2003-11-24 - 8:20 p.m.

My One Regret.

I hadn�t really thought about Robyn for quite a while. Which, thinking about it now, seems strange - I used to think of her that much. My girlfriend and I were talking about how a guy was sentenced to 16 years in max security for stealing copper wire and people like Carla Homolka are released so easily. She mentioned the fact that the guy who killed Robyn was out in under three years.

I guess the fact that I�d not thought of her in so long must have been visible, because my girlfriend (it�d just be so much easier to say wife ) continued, �I don�t know if you remember, but I used the story you�d told me about you and Robyn in a Public Speaking course I took at the Academy.�

No. I didn�t remember that.

�Yeah, you helped me with it. People were crying by the end of it � hell, I was crying. It�s such a sad story.�

Yeah. It is.

�That�s cool. I like that,� I attributed my lapse of memory to the fact that at the time she was in school I drank like a fish, �I don�t think I could tell that story.�

�Have you tried?�

No. Not written into words, per se.

�Maybe you should.�

I still don�t believe that my words can do justice to the story I�d told my girlfriend � I can�t fathom having told my Keeper a tale that emotional. I�m half Vulcan half Trickster Asshole and �opening up� is not one of my talents. I thought I�d discount the idea., but the story lingered there in the Idea Well, and lately I�ve found myself thinking about Robyn quite a goddamned bit.

So rewind to 1988. Robyn was a best friend to one of my best friends. She introduced us hoping to hook us up. If she wasn�t hooked, I sure was. Line and fucking sinker. I was sixteen, she was fourteen.

Sixteen. That was more than half a lifetime ago and here I am today, wrestling with an Old Ghost that�s usually pretty quiet. Spock to Kirk, �These sensations you humans call, �emotions,� confuse me.�

She was beautiful. Even looking at her picture half a lifetime later I can she was devilishly cute. Devilishly cute pretty much summed her up as a whole for me.

She adored Purple Rain and all things Prince. She wanted a Red room. Think I can remember much more than that? A little, not much more, though. She had a robin�s egg blue dress made for my prom and gave me a matching broach to wear instead of a tie (80�s�remember?).

Things started to fall apart for us around my Graduation time and on the night of my prom, she broke up with me. Pretty shitty thing to do to a guy, but shit, we were teenagers.

That was the first time I�d had my heart broken. I didn�t react positively to it and managed not to talk to her for the next year. To say I was avoiding her is a little strong, she�d faded into the background in a matter of months.

Fast forward a year to the summer of 1989. I was back from University and a mate of mine was having a beach-side cottage party, Maritime-style. Droves of people, each drunker than a porch boot. Me and my friends show up late and we get to the drinking, like proper Maritimers. Later that night I�m standing on a Witchgrass dune when I see a tiny girl with long brown curls bounce up the sand towards me.

Robyn was drunk � we both were � and when she got to the top she looked at me with doey, sad brown eyes that were welling with tears and asked me point blank, in a quivering version of her little voice, �Why do you hate me so much?�

Hate her? Hardly. I�d loved her. I knew that then, but not when it mattered. She was The First of many. I pulled her into me and her curvy-pixie body shuddered as she cried. �I don�t hate you, Robyn, God�why would you say that?�

She�d heard something from someone who�d heard something and she�d kept that nugget with her like gospel. She was happy it wasn�t true.

We walked down the wet sand on that icy blue clear beach summer night � for a bit. Until she noticed that she�d lost a shoe somewhere. Might have been an excuse or a well thought out plan to escape my company, but I don�t think so. She tiptoed up and kissed me on the cheek, her hand brushing the other.

The last time I saw Robyn was a wobbly silhouette skipping over the beach in search of her lost shoe.

Fast forward a year to the summer of 1990. I�d pretty much quit University to join the Air Force and was doing well � I was stationed as AESOP with an American �Bear Hunter� detachment. It was July 4th and I was returning from a whirlwind three-day stag party with my best friends. It was a great fucking summer.

I drop by the MP shack to say hi to the guys when I get told that my Captain was looking for me and I was to report to him after I drop my kit off. They didn�t know what it was about.

Now, it�s not a good thing having your Captain put an APB out on you and I was Hangar-side as slowly as I could possibly muster. A million things were going through my head: Someone saw us with the strippers. No. An MP saw the brawl we got into. Naw.

