The crisp November breeze whipped my auburn hair across my pale freckled forehead as I pedaled, flying to catch up to my parents' bicycles. My dad had raced in the Tour de France, and my mom was just as much of an athlete. That being said, I don't know where my book-obsessed theater geek genes could have come from, but I got them all the same. I shivered in the cold air as a gust of wind swept straight through me. "It's getting pretty windy," I called up to my mom. However, it was my dad who looked back.
"Oh, come on!" He laughed. "Any thirteen-year-old can handle it!" "Fourteen," I corrected him. "Which means I'm old enough to know my limits!" I truly was thirteen, but my birthday was less than a week away. What did four days matter? "Can we start heading back down? It's cold up here and-" I looked down from the narrow, unprotected trail to the base of the the enormous mountain we were climbing. "Really high," I gulped. The fear was starting to get to me. Stomach churning, I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn't hear my mom answer my request. I didn't see that my parents had slowed down for me. But I felt the impact when I smacked into the bike of my mother, which slammed into the bike upon which was my father, which, along with mine and mom's, fell off the edge of the trail and down to the ravine below, carrying us with them. It was all my fault. My name is Abigail Coriander Jameson, and I'm the girl to blame.