A/N: I do not have a new chapter for you today.

No, the reason I'm writing this right now is because something happened these past two days that has completely changed my life, and I feel compelled to share with you my experiences. I am working on new chapters of Rose's Turn and 15 Percent, as well as another Harry Potter oneshot. Please just bear with me as I tell you what happened.

My school had a student die last year. Her name was Amanda. She died because she failed to receive medical attention for a skull fracture sustained at a party with alcohol, thrown by a boy in my grade. She was in the hospital for a week before her family was told that she would never wake up. They were forced to pull the plug on their daughter's life. She was fifteen years old. She has a twin sister named Bianca.

Every two years, there's a program that goes on at each school in my district. It's a program called Shattered Dreams, which focuses on the prevention of death caused by underage drinkers, mostly because of drinking and driving (though, as shown in Amanda's case, driving drunk is not the only cause of death). Yesterday morning, a group of 70 students, myself included, arrived at the school before 6:30 AM with an overnight bag packed. We couldn't have phones, eReaders, cameras, tablets, or laptops. No technology at all. Nine of those students were taken away from the group. They were part of a highly realistic, staged car accident in the school parking lot, which everyone attended half an hour after morning classes began. One student was the drunk driver. Eight others were his victims. Of those eight, two students were flown out of the scene via helicopter. Both died. Two were dead at the scene. One was taken to the medical examiner's office to be identified by his parents. The other was taken to the funeral home so her parents could plan her funeral. Two were rushed to the hospital in the ambulance, where both coded, one right in front of her parents. Of the eight victims, only two survived. The drunk driver was arrested and taken to booking, where his parents had to bail him out and take him before a judge. He was charged with several counts of felony manslaughter, DUI (driving under the influence), and MIP (minor in possession).

Every fifteen minutes after the crash, there would be a chime over the intercom system, which was the sound of a car crashing and a patient's heart stopping. When this happened, a police officer, a Grim Reaper, and a mortician would enter the classroom of a student participating in the program, read an obituary written by the student's parent, and strap them onto a gurney. They were wheeled out of their classroom, had their faces painted white and black like a skull, and sent back to class as one of the Walking Dead, a silent reminder that in the state I live in (Texas), every 15 minutes, someone dies in an alcohol-related car crash. The Walking Dead were not allowed to speak for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day, all of us Walking Dead took a wooden cross with our names, dates of birth, and dates of death and stood in a line, facing the cars that were driving in to pick students up from school. The looks on people's faces as they watched 70 children, all ages 16 to 18, holding crosses with their names on them, was heartbreaking.

When all of that was over, the real pain began.

All of us piled onto a bus and set off for a retreat.

Let me tell you that I saw the happiest people, the most stoic people, the toughest people all break down at some point during the night. There's something really powerful when you see that football player break down and sob into the shoulder of some girl he really didn't know that well. We saw pictures of cars wrapped around trees and poles. We saw pictures of mangled and mutilated bodies that literally had some people running from the room. We heard from the mother of a teenage girl who was killed in a drunk driving accident that she caused, and heard from her victim, a then eighteen-year-old boy on his way home from dropping his girlfriend off after prom. We wrote our parents letters, telling them goodbye. That was the hardest part for most people. I saw my classmates hunched over spiral notebooks, sobbing uncontrollable as they tried to voice the unvoiceable. We were told to think back to where we had been ten hours before. Ten hours was how long Amanda was lying unconscious before she was taken to the hospital. The room was eerily silent.

We didn't get to sleep until almost 2 AM. Most of us couldn't sleep anyways.

This morning, we were woken up at 4:40 AM. We got dressed, gathered our belongings, and prepared for the day's events, which was a mass funeral for all who died. Two students out of 70 were chosen to read the letters they'd written to their parents. I was one of them.

At the service, we all laid down on our own bench, our cross at our heads, a sheet over our bodies. Over 2,500 students, staff, and parents packed our competition gym. A student gave a reading, explaining everything that had gone on over the past 24 hours. When he finished, he read off a list of the dead, at which point we all filed into chairs set up for us at the front of the room.

We watched a slideshow of pictures that had been taken the day before, of the driver (who was sitting apart from everyone else in a prison uniform) and his victims, the Walking Dead and reactions from bystanders. Then it was my turn to stand in front of over 2,000 people and share the words I'd written to my mother.

I almost didn't do it. I almost told them I couldn't. I cried the entire way through my two page long letter. My mother is my everything, and has been since before I was born. She has always been there for me. The thought of leaving her alone like that – in such a violent and senseless way – was nearly impossible. The entire auditorium was silent while I cried.

I had to leave once I finished my reading to meet with a counselor. I cried for another half an hour before I could return to my seat. When I got back, I noticed that many other students in the program had left to speak with counselors, too.

The service ended with a slideshow of all of us involved in the program. There was a picture of each person, alive and happy, doing something they loved like cheerleading or volleyball or just hanging out in the halls with friends. The yearbook crew had been taking these pictures for weeks. Most of us had no idea.

The rest of the school was dismissed to classes. We were dismissed to our parents, and allowed to leave for home.

People I didn't even know came up to me after the service, telling me how beautiful my letter was and how brave I was to share it with everyone. I got more hugs in the last 48 hours than I can count. I've cried more than I think I've ever cried. I learned more than I've ever learned.

So, the moral of this story is this: please, think about others before acting. Your decisions can hurt the people around you. Tell the people you love that you love them. You never know how much time you've got.

To tie everything back to Harry Potter (as I usually tend to do), Dumbledore once told Harry that "death is but the next great adventure." I believe that this could be true. But in order for it to be so, you must first live through the adventure of life. Live for the people who can't. Live for the people who have died far too young. Live for Amanda, who only got fifteen short years on this beautiful planet, who left behind a family who loved her and friends who still cry sometimes. Amanda was taken too soon. Her death could have been prevented. The next could be too.

Thank you if you kept with me for this long. I just really wanted to share with you all the things I learned and what happened to me and every other person who witnessed Shattered Dreams at my school this year. I hope that everyone walked away with a little more appreciation for their lives, and the lives of others. I might not have known Amanda personally, but I would like to think that her death has not been in vain.

I love you, I love you, I love you, because you can never say those three words enough.

~Trisha