So I show up, on a non-flying Sunday, to an empty hangar. I go to the Captain�s office and knock. He tells me to come in and close the door. Tells me to have a seat. I prefer to stand.

Then he tells me, �Your friend Wade contacted your Mother Squadron trying to contact you, do you know who Wade is?�

High School friend.

�What is this about?�

�I don�t know exactly. A close friend of yours has died, other than that I can�t tell you. We have a car waiting for you to take you to Halifax International, are you ok, Son?�

I don�t know what I felt. I didn�t know who�d died. Dozens of faces played past the backs of my eyes. The Captain gave me the number Wade�d left. I called.

I can�t remember his exact words, but I remember they made me want to throw up. Robyn and Jocelyn were killed by a drunk driver two days prior, a shy three minutes from Robyn�s house. Our mutual best friend, Arlene�s, brother pushed a third girl and himself into the ditch and watched the two girls get slammed into telephone poles and trees at 110 km/h.

Arlene, was taking it pretty badly Wade told me and I was the only person he could think of who was nearby that might be able to help. To come home. So I went home. I didn't need prompting.

Things were bad there, back home, as bad as could be expected, I guess. Me and my High School buddies were still tight, even though we never saw each other anymore. We weathered it Maritime-style. With booze.

And tears. Man, I cried like a baby. We all did. My father cried, which at the time I found odd, as he didn�t really know her. I understand his sadness, now.

Arlene was hard hit. Catatonic at times. They were like sisters and at the time I was like a brother, so I was there for her as much as my emotions allowed. With drugs, she got a little better.

We found the guy�s demolished car in an auto yard and torched it � we laughed for the first time in days and fled the sirens.

The wake was a typically sad event. Sad in the �Catholic wake� kinda sad. Open casket. I hugged Robyn�s mom, I was barely holding back the tears she was crying. I looked into the casket. She was in the blue dress she wore to my Prom.

�At least she got to wear a prom dress once.� She said touching my shoulder and I put the broach I�d taken with me in her tiny, cold hand. I didn't know. The coincidence was too much for my half drunk brain and that was enough for me for a bit. (Ed. Note: I'm not making this shit up. This whole story is saccharinely sad and hardly seems true, but it is. People affected read this.)

Christ. My throat hurts thinking about this and I still don�t think I can do this story justice. Tally-ho.

After the funeral and before I stole Arlene to Halifax to get her away from it all (and consequently went AWOL for 2 days and to this day don�t believe she knows that) I drove to Robyn�s family�s house in the Boonies, but made five drive-by�s before Robin�s mother managed to wave me down and took me in and gave me tea, like a good Maritimer. Then Robyn�s little sister took me downstairs to give me something. Down to Robyn�s room. I see she�d painted it crimson red.

I didn�t know Becky. But she seemed to know me. She was wary about me. She pulls out a scrapbook and hands me some things. Some old notes. A picture I drew. Pictures of us. I was smiling with tears.

Becky looked at me sort of curiously and said, �I was surprised you came.�

Surprised? Why?

�Robyn thought you hated her. She still really liked you, but you hated her. That really bothered her.�

My heart stopped beating a full second before my lungs squeezed it up into my constricted tonsils.

�i didn�t hate her. we�i told her that��

She was drunk that night...

�Well she thought you did. She thought you were a real good guy. She was sorry it ended like that.�

...she'd forgotten she'd even seen me.

But the fact of the matter was that The First girl I fell in love with died thinking I hated her.

She�s dead. I know she doesn�t care anymore. If there is a �something else� she knows I�d never had hated her. Never. I was just very heart broken for a bit.

If there�s a moral that I pulled out of all of this, it�s this: Make the time to tell the people you love, that you love them. Don�t hold a grudge, holding a grudge takes as much effort as confronting it does. One way or another, make sure people know what you think of them.

Because sometimes there�s no today, and the loose ends can affect, even the most emotionless of people, more and longer than you would imagine.

As an "Added Later in the Evening" Postscript: This wasn't an angst story. I've long ago come to terms with whatever guilty shit I used to carry. It's a sad story. And sad stories deserve to be told, too. And I'm glad my woman prompted me to do so - it was a long time in the coming, for what the story's worth. Time fer bed. I'm drained. - S.S.

0 of you fuckers have been accounted for.

old shit. - newer shit.