Jemima groaned again. "Fine, I'll starve," she moaned and stomped back upstairs to get dressed.
***
Forty minutes later found Jemima ringing the bell of an ordinary terraced house: red brick, three windows a door and some guttering. The guttering had been painted blue in an attempt to brighten the place up but the effect was garish and the paint had peeled.
The door was opened and Jemima found herself face to face with her favourite occupant of the house; a short, curvy girl with cropped brown hair who was currently looking rather pale.
"You look terrible!" Jemima's eyes widened at the dishevelled state of her best friend Samantha Emery.
"I threw up 6 times in half an hour," Sam replied - almost boastfully - with a raised eyebrow. "No school for me today!"
"Typical! Why does everything have to happen to me all at once?! First, my mother - who is supposed to provide for me - would rather see me starve than give me money, and THEN you beat my throwing up record and tell me you've got the day off!
“I need to copy your English homework - Miss James is actually going to rip my head off!" Jemima was fuming by this point, wearing an excessively disgruntled look and a now tousled uniform. The girls' increasingly heated conversation was attracting bemused glances from passers-by.
"Well I didn't do her essay because I felt ill all evening..." Sam was now leaning against the doorframe, looking weaker by the second.
Jemima breathed deeply, "You're so selfish. See you later, sicky." and walked up the short garden path.
It was just a few minutes later when Jemima - muttering darkly under her breath about the selfishness of others, how mind-numbingly boring her day was going to be and how it was most likely going to rain - crossed the road whilst deeply lost in thought.
And it was at that precise moment that a particularly ordinary bus ran her over.
***
What the...? OH. MY. GOD.
No.
No, no, NO.
I screamed. You would have too.
There, in the centre of a growing crowd of shell-shocked strangers, lay a somewhat mangled body.
My body.
I screamed again. No one noticed; everyone was screaming. But this was my body, no one should be screaming as loud as me.
And why the hell wasn't anyone calling an ambulance?!
I moved closer, edging round the crowd towards a gap through which I could see better, all the while panic surging through my veins. I caught sight of myself properly and immediately wished I hadn't.
Splayed on the ground, I couldn't help but notice how pathetic I looked. My limbs lay at funny angles, covered in scratches and marks. Blood oozed on to the smooth tarmac from several deep gashes along my right forearm.
I glanced at my face for the first time as I heard sirens in the distance. My eyes were half closed so that only the whites were visible. A strand of my long, dark hair was stuck to a small cut across my cheek. The rest was spread out around me. Tangled and matted with blood.
Great.
The dramatic within me had always imagined my death as tragic and picturesque. I had dark thoughts, was often unhappy. I pictured my death a lot.
It is NOT meant to happen like THIS!
Sixteen years old and I was killed by a bus on the way to school.
Strangers, who frankly looked more interested than concerned, surrounded my body.
With my long, dark hair - my pride and joy - looking like a birds nest and in my school uniform with my inappropriately short skirt.
Where were the ravaged cliffs, the wild fields, the shotgun?
Where was the beautiful man and his desperate attempt to save my tragic life?
Where on earth is the ambulance?!
Not that it mattered. I was quite obviously dead.
Where was my beautiful dress? Typical, I would die in my uniform, on the day that I wore that ridiculous skirt that -
Oh my God, you can see my pants.
