin, the EMT’s iodine stained fingers from the emergency makeshift tracheotomy he had to give Nick to get him breathing again.

            Nick was a lucky casualty of war, he lived and fully recovered. Age had slowed Wayne’s once lethal reflexes; his body had dulled. His mind, however, was not as forgiving. Every day, Wayne was in the tunnels.