Think about this for a moment…if you lost your best friend, how much would you give to get her back?

I lost my best friend to a fatal car crash. She had been driving home from a party where a bunch of kids had gotten drunk and high, but she hadn’t. She was driving home, and another driver had hit her. She had been killed instantly. The driver had been killed too, and when they did the autopsy they discovered that he had been high. Drugs had killed my best friend, but she hadn’t been the one taking them.

I didn’t find out until the next day in school. On the announcements bulletin board, there was a big poster that said In Loving Memory, and had my best friend’s yearbook picture on it, her name written in flowing calligraphy. Some kids were crying, I started shaking and ran out of the school. I heard people calling my name, but I didn’t stop, I didn’t even look back. I just kept running until I found it: our place, where we had gone almost everyday, just me and my best friend. It was a little clearing behind some shrubs in the woods, we had talked and laughed and cried back there, that little patch of earth was ours, it belonged to us. I collapsed on my side and broke into loud sobs. My whole body was shaking, my chest was breaking.

That was where they found me, leaves and dirt matted in my hair, rolling around on the ground, crying out my best friend’s name.

That was one year ago, and I still cry a lot, and I think about her everyday. I still wonder why this happened, why her? That experience changed everything.

Exactly one year ago, everything changed.