Prologue

My name is Jack Trexlor, and this is not my story. This is John Lupo's story. Partly it's Macy's story, too. Maybe Sharon's. And it's a part of Erica's story that I don't have any real right to tell. I was there. I saw most of it. I was in it, but it isn't my story.

I think about it quite a lot now, the way everything worked out. It's weird how little decisions, little coincidences, had such a big impact on our lives. I often wish that we'd had more time, or less distance. Frequently I wish that we'd done a lot of little things differently. Even a few changes would have made a big difference.

Sometimes, though, it seems that there was never a question, never a risk, never a chance. Sometimes it seems that all of our lives were cast from the start to take that adventure, that our fates were set in stone and we were all just passengers bouncing in the back of the big pickup truck of life.

If we had never taken that adventure, I would perhaps never have grown in the ways that I have since then. None of us would have. Whatever wisdom we gained from that adventure, though, we paid for with ourselves. It never seems that the meager results we gleaned were worth the price we paid, the price some of us still pay in the quiet night.

However, if we had merely stayed home, other people would have paid. Of that I'm certain. We couldn't have stopped the toll from being collected, but I wonder often why we had to be the ones to pay it.

Most of all, I just wish I hadn't gone with Macy and John that first night. Maybe things would have been worse for someone else, and maybe not. How can I know where an alternate path would have taken us? I can't. All I can know is how the choices we made led us to where we are now. I can't know all of what might have happened, I can only know what did happen, to us.

And mostly I don't like it.