They called it ‘over anxious’; she called it ‘eager not to die’.

Death was her obsession since she was old enough to understand it, and the more she learned of death, the more she realized that death was just not her thing. It took her three weeks to accept that bridges do not always fall out from underneath you, four for her to get in a vehicle with anyone other than her parents, and six for her friends to convince her that, no, not all guys will date-rape and murder you.

These revelations marked a turning point in her life. Gone was the sweet, innocent girl who believed in the epic and eternal motto of “No day but today”- here to stay was a cold, scarred teenager with an anxiety problem.

Or, at least, that’s what they told her.

March 14, 2009, 3:20 PM

“…In other news, the United States Geological Survey has issued a cautionary statement to residents of our area about the increased risks of landslides due to recent seismic activity. Further warnings and reports will be broadcast at 10. As the fires rage on in southern—”

“All right, that’s enough!” Eileen Nicholson yelped as she listened to her daughter recite word for word the previous day’s newscast. “How on earth do you do that, Lorelei?”

“It’s the sweetness,” the girl muttered, grabbing her simply decorated letter jacket and her purse from their respective hooks in the foyer. Lorelei yelled back “I’m going to hang out at Lisa’s.”

“Be back by eleven.”

The door creaked open as she groaned back, “Yeah, yeah.”

The petite, seventeen-year-old girl dug through her purse for her keychain as she walked out to her hunk-of-junk of a vehicle. She unlocked the car- so funny, to have to manually unlock a car these days- and slid in. The seat had molded to her form over the years- so much so that it was uncomfortable to anyone other than she.

Nearly as old as she was, the car had been through four users- her parents had bought it used (although she supposed that the term nowadays was ‘pre-owned’), passed it down to her sister, Phoebe, a few years previously, and bestowed it upon her when Phoebe had gone to college.

The poor thing was on its last leg, or wheel, as the case may be. Chunks of rust fell off when she opened the door, the heater smelled like cow dung- the air conditioner barely worked and the defroster fogged up the window rather than taking away the fog. One could hardly tell that it had once been sleek and green. However, it was four wheels and a seat- more than she could likely buy with her own money- which was really all she needed.

It was a piece of junk, but it was her piece of junk.

Lorelei drove along the familiar road out of her neighborhood and on toward the just-as-familiar roads that would as usual take her out into the familiar town and then out into the familiar country, which would lead her into the neighboring town and down the familiar side-street leading her to the familiar house of her friend. Same damn thing every god-damned day.

Left turn. God, she hated left turns. Traffic lights never turned on the green left turn signal. Ever. It was so unfair that those people who took lefts had to wait forever just to turn, while everybody else just sped on through.

She hated this road, too. Bordered on both sides by tall cliffs with their stupid pockmarks, no trees, no grass. Just ugly sepia-toned rock.

She groaned and flicked on the radio. A small town like this had few stations to choose from, but at least it wasn’t any of that crap-ass so-called rap ‘music’.

“You’re listening to KS97 with your news at the bottom of the hour. Earlier this morning, NASA revised yesterday’s statement that there was no danger from the Greenberg asteroid’s predicted near passing of earth, stating that there is a very high risk of collision with earth’s surface in around fifty hours.”

She paused. A strange fear emerged, as though ‘very high risk’ indicated ‘one-hundred-percent chance’. She had just gotten over the paranoia thing; she didn’t want to start again. Not like this.

“The Greenberg asteroid is slightly less than a mile wide and would likely result in mass extinction, alter climate patterns, and, should it hit, land in the upper Yucatan peninsula. In local news—”

Lorelei wasn’t even listening anymore. It couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t. She had one more year and she would make it to college. She would be able to travel abroad, see the world.

Slowly but surely, the car made its way across the middle line, closer and closer to the sidewalk just outside town. A lone bicycle rolled along, its rider oblivious to the imminent threat of a car not controlled by its driver.

She would graduate college, go to law school… everything she’d ever dreamed of, crashing down on her.

The bicyclist never saw it coming.

His body flew back into one indentation in the cliff face, the car skidding into the rock wall, sending its driver flying out into the same indentation. Rocks fell from above, crushing the car under their weight, effectively caving in the two fatalities.

It was to be a long night.