Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

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    Domini was a transfer student from Illinois, where she had been living with her dad. She came to Arkansas in the middle of the school year and moved in with her mother. Since her parents’ divorce she’d alternated living with one and then the other.
    I was sitting through some sort of civics class when she first walked in. Deanna was sitting behind me (we were still together at the time), and two friends, Joey and Jamie, were sitting on my right. The teacher was a bad-tempered Italian man who had just finished lecturing us on how we’d have time to finish our homework if we weren’t out riding around and “partying” every night. I pointed an accusing finger at Joey and voiced a loud “That’s right,” only to have him do the same back at me.
    Deanna laughed, and the bad-tempered Italian said, “Look at Damien, pointing them out.” He gave me a narrow-eyed look to let me know his comment had been directed at my crew. There was a knock on the door and he stepped out into the hallway. The class erupted, as it always did when there was no disciplinarian in sight. When he came back in, Domini was with him. He introduced her as Alia and told everyone she’d be part of the class from now on. Joey shivered as though he found her repulsive. I paid very little attention. She was a red-haired girl with green eyes who looked strangely like Axl Rose in the “Welcome to the Jungle” video. She was dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. I turned back to Jamie and Joey and continued to discuss where we would go that night once Jamie picked us up, just as we had been doing before the teacher caught us. I didn’t give Domini another thought for several months.
    I encountered her out of school for the first time about a month after Deanna and I had broken up, while I was on one of my Forrest Gump walkathons. Jason was with me and we were walking through a store a couple of miles from Lakeshore. Domini was there with another girl. I never did understand why she used her middle name, Alia, at school and Domini at home. At school she seemed painfully shy—she never talked, and kept to herself. At home she was a little more outgoing. The four of us began talking and ended up at the nearby apartment complex where Domini and the other girl lived. A guy who lived there seemed to have an open apartment policy, because his front door stood open to let the breeze in and people seemed to come and go as they pleased. I figured he was a friend of Domini’s because she wandered in and started talking to him as if she had just left. Jason and I followed.
    I sat in a chair minding my own business and staring blankly at the television screen while other people talked, drank beer, teased each other, or stood at the door, shouting to people in the pool outside. I didn’t care about any of it; this was not my place and I did not fit in. I could tell Jason was just as uncomfortable. The only people I spoke to were Domini and her friend, who introduced herself as Jennifer. We weren’t there long before Jason and I got up to leave. Domini tried to get us to stay, but we said Jason had to check in at home. She wanted us to come back later, and I said I would, even though I had no intention of doing so. As we were walking home Jason asked, “You’re not really going back, are you?” My answer was “Of course not.” In the end I didn’t have to, as she came to me.
    That night I was alone in my room with the lights off. The radio was on and I was staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t sleep much at night anymore because that was when the hollow, empty feeling was the worst. At night there’s nothing to hold your mind to the earth, and you spend the entire time falling into an abyss. The only cure is the rising of the sun. I was following my usual routine of waiting for daylight when my mother opened the door and told me someone was there to see me.
    When I entered the living room, Domini stood looking back at me. She knew people who knew where I lived, and had taken it upon herself to come calling. It was late and she stayed only for about fifteen minutes, but before she left I kissed her. I don’t really know why; I guess I felt like it was expected of me. I was still in mourning and felt no desire for her. In hindsight I know I did it for the same reason I walked nonstop—because I didn’t know what else to do, and doing something was better than doing nothing.
    There wasn’t much of a courtship, no scenes of seduction. We