lily_storybook

West coast of Florida, June 17, 1989

     Bubbles fizzed around Lily like a soda pop as she plunged from the dock into the azure sea. The warm waters were a blissful respite from the opressive heat that had settled over Florida a few weeks before. As the quiet fifteen year-old in snorkeling gear struck out for for the cove a few hundred yards away, she wished she could swim away from her life. Away from the car accident. Away from the image forever ingrained in her memory . . . Stop! Lily commanded herself fiercely as her throat tightened. Don't think about it. Not about Kelly.

     Kelly Powell was dead. The afternoon that the world shattered into a thousand pieces was sunny and warm, perfectly ordinary for early April. It was Monday, Kelly's day to give Lily a ride home from tennis practice. Kelly's mom picked the best friends up from the high school at 3:30 sharp and turned onto a less congested back road. Both girls spoke relatively little; what was there to say with a parent in the front seat?
 
      Combing through her auburn ponytail while glancing at Lily with mischevious green eyes, Kelly's mouth twitched as if she was about to laugh. Lily grinned back. There was no telling what her lively friend was thinking about at the moment. The car stopped at a red light. Kelly was having an even harder time controlling her laughter and Lily raised her eyebrows expectantly. Mrs. Powell pulled out of the intersection. 

    Lily was slammed violently against the passenger-side door as the car suddenly compressed all around her with the loudest grating sound she had ever heard in her life. She glimpsed a look of sheer terror on her friend's face in the fraction of a second before twisted metal and shattering glass flew through the backseat. Lily's world closed in on her. The expression on Kelly's face in her final moment of life would haunt Lily in her dreams and in every step she took. It was the most chilling combination of agony and fear imagineable. It was the look of someone who knew that she was about to die. And Lily would have to live with it for the rest of her life.  

    Hours later, Lily groggily awoke in the hospital to the throbbing pain that coursed throughout her body and to a greater nightmare that she could never leave. No one needed to tell her that Kelly was gone. Lily insisted on hearing the details of the accident on the day of the funeral, hoping to find some closure in her parents' somber words. A middle-aged woman late for an appointment ran a red light and plowed her SUV into the driver's side of Mrs. Powell's sedan. Kelly and her mom were both killed on impact, which was cold comfort to Lily. They didn't have to suffer for more than a second. Lily's own life was spared because she sat on the passenger side of the car. Otherwise, her own funeral would have been that very day. At that thought, Lily clung to her crutches and wept.