Lost

Chapter 1: How it Happened

I was fifteen years old when I died.

It all started on a warm summer night. I was out with my friends to the typical high school party. Everyone was having a great time, but of course, at some point all great parties must come to an end.

I stayed sober the entire night, none of my friends did. My friend Michael had just gotten his license last week and I depended on him to drive me home since I wasn't old enough to drive yet and really didn't know anyone else at the party that would take me home. I also didn't have enough money for a taxi so I saw Michael as my only option.

Sure I had last resorts like calling my parents but, C'mon. Call my parents and get in trouble for being at the party in the first place? No way!

So of course I got into a car with him and a few of my drunk friends.

Thing is, Michael had been drinking too. I thought I would be okay because out of my group of friends that drank, he seemed to be the least drunk. He seemed a bit tipsy if anything and it wasn't like he was driving an hour away. I thought I would be fine as long as he was sober enough to steer the car.

I remember the way Michael repeatedly blinked his eyes, desperately trying to stay awake.

I remember constantly asking him if he was okay to drive me home and him constantly replying yes.

Michael lied.

I realized the alcohol was really affecting him when he shut his eyes for a second...which became multiple seconds until he had completely knocked out with his head resting on the steering wheel, hitting the wheel so hard it triggered the horn.

Like I said, I couldn't drive yet, but I still tried.

I grabbed the steering wheel, hoping that I could swerve us to the side of the road, but I didn't have control of the breaks. So all we did was switch lanes, head straight through a red light, and crash into a car, head-on.

Sometimes I wonder if I should've jumped out the car and broken a leg, but then I'd remember that life isn't always fair. I knew this was true because in the end, out of all the drunk teenagers in the car, I was the only one who died.

Of course the others got critical injuries but I was dead. I was gone, never to return.

The car flipped over on my side, causing the windshield to shatter and strike my body in multiple places. The doctors believed that's what killed me, but the truth is I was already dead once the impact of the car hitting us caused my head to roughly slam against the headboard which practically shattered my skull.

That's when the dying process officially began.

Dying was strange because I didn't feel anything at all. Usually when you hear that someone dies in an unbearable way you think, Wow that's sounds painful, but it was like I knew I was dying so I left my body before I could feel the pain.

As I left my body, it was as if the world was moving in slow motion. I struggled to keep my eyes open which left me with a blurry image of my last few seconds on earth. I heard a voice in my head repeating, "It's over. My life is over." As the voice repeated those words I saw a flashback of my entire life from the second I was born up to this point. As soon as it ended, I blinked for the last time on Earth.

When I reopened my eyes, as strange as it sounds, I found myself staring at the scene of the accident.

I watched as cops and ambulances surrounded the two cars. In the car that Michael crashed into that night were a mother, a father, and their young daughter.

The child survived, but her parents had died.

As an officer carried her out of the car, she cried, "Mommy! Daddy! Wake up!" Over and over and over.

The poor girl had no idea that they never would.

I tried to look around for them since they died around the same time I did, but I guessed they had gone their own way.

Suddenly, I heard someone gasp for breath and I realized it was Michael. He was the first of the four people in the car to regain consciousness.

His face was a bit bloody from some of the glass that cut him. 

The first thing he did was look at my body seated in the passenger seat. "Emily? C'mon Emily, get up! You are not dead! You are not dead! Get up Emily!" He yelled at the top of his lungs.

He then turned around to look at the rest of his friends in the back seat. Ashamed of himself, he held his head in his hands and sobbed. "I killed them. I killed my friends."

An officer helped him out of the car and forces Michael to tell him what happened. Michael was so panicked. He rushed over his words and cried hysterically, but he just wasn't making sense.

"Listen kid, I'm going to need you to calm down. The ambulance will deal with your friends. I want you to explain what happened." The officer demanded.

"I w-was at a party with my f-friends and I didn't even drink. I was just tired and I shut my eyes for like a second and next thing I know, the car hit me." He lied.

"And you're telling the truth?" The officer asked him.

Michael nodded his head, "Y-yes sir."

"Alright well I still have to go through standard procedure. I can smell alcohol on you."

"P-procedure?" Michael stuttered.

"Yes, I'm going to have to ask you to take a Breathalyzer test."

I watched his face twitch in panic. "Okay, I had a few shots and a couple beers. I could've sworn I was fine though!"

"It doesn't matter, kid. You were not only drinking under aged. You were also driving under intoxication."

After giving the test, the officer recited the Miranda rights as he arrested Michael and sat him in the back of his police car.

I watched as the flashing red and blue lights disappeared down the road. During the whole process, the paramedics rushed to get all of us out of the wrecked car.

From there Allison, Reese, Jade, and I were placed onto stretchers and hurried into ambulances.

Little did they know, they had a dead girl on the stretcher that they thought they could save.