It started out like any other fight they'd ever gotten into. Hayla had rolled her eyes at her mom after made a few smart remarks. It seemed as though one remark lead to another and then another. Finally her mom decided she'd had enough of this disrespect.

"Hayla Claire Anderson! Your attitude needs to end this instant or you're going to find yourself without your precious little car for two weeks," she said as she shot Hayla the most bone chilling look she'd ever seen. 

"Oh really another one of your empty threats? Go ahead take my car away, I dare you," Hayla challenged.  "You know, I thought you would have learned by now that they don't scare me anymore. I know better than to believe you'll actually follow through with them." 

Hayla's mom now looked completely shocked. Her daughter had said a lot of mean things to her since her father's death a year ago, but for some reason this surprised her. "Hayla I don't threaten, I-"

"You what?! Lie?" Just then Hayla began to cry. As tears rolled down her cheeks she could think of nothing but her distaste towards her mother. There were so many reasons for her to hate her, and she had to problem embracing all of them. 

"I have never lied to you Hayla. You know I never have!" Cries her mother. "Tell me one thing I've ever lied to you about! Name one."

Consumed by her fury Hayla unleashes all her anger and admits to knowing the biggest secret her mother ever tries to keep. "Your affair. I know that that's why dad left that night. You sicken me! You're the reason he's dead!"

"What?! What affair?"

"Don't pretend to be innocent! I know damn good and well about how you went off and started shagging that guy from Virginia!" Hayla says as she grabs her keys off the kitchen counter heads for the back door. "You can't pretend like it never happened! Like you didn't ruin this family and-"

"Hayla where the hell do you think you're going?! Give me those keys right now." After receiving no response, her mother runs to the back door after her daughter. "Hayla Claire! Come back or I swear I'll-"

Whipping around to face her mother Hayla wipes the tears out of her eyes and stares at her mother. "You'll what? Ground me?" She begins to laugh. "Haha I'm 18 years old. I'm not legally required to listen to you. Why would I obey the one person I hate the most on the face of the planet? What's the point?" 

"I'm glad to hear that's how you truly feel. Thanks for explaining so fully. Well guess what. You're no ray of sunshine yourself." Her mother, now enraged by her daughter's opinions of her, says. " No one feels sorry for you anymore. You lost your father a year ago. Stop acting out for attention."

"Acting out for attention?! Are you kidding me? You're the one who plays the poor pitiful me card every chance you get. Oh poor me my husband died in a car accident. My life is horrible, but what I don't tell you is that he died because of me. What you think people would do if they know that detail?" Hayla reaches for the doorknob. "I'm done with your crap. Goodbye. I'm going to live with Grandma."

"Fine then! Go ahead and run away. I'm so disguised with you right now that I could care less about what happens to you. You could get hit by a car and I wouldn't care. I would simply think of it as karma."

As her mother speaks Hayla opens the back door and pushed the button to raise her garage door. She is so furious that she when she hears that she could get hit by a car and her mother wouldn't care she can't help herself from stopping dead in her tracks. She turns toward her mother and closes the space between them with three steady, slow steps. Then in one movement raises her right hand and slaps her mother across the face. "Never say that again!"

Immediately after she is slapped her mother reaches for her arms and pins her to the wall behind her. Then moves her hands to Hayla's neck. "Shut up you little brat! You don't tell me what I can and cannot say. I am your mother and so you must treat me with respect you little twat!"

Struggling for air Hayla thrashes against her mother's strong grip. Suddenly she remembers about her mothers bad shoulder. With one swift jab of her fist Hayla manages to break the vice grip on her neck and falls to the floor. As her mother staggers backward grasping her injured shoulder, Hayla makes it to her feet and runs to her car. Reaching for the handle of her 2008 Chevy Tahoe, Hayla prays that her mom will eat her words. 

It takes four tries to start the engine. "Come on baby START! Please, I need to get away from here. NOW!" On the fourth try it sputters to a start.

As she pulls out of the car port she hears her mother screaming at her. "If you get hit I'm not coming to the hospital. You're on your own! Good riddance you little whore!" 

'Whore? Who does she think I am? Wow, that was a low blow even for her. I can't believe she really just said that. If anyone's a whore it's her. She couldn't even bother to stay true to her husband of 25 years. She just had to go and "get to know" that Jake guy from work. She had a family but apparently that didn't matter to her. Ahh I hate her.' Just then Hayla turns on to a new street and sees a girl from school having lunch outside of a cafe with her mother. 'Why is it that other girls here have such amazing moms and I have her? It's not fair. I didn't do anything to deserve this.' She thinks to herself as it begins to rain. 

Still not sure where she's going, Hayla decides to turn onto the highway and heads in the general direction of the closest shopping mall. After about five minutes the rain has become so heavy she can barely see out her windshield. All she can seem to made out is the reddish color of tail lights ahead. 

Suddenly the car in front of her slams on their brakes. There's not enough time for Hayla to stop before she slams into the other car so she decides to swerve and avoid the crash, but as she swerves her car begins to hydroplane. In a sense of panic Hayla turns the wheel in the direction of her rear wheels, but this does little to help. Within three seconds her car slams into the side railing or the overpass she's on causing her car to flip over and land on the freeway below. 

On impact her air bags inflate and she is pinned to her seat by herseat beltt. She can't move, and she is barely conscious. The last thing she remembers before she blacks out is a man struggling to cut herseat beltt. 

When she wakes up she finds herself laying  in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask on her face. There's a tall pale man with piercing blue eyes tells her that she'll be okay. She thinks immediately of her father. He had the same blue eyes, but this man had blonde hair while her father had the same dark brown hair she did. Then everything goes black again. 

She's still unconscious when she's wheeled into the ER. Her femoral artery was severed by a shard of glass during the accident and if it hadn't been for the man who pulled her out she'd have already been dead. He used his belt to tie off the top of her leg, but by the time he'd secured the belt she'd already lost nearly 3 pints of blood and was out cold. The doctors tried their hardest to save her life, but Hayla didn't make it. She'd lost too much blood and didn't make it very long past the surgery to repair clamp her artery.