I WAS A TEENAGE MANIAC

How My Year In The Honor Academy Shaped My Life

My eyes felt soldered shut. Someone was shaking me. I was just so tired — I was always so tired; I grumbled something about letting me sleep. Eventually, I comprehended they were saying something back.

Family meeting. I had to get up.

I shuffled along with everyone else toward the auditorium, blinking curiously at the sight of over six hundred teenagers stumbling sleepily through the East Texas darkness. It was eerily quiet for so many people. None of us knew why we were being summoned at this time of night.

I sat with a few Kitchen Crew friends. Some people didn’t bother sitting, knowing they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Instead, they stood along the wall or at the back of the room to keep awake, as we’d been trained to do. None of us was a stranger to exhaustion.

Then David Hasz, the Director of the Honor Academy and Ron Luce’s right-hand man, was standing at the podium. His face was drawn, sober; my stomach clenched.

Dan O’Donnell, a graduate intern, had been in an accident. He and three others had been driving through Michigan. The roads had been icy. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

I was suddenly wide-awake. A hush fell over the room, except for the gasps of a few people who were crying. Dan had been a mentor to many of them.

Afterward neither I, nor my K-Crew friends, felt like sleeping. Instead, we…