The Thursday Night Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

front grill just inches from him.
Oh, God
, he thought and as he held his breath, the car’s tires let out an eerie shriek—just before taking a hard, mind numbing bite out of his side.
    As Jesse went down, the world quickly faded to black—and disappeared.

    After squealing sideways, the car jerked to a sudden stop. An older male driver—his bloated face bleached white and showing signs of shock—jumped out of the late model Lexus and hurried to assess the damage. The young man he’d struck was lying motionless in a growing pool of blood. As several curious co-eds gathered around the gruesome scene, the driver began to panic. “Someone call an ambulance!” he yelled and looked back at the young man’s bloody body. “Oh, what have I done?” The driver checked Jesse’s pulse. “Oh God, no!” he screamed.
    As the crowd grew thicker—with some of them becoming visibly upset—a siren wailed sorrowfully in the distance.

    Across campus, Kevin was walking to class when his cell phone rang. “Not again, Randy,” he said under his breath. He looked at the phone’s display and nodded. “Not Randy,” he confirmed and answered the call. “What’s up, bro?”
    Kevin listened intently for a moment. His face became distressed, until a grin appeared. “No way, bro, I’m not buying it! Jesse just lost one of our stupid contests and now he’s trying to even the score.”
    As Kevin continued to listen, the grin was completely wiped from his face. He hung up and made a quick call. “Izzy, did you hear anything about Jesse getting hit by a car this morning?”
    He listened and then shook his head. “No, me neither, but some dude from my Psych class told me that he just got messed up pretty bad over near the park on Elm. Grab Ava and meet me over there. I’ll put a call into Randy.” He listened again and nodded. “I know, but even if it is a hoax, I say we play along.”

    At the accident scene, an even larger crowd had gathered as Kevin, Randy, Izzy and Ava tried to make their way through. There were police lights—even from town—flashing. A sheet-covered stretcher was being loaded into the rear of an ambulance.
    Kevin looked back at his friends and gasped. “I don’t think this is a prank!”
    The gang fought harder to make their way through the thick crowd. Just as the four friends got close, the ambulance doors closed and a siren howled away from the scene. With panic etched into each of their faces, they approached a police officer who was trying to keep the crowd away from the spot of the accident.
    “What happened here?” Randy screamed toward him.
    The police officer motioned with his palm that they remain on the sidewalk.
    “Okay, okay,” Randy yelled, “but tell us what happened!”
    “Some kid tried to beat the light and paid for it,” he said nonchalantly.
    Randy looked back at his friends and then down at the street—near the area that the police officer was protecting. There was a giant red bloodstain. “Oh no…”
    White-faced, Kevin grabbed a co-ed standing nearby. “Who was it?” he asked.
    “Some guy named Jesse,” she said. “I didn’t know him.”
    Randy overheard this and screamed back to the police officer, “Do you think he’ll be all right?”
    The cop shook his head. “He was already gone by the time we got here.”
    “Gone?” Izzy screamed. “What?”
    The police officer put his portable radio to his ear and listened. He shook his head again. “They just pronounced him dead,” he reported sadly.
    Ava collapsed to the sidewalk. “Please God, no! Not Jesse!” she shrieked.
    Izzy and the others immediately began to mourn.

    An hour later, Izzy, Ava and Kevin sat in shock on the girls’ front porch. Randy slowly approached the stairs, shaking his head. His face showed every sign that he’d recently been crying.
    “What—” Ava began to ask.
    “—they told me that he died instantly and that…” Randy interrupted, but began crying so hard that he couldn’t