The Empty Seat

THE EMPTY SEAT
Seven seniors. Eight reserved seats. One final trip before graduation.
It is 1986 in rural East Tennessee, and seven high school seniors are climbing aboard an aging church bus for one last adventure before graduation.
There should have been eight.
Danny McAllister was supposed to be with them.
Instead, after losing his battle with cancer earlier that school year, all that remains is a strip of masking tape bearing his name on an empty seat nobody is willing to touch.
Tommy is angry at God.
Rachel is carrying a grief she refuses to let anyone see.
Moose hides behind jokes.
Caleb has plenty of Bible verses but fewer answers than anyone realizes.
Lisa knows a side of Danny the others never saw.
Brian is carrying a secret about the last words he ever said to him.
And Jenny is terrified that graduation will prove everyone else's expectations about her were right.
They were never supposed to become friends.
Then the bus breaks down.
Stranded miles from anywhere, one long night forces seven teenagers to finally say the things they have been hiding-from one another, from God, and from themselves.
And then they find Danny's cassette.
Recorded before he died, the tape begins with the Danny they remember: bad singing, terrible jokes, ridiculous impressions, and enough insults to make sure none of his friends escape unharmed.
But there is another side to the tape.
Side B.
And what Danny left there will change the rest of their senior trip-and perhaps the rest of their lives.
Set against the music, fashion, church buses, paper maps, first loves, and uncertainty of 1986, THE EMPTY SEAT is a Christian coming-of-age story about friendship, grief, forgiveness, unanswered prayers, and discovering that moving forward does not mean forgetting those we leave behind.
Because sometimes the question isn't why someone didn't get more time.
It's what we're going to do with ours.