Marie wants to live with her mother again. When she sees a bottle with a skull symbol at school, she knows what to do
By Skip Hollandsworth
It was a January evening in 1994, Marie Robards was about to graduate from Mansfield High School in Texas and was working on Shakespeare’s Hamlet with her classmate Stacey High. They had come to their favorite passage, the monologue of Claudius, who had murdered his brother in order to take the throne himself. With the utmost pathos in her voice – only slightly tinted by her thick Texan accent – Stacey recited Claudius’ despairing speech, in which he ponders whether he will ever be able to repent:
My crime is done
But oh, what a turn of prayer
befits me? “Forgive my vile murder?”
This cannot be; I still have everything
What drove me to kill…
“What a cool spot!” Stacey exclaimed. But then she saw that Marie had turned pale. Her hands were shaking.
“Stacey,” Marie asked, “do you think people can go through life without a conscience?”