• Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes until the first bell is to ring, and she is still clouting the snooze button on her alarm clock. She glowers at the beast with fire in her eyes, as if pitching it against the wall will somehow alleviate her life. Slowly, she loiters her lifeless body out of bed, striving not to step in that venerable plate of pizza. That plate's subsisted there since the day that her father brought her back from the E.R. with blood-stained gauzes swathed around her wrists. Those gauzes are long gone. The razor blade, however, vacates the bathroom shelf nearly every night.
    Without contemplating, she veers over to a heap of clothing and procures a pair of faded blue jeans with a tear across the left knee cap and an eyelet in the upper right thigh. Forcing them on, she catches a glimpse of her favorite T-shirt residing aside her only pair of shoes. She wastes no time adding them to her routine just before she lets her brown hair fall past her shoulders and seizes a brush. As it slides through her mane, she stares in the mirror, picturing her life before the accident. How it was truely grand. She awoke morning after morning to gracious meals and more than welcoming parents. Her mother considered it an honor to be able to drive her only daughter to school. Her weekends were a real treat as well. Trips to adventure parks, hikes in the nearby forest, and swimming in the pond down the road were all regular activities in their Saturday schedules. They would never consider doing any of these on a Sunday, however, because that was a day belonging solely to God. They were reliable chuch-goers before "it" happened.
    Kaitlyn remembers that horrible Sunday. She was awakened by her mother who was glowing in the sunlight; the reflection of song was loud in her blonde hair. A true angel was sitting on the bedside. She was telling Kaitlyn to ready herself for church. Kaitlyn loved her mother with all of her heart. The bond shared between the two was as deep as the oceans are wide. The twosome put on their Sunday best and met Kaitlyn's father in the car. He gently kissed her mother's rosey cheek before they departed.