AN: CW for brief reference to suicide.

"Hey, this is Lauren. I can't come to the phone right now, or I'm ignoring you. Either way, leave a message. Or, you know, just text me like a normal person."

I grinned, shaking my head at my sister's idiotic voicemail greeting as I waited for the beep.

"Hey, it's Emily. I'm just leaving Lisa's house—everyone was asking about you. You know, it wouldn't kill you to get out of your room once in a while and actually come with me to one of these parties. It would be nice to have someone to take turns being the designated driver every now and then." I sighed, shaking my head at my impossible sister. "Anyway, I'll be home soon. If dad asks, I was home by one o'clock - you're my alibi, okay? Love you, Loz."

I hung up and sighed, heavily, replaying the fight I had had with my ex before leaving the dying party. He was such a dick. I couldn't believe I had ever thought I was in love with him.

Lauren had hated him on sight - even before we dated - but that wasn't exactly a red flag. Lauren hated everyone, as far as I could tell, with very few exceptions. If my dating pool was limited to the people my sister actually liked, it would consist of me, our neighbour's dog, our friend Clive (who already had a girlfriend), and the crazy guy who lived at the foot of the braes.

I had asked her once why she liked that man - who muttered to himself and always carried an empty grocery bag - and she had looked genuinely confused by the question.

"What do you mean, you went to his house for tea? Lauren! He's insane." I had tried to explain. "And possibly dangerous."

"He's just lonely. And he's the only interesting person within a ten-mile radius." she'd shrugged. "I want him to adopt me."

I frowned at the memory, but couldn't help the smile that tugged at my lips. My sister was the most popular girl I had ever known who had zero interest in embracing it, which only seemed to make people like here more. She was rude to everyone at school, but so naturally funny that people usually assumed she was joking.

I knew her well enough to know that she usually wasn't.

When Lisa called the day before to invite us to her party, I accepted before passing the phone to Lauren.

"No." I heard her say, bluntly. A pause. "Nope." again, bored. "No other plans."

A beat passed as Lisa pressed her. She shrugged, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

"Because I just don't like you very much." She said, deadpan.

She handed the phone back to me with a pleasant smile, and I heard Lisa's laughter on the other end.

"She's so funny, your sister," Lisa gushed. "So you'll both be here?"

"I'll try to twist her arm." I said, throwing Lauren a meaningful look. She mimed hanging herself and left the room.

I hated the way that I always felt the need to cover for her terrible manners - almost as much as I envied how little she cared what anyone thought. A truly infuriating person to love. We were identical twins, but we couldn't have been more different.

Dad once described her as having "the confidence of a ninety-year old man", and for some reason, that always stuck with me.

I snapped out of my reverie when I realised I'd taken a wrong turn. There weren't many roads around here that I didn't immediately recognise, and I glanced around looking for a familiar landmark. The old coal bing that was visible for miles around was on my left, and I groaned, realising where I had gone wrong. The clock on the dash flashed 4:00 am, and I knew that my accidental detour would add at least another twenty minutes to my drive. I had nursed a single cider when I arrived at the party hours before, but my eyelids were growing heavy with sleep.

I was surrounded by green fields and there wasn't a single other car on the road at this time in the morning, so there was little to hold my attention. I blasted the aircon and flicked on the radio, trying to stay awake.

Our tiny village was surrounded by seven or eight others just like it, all nestled in a patchwork of farms and narrow roads. Lauren and I would be leaving for university at the end of the summer, and I could hardly wait.

It was a lovely place, really, but when you grow up here, you don't appreciate the quiet beauty of trees and rivers and green hills: you just look for a way to get out – to escape the quiet and the green for somewhere busy and breathing and grey. You get out, or you live and die your quiet life, just like your parents and your grandparents before you, and you definitely don't make a difference.

I wasn't even sure I wanted to make a difference. But it'd be nice to have the option. And honestly? There had to be hotter guys in the city than there were here. If Gavin Grieve qualified as a heart-throb around here, I might as well resign myself to spinsterhood now. Maybe the crazy old guy at the foot of the braes wasn't such a bad option after all.

And then, I was thinking about Gavin. Local high-school sports hero, average grades—not that it mattered. Everyone knew he'd work on his dad's farm when he finished school, anyway. His whole future had been mapped out before he was even born. And that was the dream around here. That was the best case scenario. That was stability. Gavin Grieve was the closest thing we had to a local celebrity.

My sister used to say that he was the "biggest little shit in South Lanarkshire".

I felt my eyelids droop and I realised that the radio was blaring out sports highlights. Well, that wasn't going to keep me awake.

I reached to change the station - only my hand wouldn't move. My fingers stayed locked on the wheel. I frowned, trying again to release my grip, but the harder I tried to pull my hands away from the wheel, the tighter my grip became.

A cold ripple of panic slid down my spine. The chatter of the radio was drowned out by the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

Then the speedometer started to climb.

Forty. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy.

I'm not sure when I started screaming.

I jerked and twisted in my seat, wildly, thrashing against the restraints of my own body, trying to move, trying to slam the brakes - but I was frozen. Held in place by...something.

I screwed my eyes shut. Maybe I had fallen asleep after all. That was the only thing that made sense. This was just a nightmare.

I opened my eyes and the world outside was a blur of fields and motion. Except for one thing that was perfectly in focus, and just ahead:

A tree. Alone on a hill.

Gnarled and black, it stood out from its surroundings like it didn't belong there. My hands – not my hands – turned the wheel toward it.

I closed my eyes. I knew this was the end.

"Lauren—LAUREN!"

I don't know why I screamed her name in that moment. The darkness swallowed it, and became me. And finally, my hands let go of the wheel.

Too late.

Too late.

When you grow up here, you don't appreciate the quiet beauty of trees and rivers and green hills: you just look for a way to get out – to escape the quiet and the green for somewhere busy and breathing and grey. You get out, or you live and die your quiet life, just like your parents and your grandparents before you, and you definitely don't make a difference.

AN: I said in my description that these earlier chapters could do with a rewrite, because it's been more than a decade since I actually started this fic and yes, I do feel the icy breath of death upon my neck, thank you for asking. So this is my half-hearted attempt at making the first few chapters a bit more interesting/readable. Feel free to drop a review if you care to, but I'm doing this for me, more than anyone else, because I hated these chapters more than life itself.

If the rewrite is universally despised for reasons I won't pretend to understand, the original versions are preserved on my laptop to one day be hung in the Terrible Fanfiction museum.