The first thing I see when I open my eyes is a dandelion. It is easily the most beautiful and strong and perfect dandelion I have ever seen in my entire eighteen years of life. All of its petals are long and bright yellow and its stem has absolutely no bend whatsoever, sprouting out of a jagged crack in the pavement.

“What are you doing here?” I ask it, raising my head and reaching out to pet the ends of its symmetrical petals with a bloody fingertip.
It is the end of September and the beginning of a cold, harsh fall. Every other hated weed died the exact same time summer did.

But not this weed- this dandelion is a fighter.

“I’m Amber,” I tell the dandelion. “That’s Lauren.”

Music is playing in the background somewhere far, far away. It’s a George Strait song.

I’m carrying your love with me. West Virginia down to Tennessee. I’ll be moving at the good Lord’s speed, carrying your love with me.

“God, I hate George Strait,” I groan to myself, lowering my cheek back down onto the wet pavement. Small pieces of gravel bite into my skin, but the pain feels kind of good. It reassures me. It makes me feel alive.
We are still alive.

“Lauren, can we please change this damn song now? Please?” I call out to my sister who is sprawled out on the road about a hundred feet from me.
No answer. Lauren just lays there with her back to me instead. She is probably mad at me for asking to change the song again.
She is probably also pissed at me for making us late. I will apologize for that later.

A strong gust of wind picks up a few leaves and pieces of paper and drops them off in front of my battered face.

“Thank you,” I tell the wind. “Lauren needs to turn that paper in first period.”

Suddenly I hear a siren. It is louder than the screams of the wind. It is louder than George Strait’s awful cooing and swooning, which I would normally be thankful for, but the siren is so shrill it makes my ears bleed.
It makes them bleed like every other part of my body.

“Who is that?” I ask the dandelion. “Who is coming?”

Before it can answer me, the most beautiful and strong and perfect dandelion I have ever seen is crushed into the wet pavement by the dirty, heavy tire of a speeding ambulance.

“No!” I scream as the vehicle screeches to a stop and every door opens in unison. Multiple pairs of feet file out and hit the ground in front of me.
I stare at the ruined petals as they try to escape from the tire’s deathly grip with deafening screams of pure agony. My broken fingers scratch at the edge of the rubber, begging the tire to let our friend free.
The tire refuses.
The dandelion falls silent. The petals start to shrivel and die right in front of my eyes.

In that moment, I stop breathing. I stop trying. I stop fighting.

I tell myself that if the most beautiful and strong and perfect dandelion I have ever seen can’t survive this, neither can I.
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The cross is exactly one year old today. Even though it’s not very old, the white paint covering the splintered wood has still become aged with chips and fades in the corners.
A bleak wind, much like the one I felt on this very day three hundred sixty five days ago, picks up, sending red and orange and yellow leaves in a floating circle around the sturdy, stable sides of the cross.

I look up at the sky, at the sun just beginning to fall behind the mountains, cascading its final gleams of light onto the side of the road. One last attempt to make the somber day seem just a little bit brighter. I silently thank the sun for trying.

I slowly fall to my knees, ignoring the thick mud covering the edge of the road, and lower the small bouquet of pink tulips I just picked from my mom’s small garden onto the pile of withered, shriveled flowers already lying in front of the cross.

I close my eyes and time seems to shift abruptly and violently. I’m no longer kneeling on the ground, hearing the whirl of autumn air or the scraping of dry leaves against the worn road.
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I’m behind the steering wheel of my old car, pulling out of my garage. Lauren is sitting in the passenger seat. A red folder is laying in her lap, and she opens it and closes it multiple times, making sure the neatly stapled pile of typed papers is still there, nestled in its little side pocket.

“Your paper isn’t going anywhere, Lauren. Chill,” I say in an annoyed tone as I expertly use my rearview mirror to navigate my little Honda civic out of our narrow driveway.

“I don’t think you understand how important this paper is! I told you it’s the first graded assignment of the year for my AP English class and I want to do really well,” she replies, also annoyed, as she looks in the mirror outside her rain splattered window, making sure I’m not about to ram into the rusty basketball pole or our dad’s brand new farm truck.
Normally her constant watch on my driving would bother me, but today I was just worried about getting her to first period on time so she could turn in the damn paper she had been whining to our mom and obsessing over for the past week.

“Oh trust me, I understand. I’ve only heard about it a thousand times.”

