This is an opinion column.

There are no words. Not for this hurt.

This hurt. That hit so hard, so deep. So real.

This hurt. That ripped us from the night. No matter where we were. Who we were with.

This hurt. That grew and grew and grew with each painful word. Remains. Dumpster. Landfill.

Twelve tons of trash.

I was sharing the night with friends at one of the parties that dot the city during Classic Week. It was classic Classic. Then, it wasn’t.

The first among our group glanced at her phone to read a text, gasped and turned away. Turned away with a ferocity, such a hurt I wondered as if something had happened to her own child.

“Check your sources,” she said. “Did they find ‘Cupcake’?”

Her expression, her hurt, said they did. Though she hoped they didn’t.

Another friend looked at the screen in his hand and sighed, deeply. His eyes turned toward the sky.

It was Classic. Then, it wasn’t.

We were there, then we weren’t.

This hurt. Our hurt.

A hurt any parent never wants to feel. Particularly every mother.

A hurt more than anything for a 3-year-old angel and the unspeakable: Those days and nights since Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney disappeared 11 days ago. One moment, as we watched over and over on grainy black and white footage, playing joyfully and innocently with a friend on a sidewalk at a birthday party before toddling out of view.

Those final hours. The terror. The pain.

A hurt, of course, for the family, for a grieving mother and father, for anguished aunts and uncles, for siblings and neighbors and other young friends, for anyone in the little angel’s community.

A hurt, too, for countless Birmingham police, FBI and other investigators who tirelessly searched for days, telling us what they could, while piecing together a puzzle they hoped and likely prayed would morph into a happy angel coming home safe.

But knew it might not. A hurt particularly for those who were searching on Tuesday night—through 12 tons of trash—and found her. The little angel.

In a dumpster.

This hurt touched us all. It melted the differences we deem so vital each day into a puddle of irrelevance. It bound us. No matter where we stand. On anything.

This hurt. Is powerful.

What do we do with this hurt?

It fuels our anger, certainly. A deep, deep anger for the two people Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith says will be charged with two kidnapping and capital murder. The latter carries the death penalty.

This hurt makes even those among us who detest the heinous punishment wonder if, here, it is enough. And even think it’s not.

It also makes us leery. As we should always be. But now. It’ll be a while before any of us takes our eyes off any child anywhere. In a mall. At a park. On any street.

At a birthday party, for sure.

“It only takes a split second,” a somber Smith said Tuesday night. “We cannot assume everyone is part of a village trying to raise a child.”

Some will certainly put this hurt aside, particularly this week. With so many places to go. People to see. With so much Classic.

This hurt commands better.

This year, Alabama State and Alabama A&M, HBCU rivals that host Birmingham’s raucous annual family reunion, are projected to receive $625,000 to benefit their respective institutions. Each.

Those funds are probably already slated to remedy some deferred maintenance issues, purchase long-needed lab equipment or other academic materials, or maybe even launch a new, innovative academic program.

This year, at least a portion of that money—boosted even by contributions from those who don’t say “Happy Classic,” to your friends all week— could be a salve. It could pay for tuition for four years for two, three maybe five students at each institution, students from Birmingham City Schools, to attend ASU or A&M.

Maybe for every year from here on.

Call them the Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney Scholars. Young people with a chance that was snatched from a little angel.

A chance to make this hurt just a little bit less.

A voice for what’s right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama, Roy’s column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj