SKYE HERRERA: What we went through only made me stronger. I hate that it happened and I’m not trying to say I’m ultimately glad that it happened or anything like that. I guess what I’m saying is that after you go through something so terrible, it really puts everything into perspective y’know? All your insecurities, all your fears--surviving something like that, they’re nothing in comparison. Besides, I’m only living the life that I think Haley would want me to. My new confidence or whatever is a testament to her. I mean if you look at what she’s gone through, it’s the least I could do. I think she’s proud of me, but I’m even more proud of her. I can only hope to be fifteen percent of what she is and has always been.
HALEY ADAMS: That’s something I speak about at my engagements. How even still after all this time and what I’ve remade myself into, there’s still people that speak from the perspective that I’ve had my life ruined or whatever. I don’t look at it that way.
Were there times I got down about what I had lost? Hell yeah. I got pretty low on several occasions. Things were rough back in college for a while there. In the end, I looked at it as my life was headed in one direction and then this happened, and it swerved in another direction.
The extent of Haley Adams’s injuries was significant. She was med flighted to the University Hospital, the state’s only Level One trauma center, where she underwent an eight-hour surgery. In the end, she was left with a spinal cord injury that resulted in her paraplegia.
Her disability was only the beginning of her journey, however. After rehabilitation and high school graduation she attended college and received her teaching certificate, and then became a cheer coach and special education teacher.
She currently teaches part-time and has shifted her focus as an advocate for those with disabilities, speaking at various events and conferences. She is married and expecting her first child in the fall.
STEPHEN PARKER: Back when I would get those emails from Dylan about him and Nick hanging out and I would get this uncomfortable feeling I didn’t quite understand. Later, I would be able to put a name to that feeling: jealousy.
I wished it was me hanging out with Nick instead of him, sweating in that barn and playing guitar, his jawline and the look in his eyes while he played and got lost in the music. I would imagine it would get hot and there and we would have to take off our shirts and then who knows what would happen. It was a fantasy I returned to often, but it left me feeling guilty and ashamed. I tried to suppress it.
I didn’t come out for many years after. I grew up going to church and church camps and all that stuff and I guess I suppressed a lot of stuff? Grew up hearing the word “fag” and “faggot” tossed around. Back in those days, one of the worst insults was to insinuate somebody was homosexual. There was lots of denial and confusion. For the longest time, I thought that the death of Nick and everything we’d been through was a punishment for being gay.
SKYE HERRERA: Steve and I? Yeah, we ended up dating for a while. A long while actually. Going through that event together really made us closer. How could it not? We would go visit Haley at the hospital together. We would recommend music to each other. My dad, he would teach Steve guitar. He was my date to Junior Prom and we even went to Senior Prom together as friends.
If you had told me before that night all of this, it would’ve seemed like a dream come true. After a while though I realized something was up. I had no qualms or hang ups about sex before marriage and when we got to that point in the relationship, I noticed something was...off. Like he wasn’t totally into me that way? I mean I tried to convince myself otherwise and he would swear up and down that he was, but there was a drunken night in his den our senior year when we went out to the alley to look up at the night sky and he broke down and told me.
STEPHEN PARKER: I could trust Skye. It was finally time for me to tell someone, but I asked her to keep it secret. We continued to fake it for a while and eventually broke up. We still keep in touch pretty regularly, although it’s been hard in recent years.
Skye Herrera became the front woman to an alternative rock band. They performed at Vans Warped Tour, SXSW, and ACL Music Festival among others over the years. They had several mild crossover hits including songs featured in various soundtracks for television and movies.
She is twice divorced and has a daughter and when not parenting she can be found working on her musical career. Her debut solo album is set to be released next year.
BOB SCHROEDER, LOCAL HISTORIAN: Why does such a tale captivate us? It is a classic tale with much in common with the slasher genre of films from the horror section of the video rental store. There are teens to be sacrificed, bodies to be collected, scores to be paid, and lessons to be learned. Except in this version, I’m not sure that there is a moral or lesson to be learned.
STEPHEN PARKER: A moral? A lesson to be learned? Stay home, I guess. Wrap yourself up in bubble wrap and never go outside.
You know that could’ve ended a hundred times differently. Most every version I think of, we end up safely at home. There’s other versions though that are probably almost as terrible. We could’ve gotten into a terrible car wreck. The end result would’ve been the same: Haley paralyzed, Nick and Dylan still dead, me and Skye still scarred. What difference does it make, the cause of death?
