Forget-Me-Not

I sometimes think about that night and wonder if it would have been different, if I hadn’t been so focused on the gorgeous boy in front of me, if my mind hadn’t been so fogged with alcohol and maybe if I’d been sober enough not to accept a ride from my equally inebriated friend.

I often wonder if it would have been different, this night that was meant to be one of the best, became one of the most significant; this night...

The night I died.

******

Bodies swayed and moved in harmony with the heavy bass music pounding through the speakers, sadly enough, I was one of those swaying bodies. I often wish I could go back and knock some sense into myself but then I often find myself with too much time to ponder on the past, and too much time isn’t always a good thing.

I was jumping to the music, my eyes focused on those of the tall handsome figure in front of me. He leant down and whispered in my ear, sending a shiver down my spine from the ticklish sensation.

“Wanna ditch this dump, it’s getting a little crowded?” he said with a knowing smirk, I bit my lip and glanced up at him through my lashes; I opened my mouth to answer but was interrupted when a heavy, sweaty body crashed into my back.

I crashed to the ground underneath the clumsy and most likely drunk person; I wriggled away, shoving off their flailing limbs as they too tried to sit back up. The boy who was moments ago dancing with me, helped me up off the floor where I turned to see the culprit.

Lily, my best friend and maybe even only, was lying on the floor; her blue eyes unfocused and her platinum blonde hair like a birds nest around her head. She smiled up at me, obviously out of it, if at the time I had know she’d been drinking since six; I would never had agreed to the next thing that came out of her mouth.

The words that changed my life forever.

“I’m gonna head home Mariah” she slurred her words, stumbling into other couples dancing as she tried to stand, “wanna lift?” she asked, blinking furiously in an attempt to clear her head.

If I knew then what I knew now, I would have stayed, but nothing I do could change that night; a fact that rips my heart in two when I think about it.

“Sure” I said nonchalantly, I wasn’t as drunk as lily, just buzzed, but it was enough to mar my senses long enough for me to get in that car, we gripped each other’s shoulders; tripping on beer cans and unconscious people as we made our way through the house and to lily’s car.

She let go of my shoulder, fumbling around in her pocket to find the key, she caught her heel in a crack in the pavement a couple of times and gave a shout of frustration when it happened a third. I, somehow, found this hilarious and began laughing my head off. Rolling around on the floor until I heard a cry of victory as lily finally managed to open the car door, my fit petered off into giggles as I lent against the car and pulled myself up, dragging my feet all the way around the side of the car before flinging the door back and climbing in.

The thought of seatbelt’s didn’t enter my head as I chatted away to lily, she managed to get the key into the small slot and get the car started, she stalled a couple of times before we were driving away from the party, making small talk about obscure things that neither of us really cared about.

I was tired but it was dark and I’d given up any hope of sleep with lily driving. Just then the car made a sharp right turn; lily just skimmed the corner of the road, missing a nasty scrape by inches. She turned to me and smiled nervously at the incident; I returned it and looked back to the road. Too late.

We hadn’t noticed that there was an extremely sharp left turn just after the right, followed by a gentle bend in the road. If we had lily might have turned in time, but instead we looked a fraction of a second too late, the car scraped the side of the hill that the road was carved from, hitting the turn head on and spinning over; landing upside down on the bend in the road.

I cringed as the sound of scraping metal hit my ears, though this was the last of my worries as I smashed into the wind screen, pain coursed through my forehead nose and lips as I broke through the glass; red covering my vision as another wave of agony seared from my head all the way to my toes. I wanted to scream, but all that came out of my split lips was a strangled, chocked cry, followed by a fountain of blood from my mouth; cutting off my cry. I slumped back against the ground, pain finally getting the better of me as numbness took over and I blacked out.

*******
Sound started to return as I took a deep breath, my eyes shot open and I sat up at the pain breathing caused, it felt alien and wrong. I looked down at myself, I was in my party clothes but I was fine, not a scratch. It was then I noticed all the noise around me, the crying and screaming as well as murmur of questions being asked.

My eyes widened as I took in the scene around me, lily’s car was upside down in the road and surrounded by police and paramedics, the police we’re holding back weeping family members. My eyes were then drawn to the scene by the car, lily was being hauled away in an ambulance, I should have been worried but I could see her breathing and was more worried about another fact.

Lying by a pool of blood was a body covered in a black tarp, obviously waiting to be tended to. A tear rolled down my cheek as I saw that a hand was hanging onto the road, uncovered, with a bracelet that looked distinctly like the one lily bought me last Christmas.

I still remember the silent scream that escaped my lips and the thought that passed through my head when I recognised the body underneath the tarp.

‘I think I’m dead’.