Black Ice

Prologue

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." 

~Steve Jobs

*****

It never would have happened if not for the black ice. 

I wasn't doing anything wrong; the light was green. I was allowed to cross the street. It was cold, and I was tired of waiting. I expected any approaching cars to stop at the red light, like they were supposed to. 

My earbuds were in. I like sad, slow songs. They remind me that there are more important things in life than the state of my hair. I hummed along quietly, my breath billowing out in front of me in a cloud of fog and hanging momentarily in the air. 

I heard the car first. The squeal of tires vaguely penetrated the soft lull of my iPod. I paused, tugging out one earbud and glancing around. All I saw was a flash of red skidding across the black ice that no one had noticed - and then the car slammed into my body. 

I couldn't tell you what type of car it was, or where exactly it hit me. All I could do was close my eyes. There wasn't even time to open them again before I felt myself fly backwards and experienced a moment of unbearable pain before everything went eerily quiet in my mind. 

*****

I've always been a quiet person. 

I don't know why. I just like to listen to the thoughts in my head. I try not to be antisocial, but people tend to avoid me, anyways. I'm not a bad person. I just have that haunted look about me that people like to steer clear of. When they're being nice, people call me and 'old soul'. When they're being nasty, they call me 'weird'. 

My hair is long and dark, hiding my eyes, which are icy blue and perhaps my only attractive feature. My skin is porcelain and pale, and I have a thin, short frame that my mother calls 'petite'. I look nothing like my mother, probably because I was adopted when I was four years old from Russia. 

I don't know much about my past. My father left my mother when he found out she was carrying a child, and my mother thought I was going to die when I was born because I was so small and malnourished. My mother worked all hours so that we could eat, but it wasn't enough. She starved to death when I was three. 

I have retained only one memory of my mother, and it's very fuzzy. But I cling to it like a lifeline whenever my moral compass fails. It was during the darkest time for us. She was nearing death, and we were living in the orphanage. The nursemaids were just waiting for her to die so that they could 'officially' take me in. In her final hours, I remember being called in to see her on her deathbed. She was pale and sweaty, crying and shaking and cursing the world. She pulled me closed and told me that the world was evil, and that the worst things happen to the best people. 

The nursemaids pulled me away. 

And I never believed her. 

But I used her words to remind me of the person I needed to be whenever I was unsure about how to react. I thought of it as a final lesson from my biological mother. Don't be like her. Don't be bitter with the world. Don't be like my biological father, either. Don't lie. Don't betray. Have faith. 

These were the morals I chose to live my life by. 

Right up until the day I was killed by the black ice.