I’ve thought about it a lot. Several of us died that night, but in the end does it matter that terrifying events occurred prior? Dead is dead. Gone is gone. After 9/11 and after Afghanistan and when Iraq started up, they gave a Marine recruiter full privilege to stalk the high school and lure in unsuspecting prey. Even gave him access to a storage closet that he used as his office. He had all day to work on us. He recruited a couple from my class. One of my classmates ended up dying over there. Another lost his leg.
Later, the opiate epidemic hit really hard in the state. By our ten-year reunion a couple of us had died that way. Blissed out until they forgot to breathe.
BOB SCHROEDER: Teenagers as a cautionary tale is an old concept. They are the bridges to adulthood, yet we’ve used them over the years for various ends. They are young and dumb and full of cum. Or is it piss and vinegar? I can’t remember.
They are nine feet tall and bullet-proof. Or so they think. We use this to our advantage, get them to join our wars and fight for us. They make good cannon fodder and we love them for it as they storm that enemy hill without a second thought. The thirty-year-old might hesitate, pause to analyze the situation.
We give them two-ton hunks of steel, death machines capable of reaching speeds of 120 miles per hour. We give them cell phones to check in with us, knowing full well that they are distracting and likely to increase the chance of a wreck. We cross our fingers and hope for the best.
We send them to school with bullet-proof backpacks and contingency plans for school shooters. We haven’t figured out a better solution.
Our teens are lambs to the slaughter. Always have been.
(shrugs shoulders) Eh, but most of them make it out okay.
STEPHEN PARKER: I mentioned earlier that I had found myself back in Somerset years down the road. I mentioned that it brought the emotions roaring back. I found myself in the park and I got out and it was mostly empty, but I was under this row of giant sycamore trees, and I walked around a little until it hit me like a sledgehammer to the gut. I broke down and wept. I wept for my past. I wept for Nick and Dylan. I wept for what could’ve been.
SKYE HERRERA: Years later, I returned to Somerset for a few days to visit with some elderly family members. You never knew when it would be the last time. On a Saturday evening I drove the old Main drag a couple times. It was dead. Empy. No kids hanging out, just some people leaving the movie theater. I pulled over to Sonic to get myself a drink, asked the middle-aged carhop if people “cruised town” anymore. “Not for years,” she said.
BOB SCHROEDER: The other thing about slashers is that they often feature the common trope of the killer getting away. The killer is out there, not quite dead, waiting to return.
STATE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION NOTES, OCT 28th, 2003: A body from the state medical examiner’s office has been reported missing. The body of the John Doe believed to be responsible for the numerous deaths in Somerset has vanished from the lab site. If you have any information regarding this, please contact us at (XXX) XXX-XXXX.
STEPHEN PARKER: I mentioned before about pivotal moments, and I’ve thought of another. It’s one that I keep coming back to, a moment outside of all of the trauma. Something warm. Something comforting. In spite of everything that happened, I’m glad that I have this.
Let me set the scene. We’re heading out to Buster’s and we’re all a little giddy. Dylan, he says, “Look at us, just a regular bunch of Breakfast Club motherfuckers up in here.”
HALEY: Oh really? Why’s that?”
DYLAN: It’s an unlikely crew is all I’m saying.
HALEY: Oh, because I thought you were saying it’s like all of us fit into a bunch of cliched roles. Are you saying that I’m the cheerleader and Nick’s the jock? What does that make Stephen and Skye?
NICK: I ain’t no jock.
SKYE: Wait, are you saying I’m the weird girl?
STEPHEN: No way in hell you’re the rebel, Dylan. You’re the geeky dude.
DYLAN: Look, can we just drop it? How about we’re the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or the Justice League or something?
Right then, Nick starts to sing the chorus of that song from that movie, the one that plays over the end credits, the one that goes. And before you know it, it was like a goddamn singalong, the whole truck joining.
So, this was another pivotal moment, I think. We were all happy and it was like this high we would continue to pursue the rest of the night, a night we wished would never end.
Now, I’m not a journalist or anything, but if I was writing this thing, that’s where I’d end it.
Stephen Parker drifted for a few years after high school: a stop-and-start college career, numerous entry level and service industry jobs, relocations. He eventually pursued a career in medicine and now works as a pulmonologist. He lives in California with his partner, Shawn.