As I turn onto the road that will eventually lead us straight to our small high school, I punch the power button on the radio and flick the volume knob to its maximum point.
Baby all I got is this beat up leather bag. And everything I own don’t feel up half.
“What the hell?” I say, disgusted, hitting a button that sends my radio searching for another, hopefully better, channel.
I hate country music. I know Lauren likes it, though. I can always hear its slow beats and overly sentimental lyrics seeping out from her headphones or the small space underneath her bedroom door.
“Put it back!” Lauren yells, twisting the tuning knob until it lands right back on the awful, whiny, country song.
“We don’t listen to country in my car. You know the rules!” I yell back, never once taking my eyes off the wet, winding road. My noisy windshield wipers mechanically slap away the light drizzle that smacks against the glass.
“And you know I don’t like being late for school. Just please focus on avoiding that right now,” she replies, once again opening up that folder to look at her paper while she sings along with George.
Don’t you worry about the way pack. All I care about is getting back real soon. A goodbye kiss is all I need from you.
I open my mouth to argue, but before the words can leave my mouth, a figure jumps into the road in front of me. I impulsively slam on the breaks and jerk my wheel to avoid a collision. My locked tires squeal for just a second against the slippery pavement before we start flying.
Time seems to move in very slow motion. Lauren gasps as her folder leaves her lap, hitting the roof of the car and unleashing its contents around us like a snowstorm. I watch the entire glass of my windshield crumble easily with just one long crack, like a thin piece of ice being stepped on. The horrible sound it produces collides with crushing metal and breaking bones and George Strait to create a loud and disgusting and terrifying song.
The next thing I know I’m on the road. I’m not even sure how I got there; it’s like the car just spit me out. At first I feel white-hot pain and I can’t help but scream. Lauren doesn’t scream back.
But then I don’t feel anything. I don’t hear anything. I just close my eyes.
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The first thing I see when I open my eyes is a dandelion. It is easily the most beautiful and strong and perfect dandelion I have ever seen in my entire nineteen years of life. All of its petals are long and bright yellow and its stem has absolutely no bend whatsoever, sprouting out of the same jagged crack in the pavement that is now right beside my knee- right in front of the cross. I have no idea how I didn’t see it before.
I reach out and feel the sharpness of its triangular petals with my perfectly healed fingertips. They feel familiar, but also very different.
“What are you doing back here?” I ask it. “Just visiting?”

The dandelion doesn’t reply. I’m starting to learn that dandelions never reply.
“Yeah. Me too,” I whisper anyway.
I want to tell the dandelion everything that has happened since the last time he’s seen us.
How we were rushed to the hospital in that murderer of an ambulance. My head suffered traumatic injuries and my heart stopped beating once.
How I had to be shocked, but they didn’t shock Lauren. They said it was too late for her. How they didn’t even try.
How I ran out of the room in the middle of the closed casket funeral service. I sprinted to the bathroom and vomited into the stained, cracked porcelain sink. I stayed in there, laying on the cold tire floor until I couldn’t hear condolences offered to my parents from friends and distant family members outside the door anymore.
How the unfriendly funeral home owner had to open up that same bathroom door with an old key two hours later when I wouldn’t respond to any pleading knocks. My dad picked me up into his strong arms like he would a crying infant and carried me to the car.
How our new, expensive mahogany table, meant to seat four, only seats three now. My mom still leaves a checkered place mat out for her. I sit across from Lauren’s chair at every meal and just stare at the empty spot I created in my family.
How I never touch the food that sits in front of me. I only drink water to soothe my sore, sobbing throat. I starve myself to punish myself.
The pain of hunger sometimes overpowers the pain of loss and hurt and shame. Sometimes.
How I only eat when my mom’s begging cries of desperation force me to swallow a few cold bites. I tell myself that she’s suffered enough. She doesn’t need to watch her only living daughter starve and disintegrate in front of her red, swollen eyes.
How the food never stays down long, though. When I know my parents are sleeping, experiencing haunting nightmares about losing their youngest daughter, I force the food up and out of my stomach.
How guilt and food don’t mix.
Mostly I just want to tell the dandelion how it was all an accident- an awful, horrific accident. How I never wanted or meant for it to happen.
How if I could, I would do anything in my power to go back and fix the horrible mess I made.
How I wouldn’t slam on my breaks and turn my wheel to avoid the animal. I would have just crushed right through it, completely destroying it and my beloved car, instead of my baby sister.
How if I couldn’t do any of those things, hell, I would have just let her listen to the stupid George Strait song. I would have sung along with her even though I had absolutely no idea what the lyrics were. I would have pretended to know for her.
How I wouldn’t make fun of her for being overprotective about her paper. I would have praised her for being such a good, hardworking student- unlike me, who is careless and forgetful and unorganized.
How I would have just hugged her and kissed her and told her I loved her one more time.
But I can’t.
And I don’t. I don’t tell the dandelion any of these things. I just stand up and take another look at Lauren’s cross on the side of the old, familiar road.
I whisper, “I miss you” and slowly walk away from the last place I ever saw my little sister alive.
But before I get too far, I stop, turn around, and take one final glance at the most beautiful and strong and perfect dandelion I have ever seen.
Even after all of its hardships and struggles, even after it was completely knocked down and crushed exactly one year ago, it is still here, looking over all that pass by on this little road.
Every other dandelion has died with the changing seasons, but here this dandelion stands, always outlasting the others, as angelic as ever.
This dandelion is a fighter.

In that moment, I start breathing. Really breathing. Really living. I start trying. I start fighting.

I tell myself that if the most beautiful and strong and perfect dandelion I have ever seen can survive this, so can I.