Olive

Mad, crazy, insane, loner, outcast, weirdo...you can call me that. Many people have.

See, I used to have friends. We did all kinds of things together like meet after school and read over bad test grades. We had our own lunch table and traded sandwiches and chips. We goofed around, dissed mean teachers, complained about cars - all the things normal, fun friends did together.

And then The Event happened.

It was around Christmas, and my boyfriend Tony had gotten a motorcycle. His parents told him he wasn't aloud to ride it until he was 18. Sure, he was 16 like the rest of us and was still learning how to drive, but Tony thought he could ride a motorcycle. Motorcycles are easier than cars, he had told me.

One week after Christmas Tony came over to my house around 11:30pm. He had thrown snowballs at my window. He wanted to take his first ride on his new motorcycle with me. Like an idiot, I climbed out of my first floor window to meet him. I was blinded by the fact that he wanted to take his first ride with me; he was so sweet and romantic I couldn't help it. I look back on this and realize what an idiot I was for doing this. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I got on the silver Wraith, admiring the beautiful paint job. I noticed something.

"There's only one seat," I said, pulling Tony to a stop. He had this stupid grin on his face, like he still couldn't believe his new toy.

"Wa - oh, yeah," he scratched his head and his grin sliped for a millisecond before it came back two times bigger. "I guess you'll have to sit on my lap, then." He smirked and tickled my sides.

I squealed, giggling. We got on the bike, Tony lifting me into his lap. The seat was very small, and I wasn't sure if the bike would hold us both. Was this legal?

I was about to voice my thoughts, but my worry subsided when he breathed in my ear. "You ready?" When I didn't answer, he started to nibble on my ear, catching me by surprise.

"Tony!" I giggled, wiggling in his lap. He chuckled.

"Are you ready now?" He said, his voice husky. I giggled and nodded. He started the engine, which made a roar that could have woken the neighborhood. He turned on the radio.

Everything was going fine and fun until we hit black ice, along with the rocks. The world had seemed to then go in slow motion. I heard screaming, and I realized it was Tony's in perfect unison with my own. We screamed so loud I felt my ear buds break.

The motorcycle was in the air now. Flying higher and higher, turning sideways in the air. The world went fast again. I felt myself fly off, falling away from Tony. I landed hard, hitting my head as I did so. Pain. pain everywhere. I felt like someone had ran over me with a bus; that feeling as if I had broken every bone in my body. I tasted blood in my mouth.

I had turned on my back, groaning. I looked at the cloudy sky that held no moon nor stars. I gasped, suddenly fighting to breathe, and he last thing I saw was the motorcycle's fading headlights and my red helmet rolling into the grass.

That had been a year ago. Let me give you the gist of what had happened after I blackened out: The police came twenty minutes later, finding me and Tony. Tony had split his skull and broken some ribs and limbs, dead as roadkill. My helmet had saved me partially, though I had still hit my head pretty hard. I broke a few ribs and my right leg, but I was alive.

That first night in the hospital is when I heard the voice.