[listopencil]

I used to have a cousin named Mikey. He was my stepfather's brother's child. He was a few years younger than me. Not much, just enough for me to notice what I perceived as the immaturity of his behavior. I saw him often when I was in elementary school and middle school. My aunt and uncle would come to visit and of course they would bring their son with them. He was annoying in a kid brother kind of way, which unsettled me a bit because I was the youngest in my family and I wasn't used to that feeling. The feeling of having a younger sibling. But I got used to it and I got used to him. Even after my mom and stepdad divorced. Because my aunt and uncle continued to visit us afterward. Checking on us, making sure we were doing all right, being there for us. They taught me a lot about what 'family' really means and I'm thankful to them for that.

One day on a cold Winter morning in Virginia my sister came running up to me as I played with my two best friends. We were kicking a soccer ball around and making a game of it. Boisterous and violent with glee, not a care in the world. Until I saw her face. Her pale face as white as that snow on the ground. And then her wild dark eyes huge like open pits streaming tears down her cheeks, tears dripping off of her nose and mouth, and I heard her ragged breaths between cries of anguish. Louder and louder as she ran towards me the cries were like strangled screams ripped from her lungs, and then they became sobs as she stopped not ten feet from me. "It's Mikey" she finally managed to squeak out. He had been run over by a school bus. He was killed instantly. I'd like to think that he felt no pain. The four of us just stood there with our breath billowing out in clouds, filling the frozen air between us. After the details had been relayed there was nothing that any of us could think to say. My sister returned home and I remained with my friends for a while. Stunned. Perhaps I was in shock.

I think of him now and then. He was part of my childhood. Another chunk of my life that I will never get back, that I will never relive, that is gone forever no matter how many pictures I see, or videos I watch, or recordings I hear. We bury the past like we bury the dead. We leave it behind because to dwell there is a sort of madness that we can't really afford to engage in. We do it so our memories don't become ghosts that haunt us. And that's what this trailer represents. The ghost of a dead child that should have been left in the ground. This show is going to be crap.