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My sunburn from Family Day at the beach still stung as I walked through my front door. I wished we hadn't had to leave so quickly after services on the Last Great Day, but my brother and I had to be back at school the next day.
I heard a car in the driveway and thought it was just my father pulling into the garage after unloading our suitcases.
I was surprised to hear my friend's voice in the living room.
I ran to greet her, full of stories from a week away from school. But before I could get close, I could tell something was wrong.
While I was gone, our friend Tony had been in a car accident with his family, she told me. Someone ran a stop sign on a country road near their house and hit their car. His parents were out of the hospital. One of his younger brothers was fine; the other had emerged from a coma that day.
She gulped.
Tony was dead. He wasn't wearing his seat belt and was ejected from the car. The doctors took him off life support yesterday. He was only 16 years old, my age.
We talked for almost half an hour, though I don't remember a word of it. A random thought popped into my head: The homecoming football game and dance were this week. There would be no more homecomings for Tony. No proms. No college. No family. Nothing.
I trudged back to my room, making a halfhearted effort to unpack. Littered with Jekyll Island sand, my suitcase mocked me. After staring into the bag for a while, I gave up and went to bed. You usually get a chance to ease back into the world after the Feast, I thought. Reality sank in a little more harshly that year.
I didn't get much sleep that night. I cried until I was numb. How could God let this happen? It wasn't fair. People are supposed to die when they are old, not when they're still in high school. How could this happen when I was gone? I would have prayed for him if I had only known. Would God have even cared? Would it have made a difference?
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