A loud bang startles me awake, and I realize that I have no idea where I am. I’m lying in a bed in the middle of an all-white room. White sheets, white floors, and white walls with a window in the ceiling. Nothing else. I’m wearing a white dress, and my hair is loose and falls in waves around my face and shoulders. I turn around, the bed to my back, and see two gold tables with one item apiece. “Choose one.” What? The voice echoes around the room. “Choose and we’ll decide your future.” WHAT?! The table on the left holds a picture of my family. The table on the right holds a picture of somebody I have never met. What is this? Sure this is some sort of trick, I snatch the picture on the right. The room starts to spin and the walls start caving in on themselves. The last thing I see before I pass out is my family’s picture, laying there on that table, my brother’s arm around my shoulders and we’re all laughing at something that he said. Did I make the right choice? I try to reach the picture but it’s too far away.

When I wake up the second time I’m in the hospital. IVs are stuck in my arm, and my friends are standing over me with anxious looks on their face. “What happened?” I ask, not wanting them to carry the burden by themselves. “Your family was killed in an accident. The man who hit your family lived. You’re the only one alive.I’m sorry.” Maika has never lost someone she loved, but she stands in front of me crying like my family was hers. How could this be? Then I remember the White Room and when the woman told me to ‘Choose and they’ll decide my future.’

But lying in this hospital bed I know only three things for certain:

1. My name is Lana.
2. My family is dead.
3. I should be dead too, but I survived.