Lightning streaked across the sky. Emma watched it from her lonesome perch on the side of the lake. A burst of wind whipped her face and she sighed. ‘A perfect day turned into this?’ She heard the voices of the search party but preffered to stay by herself, wrapped in thought. An automobile accident took her mother and a freak accident airplane crash took her best friend, Jade. And they expected her to keep going? To live as though nothing had happened?

They were wrong.

She got up from the sandy beach and walked closer to the lake. In her mind it was the right thing to do; the only thing to do. Memories jumped to the front of her mind in an attempt at saving her. Memories of her mother and her collecting sea shells on this very shore. Memories of her and Jade making sand castles. They offered her a look into the future: the faces of her dad and brother when they found her body on the shore. But nothing helped. Her feet moved till the water was at her chin. She paused; then she was gone.