Random Acts of Mayhem! by Luther Lovelace Jr.

Approaching thirty-five and facing a defining moment in a less than illustrious career, Isaac Preston sits alone at his desk eating a brown bag lunch. He?s been fighting depression for years, but things are finally starting to look up, because he?s just landed a new teaching job, his first job in some time. As he tries to ward off the demons that haunt him, he reminds himself that his current taste for bag lunches wasn?t always part of his DNA. There was a time when the world was his oyster. Seventeen years earlier during the spring of 1995, his wizardry at basketball was the talk of Los Angeles. On the verge of receiving a basketball scholarship, all hell broke loose. In the midst of the O.J. Simpson trial, two stories were on everyone?s lips in L.A. during the spring of ?95: Would O.J. be convicted and where would Isaac Preston - hailed as the next Michael Jordan - play ball, in college or the NBA? There were a lot of things heating up in Los Angeles that year, including a pilot project at Isaac?s school, placing youthful prisoners in with students to rehabilitate them. Amid the violence and Random Acts of Mayhem that erupted in Isaac?s high school that year, many lives were changed forever.