The morning farm scenery flies by as I drove along the river. I stopped at the turn to the bridge. My headlights paused to the long curling dirt road in front of me. All those memories from past summers on that road run through my mind. Learning to ride without training wheels. Learning what love feels like. Learning that I had fallen for my best friend. His smiling face after our first kiss. His warm hand holding mine in the moonlight last summer. Our tragic accident happening right across from me at the other turn to the bridge. How he lost his life and I kept mine. I glance to the little blue worn out cross sitting there at the turn.

Every morning I wake wondering if we get a do over, wondering why I the weak little girl lived but the strong brave boy next to me died. Why did God choose this for our love. I ponder on these thoughts everyday when I walk by his locker at school. I feel the guilt for asking to go out so late at night. I feel the guilt for living without him beside me. It hurts knowing we're apart. But it heals a little bit knowing each day I'm closer to seeing his smiling face again.

It's been a year and to me it still feels like just yesterday, we decided to go out to see the midnight show at the drive in. How we were both carefully watching for deer but unaware of a drunk driver coming towards us. The last thing I remember hearing was "I love you, Emma" coming from Isaac. I never got the chance to tell him if I loved him. I had been stripped of that right because he passed away several minutes after the ambulance got there.

I woke to my family crying at my bedside along with his family. I actually woke with a case of amnesia. I didn't remember anything or anyone except my name. My little sister pointed out everybody. I remember asking why everybody had been crying. They said because I had been in an accident. I even asked my dad where my mother was and that was the hardest I've ever seen him cry. Two weeks later I gained my memory back and the death of Isaac hit me the hardest nobody mentioned his death when I was in the hospital. But son I realized why, I wouldn't have remembered him nor our relationship.

Isaac was buried on his birthday which coincidentally had been mine too. We both would have been seventeen that day. We always thought there was something special bout us sharing a birthday. He however was born at six a.m. and i at eight a.m. He always rubbed it in that he was older. (by two hours) He brought it up any chance he got: arguing over something, randomly, and even when we were playing a game and he lost. He'd be like "Oh well, I'm still older."

We got competitive towards the beginning of high school. We'd fight over who had the better grades, who had more money, who was more popular. We fell for each other around the time of our twelfth birthday. Our parents saw it coming. They even joked that we were in an arranged marriage with each other. It was a rare day to see one of us without the other, in high school or growing up. He lived just past the cemetery the other way of the road that I lived on.

We thought about senior prom together and sometimes the rare thought being together after high school as a family. We thought maybe one day we'd be together as husband and wife. It was dumb to think that but it came and went in our thoughts. It was a teenage love we developed. It was that teenage love that causes me so much pain right now. It was that very teenage love that has encouraged me to tell u my story of that summer up to the very end.