The huge crowd was still gathered out on the lawn. But I could see that the music had stopped and no one was saying a word. The only noise came from the middle of the circle. It was a soft, soft cry. Like some wounded animal. Like a wounded kitten. Kat sat in the middle of the circle. Her head was down, resting on her lap, and her arms were covering her eyes. She was shaking, and making that soft, almost inaudible cry. I grabbed her wrists, trying to knock her out of her daze. It was then that I saw how cut up they were. They were slashed from the elbow to the shoulders. Dried blooded rested on the cuts, and some of the slashes were still slowly bleeding, so they looked like tiny red ribbons on her arms. She was just barely conscious. "Kat, Kat, Kat!!!" I screamed. Tears were running down my face. "Jesus, Kat, wake up! What the hell is this? You promised me Kat! Wake up!" I pushed my way through the crowd, carrying Kat in my arms. I hollered at someone to call the police and an ambulance, which they must have done. About ten minutes later, I watched as the paramedics took Kat away from me. I went home, but I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. My thoughts kept shifting back to the party, to Kat, to the promise that she’d broken. I wondered if she was dead. My thoughts drifted to death, to suicide. Just something to escape the pain. I finally went to sleep. But all through the night, I dreamt of death. My dreams swirled from the past, to the present, to the near future. I dreamed that the doctor would come and tell me that Kat was gone from me forever. The last dream I remember was the one that affected me the most, I’d say. I was back at my grandfather’s funeral. My grandmother was crying empty tears. I stood there, sort of out of apathy. I felt nothing for this man. Neither love, nor hate. Just nothing. My grandmother turned to me, and she said, "Brent Dawson. I want to tell you something. Something that I think I haven’t learned until now. You see your grandfather over there? Well, he was a stubborn one, and he finally took it to the grave with him. He didn’t want to give up on his drinking, and he didn’t. No matter what I did, he kept on drinking. See, you can’t help someone that doesn’t want to help themself, Brent. That’s the cold truth. It’ll probably cause you a lot of heartache someday, but I’m just warning you now, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themself." I awoke from the dream with a sense of emptiness in my stomach. I got dressed and went to see Kat in the hospital. She looked terrible. Her skin was this grayish tone, and her eyes had lost their luminous look. She told me about the bad trip that she had went on, how she had thought that there were tiny worms crawling on her arms, and how she’d tried to cut them off. Her arms were all bandaged. She said that she’d had to get seventeen stitches all together. She told me about the treatment she was going to receive, and how she was going to get better. I sat there, looking around, absently. That look of pain was back in her eyes. The numb feeling was still in my stomach, and I felt like I needed to breathe again. So, I told her that I couldn’t see her anymore. I left her crying in her room. I think that I heard the nurse go in and sedate her when I left. Ever since then, well, let’s just say that I’ve never been the same. I’m still haunted by those words that I heard in my dream. "It’ll probably cause you a lot of heartache someday, but I’m just warning you now, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves." And I still sing Kat’s song over and over again in my head, "Come with me. Share my radiance. Chase Heaven and angels. Love is right at your fingertips." I’ve since lost touch with her. People tell me that she’s hooked on something now. Heroin, I think. I sometimes cry, when I think of that painful look in her eyes. They’ll probably always be clouded over with pain. And I sometimes cry when I think of how she left me in a lonely place.¨

people have now been spiritually enlightened