Travis, 17, gets up from the couch and speaks to the audience about the death of his brother in Iraq.
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TRAVIS
The sun was going down when I got outside. And I thought about what Nick had said to me, all that stuff about finding my place in the world, or finding some way to make a mark, and I hadn’t done any of it. I hadn’t made a single mark. Even at the funeral I wasn’t all that important—not that many people really paid much attention to me. And it occurred to me that all I was really, was just a hole. Just an empty spot. And then I thought, I can’t even believe that all I’m thinking about right now is myself. Maybe that’s why I’m nothing. The whole world just goes on around me—my mom and dad are in there, hashing it out, my brother’s in the ground, and I’m out here whining about the fact that I’m uncool. If I was really a good person, I’d be crying about Nick, but I’m not. I was the last person to talk to him, he even told me he was worried, in his way, and I remember during that conversation that I wanted to cut it short cause there was a good TV program coming on.