Annabeth's face drained to the paleness of a worn, white bed sheet. She wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible. This place wasn't possible. The girl in front of her was a figment of her imagination. None of this was real. It was all too surreal to be real. That girl's voice, the one who wore her face lied to her. Annabeth was not dead because she stopped the car. She stopped the car before reaching the twisting trees and sharp, jagged cliff.
Younger Annabeth looked at her. She wore a look of disapproval. Annabeth knew that look. She used that look all the time. It was pointed and slightly annoyed. She only ever used it when someone was ignorant enough to blatantly ignore a fact. Younger Annabeth should not be using that look on her. Not when it was used to prove the point that Annabeth was dead.
She had to think logically. She wasn't thinking, only panicking. First she'd have to take her pulse. As long as she had a pulse she was alive. There was no disputing that. A pulse equaled life.
Younger Annabeth seemed to know what Annabeth was thinking and put a smug, satisfied smirk on her face. The little girl was too confident for what Annabeth was about to do. Annabeth was about to prove her wrong and Annabeth knew herself, the last thing she would do is smirk in the face of being proven wrong. She was too proud to do that. That smirk was saved only for victory.
Her hands were shaking like an earthquake. She hated that. She tried to still them, to make the queasiness leave her stomach and the tremor her hand. She snuck a quick, daring glance away from her hand that she was concentrating so hard on to her younger self. Younger Annabeth quirked an eyebrow up in challenge. Annabeth felt a blaze of shame that a version of her younger self could scare her so much, make her question so many things. How that little girl wasn't even real and this was all a terrible dream.
Her hands made her way to her neck and her fingers pressed to the carotid artery. Her skin was colder than ice or winter. It didn't feel like an absence of heat, but more like her skin could never hold heat. Her skin felt as if it were dead.
She tried to relax her shoulders and take a deep breath. Her mind focused on finding a pulse or any other sign she was alive. Her fingers pressed coolly on her neck. She waited for the small thump that showed her heart was beating. There was nothing. There was no pulse.
Her steel gray eyes widened in realization. She stumbled backwards in shock and cowardly fear. Tears flowed down her cold, cold white cheeks in streams like rivers. They were all wrong. They weren't hot like tears should be and Annabeth could only faintly feel them rushing down.
"Why? How?" Annabeth whispered hoarsely, her voice caught in her throat.
"You died, Annabeth."
"No! I-I stopped the car." She felt her world crash down on her like a sudden clap of thunder. She felt like the wicked witch when water was thrown on her as if all her sanity was melting away. Panic and terror rose like a hot air balloon inside of her.
"No, Annabeth, you didn't. You never got to your road. You never stopped the car before getting to the cliff or trees. You never felt the need to go faster."
"But I did! I stopped it and went to sleep and this is just a sick and twisted dream." Annabeth was throwing a tantrum like a child. She knew she stopped the car. She just knew it.
"Annabeth, look at me." There was a fierceness in Younger Annabeth's voice that she just couldn't ignore.
Annabeth felt hopeless and lost and scared and confused. She felt overwhelmed beyond reasoning. That fierceness attracted her like a moth to a light. It held grounding instead of the disarray inside of her. She had to look at Younger Annabeth even if she didn't want to.
"You did not reach your road. You were driving home from a party. You crashed only a minute or two into driving. No one else was hurt besides you. You are dead. Accept the fact." Younger Annabeth's voice was clear like crystal water rushing in a summer's creek.
Annabeth swallowed the growing lump in her throat. It was like trying to swallow nails with rotten milk- impossible.
"H-How did I crash?" Annabeth managed to squeak out. She hated herself for acting this weak. For acting like a scared five-year-old.
"Oh, wouldn't you just love to know? Be careful what you wish for." A devious smirk flashed across her face, a slithering red snake on summer skin.
Annabeth braced herself for the response.