Probability

Schuler’s dead. 

Mike and Aaron too.

Amanda. Debbie. Brandon -- though fewer people talk about him, what with the shotgun and all. 

Cars or cancer for the rest – Schuler called it quits after the third time they poisoned him nearly beyond recognition. Amanda didn’t catch it in time and at twenty-seven was gone inside of six weeks. Debbie and Mike both missed a turn late at night, one in middle-of-nowhere Idaho and the other in even more middle-of-nowhere Montana. 

Aaron was just along for the ride, along with Beth who, somehow, walked away at least physically unscathed. And Brandon, well, it seems he just finally fell prey to the same demons I guess he’d been bunking with for the better part of his thirty years until he took them out, along with himself.

Death should be no more foreign to any of us than birth, but nowadays we tend to do the math wrong, make assumptions based on modern medicine, airbags, and statistics that, individually at least, are more and more on our side, discounting the fact that even if the odds seem pretty solidly in your favor, they’re still odds, and that means somebody’s got to be on the short end.