It all started on a normal fall Wednesday morning. Sam got in her car and headed for school. It was a beautiful morning. The sun had just begun to rise and the sky was overflowing with colors so gorgeous they took Sam’s breath away. The air was a crisp fifty-eight degrees with a soft whispering breeze. As she pulled out of her driveway, the song “Good Morning” by Mandisa blared on the radio. She turned the music up a little louder and started singing along.

First she passed the Moore’s little red barn, and then the old run down post office. The drive was slow and repetitive. She had been making this trip almost every day for the last six years. Her family lived exactly twenty-three miles from the school in which her and her siblings attend. And she knew exactly how long it took every day to get to school.

As she approached Al’s pens her phone started to ring from her backpack in the passenger seat. She ignored it because she knew it would be unsafe to reach for it. Thirty seconds hadn’t passed, when it began to ring again. Now she was getting curious, but once again she just let it ring. It hadn’t been a minute when it started ringing again. At this point she became worried that it was an emergency. She reached over to her backpack, unzipped it, and began digging through it. She tried to keep her eyes on the road, but as it started to ring for the fourth time she began frantically searching for it. She leaned into the backseat to look in her backpack, and she finally found it. Sam pulled it to her face and said hello to her best friend Jason. About that time she looked up and realized she had just hit the curve and was about to go off the road. Her brain could not believe what her eyes were seeing. She jerked the steering wheel to the left to try and avoid the reflectors. Before she knew it she had lost control of her little sports car and went airborne. One, two, three times she rolled, and landed upside down. She had never been more scared in her life. She laid there in dead silence as smoke filled the air. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She lay there praying that this was all a bad dream.

When reality sunk in she began to cry as she looked for her phone to call for help. She began to panic even more when she couldn’t find it, but then she heard a car approaching the scene. It was Mrs. Reed. A third grade teacher who lived just down the road. Mrs. Reed came up to the driver seat where Sam was laying and asked her if she was okay. “I’m freaking out a little.” Sam replied.

“Are you severely hurt anywhere?” Mrs. Reed Asked

“No. I don’t think so. I’m just in shock. And my hands are shaking really bad.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go call 911. Just hang tight for a moment.”

As Mrs. Reed went to call 911 Sam sat there in shock worrying what might happen next. Mrs. Reed returned to her side and she said the ambulance was on its way. Together they waited for help to arrive. Many community members arrived at the scene, but Sam blocked everything out. She couldn’t think straight. Why had she answered the phone? What was so important that Jason just had to tell her? How could she be so careless? What would her family and friends say? Thoughts raced through her mind as she sat there trying to piece together what she was supposed to do next.

Jason and Sam had been best friends since they were in grade school. They used to spend every summer day together racing to the water on the beach. Sam knew everything there was to know about Jason, and Jason knew Sam better than she knew her self. Many people would say they were soul mates. Others would say they had a friendship most people could only dream of. As Sam lay there waiting she let her mind flow through all of her memories with Jason. All those days spent on the beach building sand castles and listening to the waves. Every birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, fourth of July and even their own made up holiday that they had spent together. All the times Sam had cried in Jason’s arms after a rough day or hard break up. The countless times she calmed him down after his team lost a game. All the little things in life they had celebrated together. It just didn’t make since. Jason should have known that Sam was driving to school. They knew each other’s daily routines by heart.

Sam’s thoughts were interrupted when a young man came to her window and asked for her name. She looked over at the man. He had light brown hair and soft blue eyes. He looked like he was barely in his twenties, possibly still in college. He said his name was Will, and he asked Sam to tell him what happened. Sam explained everything without leaving out a single detail. Will told her that he had just graduated college to be a paramedic, and he asked if he could assess her. She told him that would be fine.

Will walked around to the passenger side and climbed in the car. He asked Sam a ton of questions about how she felt, what exactly hurt, and what she thought she hit. He applied light pressure to parts of her arms, legs, and stomach, asking if she felt any pain with the pressure. Her answer was no to all of the areas he tested. She seemed to not be severely injured. Will told her that he thought it would be okay for her to crawl out of the car and relocate to a more comfortable position outside of the car as she waits for the ambulance. He helped her undo her seat belt and gently crawl out the window of her Camaro. Sam got outside and started to stand up straight. She rose up and the minute her back and neck lifted up straight she collapsed. She was pronounced dead.

Later that day the police were investigating her wreck and they found her cell phone. When Chief Banks saw the number of missed calls on her phone from Jason he remembered that they were very close. He decided to go break the news to Jason in person. When he rang Jason’s doorbell his mother answered the door. Her eyes had dark circles under them like she had been crying a lot. Chief Banks assumed she had already gotten the news and asked if he could come in. They went and took a seat in her living room. He asked her if she knew why Jason had called Sam so many times that morning and explained to her that those calls were the reason she crashed. Jason’s mom looked at Chief Banks with a stunned look on her face and informed him that Jason was not the one calling Sam, and that she was in fact the one who made all of those phone calls. Shocked Chief Banks asked her why. “Because my son died in a car crash on his way to school this morning and I knew Sam needed to be the first to know.”