Daytona Beach – Spring Break, March 22,1989
Sirens sounded from all directions. Red and blue
lights flashed. The crowd parted as the deep throaty sound of the aerial
truck’s diesel engine deafened them in passing. The call came from one of the
strip’s hotels. Someone had jumped. Two girls continued to scream as the medics
arrived with their huge tackle box of medical supplies. The crimson-red pool
that surrounded the swimsuit-clad body of the male told of his fatal end.
MTV had hyped it up for three months on national
television that this was where they were coming—Daytona Beach Spring Break. It
was a huge toga party for all intents and purposes. On Saturday, the buses
would unload a mass exodus of students that lined the streets from one end to
the other. The sidewalk was a blur of feet. It was a huge corporate affair that
footed the bill for the world’s largest party. Copenhagen, Playboy, and the NFL
were there. Trojan was a huge sponsor of the event. Alcohol was easily had with
no one checking ID. The locals considered it the biggest party ever in their
own backyard—the great crush of kids in 1989 with Central Florida students
skipping school because MTV was there.
Inside the four-story hotel room, students
jammed the balcony to gawk. Just like a roadside accident that slows traffic to
a snail’s pace as drivers fill their insatiable desire to glimpse a tragedy,
the students elbowed their way to the balcony door. Several girls, using their
hands and arms to weasel back into the room—faces ashen and tear-streaked—rushed
to the front of the room that had cleared.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” a girl wailed as she fell
to her knees and wept violently.
“It was just a dare,” another girl lamented and
sobbed. “I didn’t think he would do it.” She bent down to put her arm around
her girlfriend whose head popped up as she spewed vomit against the wall.
“It was the drugs,” she groaned as she wiped her
mouth with the back of her hand. She screamed, “Fuck you L-S-D!”
Bobby grabbed Jessie’s hand and pulled her out of
the room. Together they ran to the stairwell.
“Shit! That was close. The cops will be up here
any second. On my god!” She looked terrified—for once. Was there another part of Jessie that wasn’t acting all cool hand luke?
The stairwell echoed, “What Mammie don’t know
ain’t gonna hurt me,” as the door slammed shut.
Copyright 2017 © Jeff Cambridge
Excerpt from PURSUIT, a novel by Jeff
Cambridge, a writer of transformational fiction with real characters in
real-life tell stories that change lives in the readers as the characters
transform.
This is a pre-published
scene.
To read the
scenes sequentially, begin with
“PURSUIT: A
Novel – Prologue”
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the previous episodes in the monthly archives. Click on them and enjoy.
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write a comment, or email me at bycambridge@gmail.com.
This novel is a
work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and
locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and
authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
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