"Can I get some help in here please!?" As an one-on-one health care for the Los Angeles Unified School District for the past 10 years Mary had cleaned up the vomit, wiped the buttocks, and shrugged off the bites and punches of her severely mentally challenged students. Some of them, in their late teens and early twenties even though the campus is considered a high school, are twice her small, petite frame. At 64 years old she often worked exasperated and stiff-backed while the younger, male health cares and assistants texted one another and goofed off. "Just one more year and then I can retire. God, I'm so tired."

She turned her back to the hallway and reentered the bathroom where her student sat in an improvised harness set atop the toilet. "Why do you always have to make such a mess?!" While she gathered her composure she thought of her eldest daughter, the 3rd grade teacher living out her passions in San Francisco.

As she finished and began walking her student back to the classroom her mind switched to her three sons, each struggling to find their way in the adult world. Just as they reached the classroom a brilliant flash stunned Mary and startled her student into screams of terror. If there had only been one more second of time in Mary's life she would have been able to watch her past pass in front of her eyes, but there wasn't.

The past five years on the Mission College campus in San Fernando Valley had been filled with racial tensions, political struggles, and acts of police brutality and abuse. Students were pawns amid various factions of professors and administrators who, in many but not all cases, were using them for their own vanity, financial profit, or political gain. The Mission College student government executive board sat on top of the wealthiest bank account in all of the Los Angeles Junior College District, but with a percentage of that account coming to each of them in stipends at the end of the year many of these so-called leaders chose to turn the school into a cultural desert. The word simony would come to have far deeper meaning to the student government than simply its literal definition.

But then there was a change. Resolving a crisis on an Ivy League university campus, the President of the United States had a sit-down meeting with the parties involved in order to work out a situation. They each shared beer. In light of the great progress that this White House meeting had created, all the combatants of Mission College gathered on the central quad, sitting, kneeling, and standing in the grass, roughly organized in the shape of a circle. While the consumption of alcohol was not permitted on school grounds, an extra kick via canned energy drinks were disbursed amongst the groups.

After several long hours of debate, and numerous energy peaks and jittery crashes followed by instant consumption of more aluminum-bound liquid legal speed, a consensus was found. In the most unlikely turn of events, a common concept of 'self' was found that created so much enthusiasm and mutual well-being that not only was it pledged that the student government account would be used for campus cultural events, but also that the school student organizations pledged to work jointly on future events for mutual benefit.

As handshakes were being passed between the several students and staff a sudden bright flash startled only a couple of those at that meeting while the others were already carving up their projected funds with no inclination that their lives were about to end.