There are, on occasion, those moments when you know that your life has changed forever. Mine came at 6:54 tonight after I left Joey's basketball game and was on my way home to slog through another thrilling 50 pages of the Merchant of Venice - worst fucking book ever. Emily was riding shotgun, and since I've recently turned over a new leaf and decided not to text while driving, I made her open it and when she said it was from Carter, I almost told her not to read it, but she never gave me a chance. "Hey do you know anything about Lauren's accident? I think it was pretty bad".

There are also moments when you can feel your heart pounding in your throat and taste copper in your mouth. When I texted Carter back and told him I hadn't heard anything, he called me and told me that it was on the news earlier. Why the hell is a news station allowed to release names? Carter told me that he was pretty sure that she'd been med-lifted to Detroit and that the news had said she had "life-threatening injuries". Now I'm sitting at my computer looking at the local news station website where there's a short article (of course it doesn't give any names because that would be too fucking useful - it only says a 17 year-old girl) because I don't know what else to do. My parents are in the kitchen whispering together about how the news can't legally release her name and whatever else, and they keep asking me if I should call someone to get the real story, and I'm sitting here calmly (I think) but I swear I'm screaming.