The sound of a voice through a speaker rattled Grace from her slumber, but her eyes felt pasted shut.

Tiny footsteps.

Beeping.

A television playing softly in the distance.

Grace tried to open her eyes, but they were too heavy.

Were the tiny footsteps Josie trying not to wake them as she got ready to go home?

Was the beeping Thea's alarm that she forgot to turn off again?

Was Morgan watching television in the living room?

Once Grace was finally able to open her eyes, she realized it was none of those things. Instead, she was met with pale brown walls that didn't match that of her bedroom. A generic painting you'd see at a restaurant or hotel room hung by a door that wasn't hers. There was a board on the wall covered in handwriting she didn't recognize. The smell of bleach and antiseptic filled her nose.

More tiny, shuffled footsteps and a series of fast ones, rushing through with a metal sound playing on a loop.

Grace followed the beeping and saw it belonged to a machine by her side, a cord attached to something clamping her finger.

A thin gown. A pale blue blanket. A throbbing headache made worse by the light pouring the rough the half-drawn curtains.

"Sweetheart?"

Grace rolled her head over to the other side, the small act causing an ocean of pain, and saw her dad sitting there, righting himself up in a chair beside the bed.

"Do you know where you are, Grace?"

She was about to nod her head, but caught herself before making the mistake. "I'm in a hospital."

Her dad's heavy breath drowned out the machines. "Sweetheart, you're..." his eyes squeezed shut, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't do this."

"Where's Thea?" Grace asked. "Where's Josie and Morgan? Are they okay?"

He didn't need to say the words for Grace to know the answer. The answer was written in his bloodshot eyes, his slumped shoulders, and his quivering breaths. "They didn't make it, Grace. Morgan ran a red light. The car was totaled. They were dead by the time the paramedics got there. I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

Sorry. It was a word they'd both been given countless times at her mother's funeral nine years ago. 

'I'm sorry.'

'She was so young.'

'She's in a better place.'

All of it was bullshit then, and was bullshit now. Her friends weren't in a better place. They'd barely had time to find their place in this world. All her friendships from high school had faded soon after graduation. The ones she'd made in college were meant to last her a lifetime. They were meant to stand by each other's sides while looking for jobs, dating, losing their jobs, losing their boyfriends, introducing each other to their 'ones', marriage, kids, old age.

Tears burned in her eyes and stabbed at her cheeks as they fell. Grace wanted to lift herself off the bed and run. Run from the truth, from that night, from reality. But her muscles wouldn't so much as flinch. Her body refused to surrender to her will.

More tears hit raw skin, burning her flesh. Finally, Grace was able to move her hand. Where the tears fell was puffy, jagged skin tied back together. Look down at the arm she raised was much the same. Gashes sewn back together, as well as the other arm, along with the same sensation on her neck. Her body had been torn apart, and they'd pieced it back together.

"We need to talk about some things, sweetheart."

Grace shook her head, only to immediately regret it. "Not right now," she told him as she closed her eyes.

Doctor's came and went, nurses visited her to check her wounds, flashing hopeful smiles and half-glances. The other patient in the room remained hidden behind a drawn curtain and hadn't made a sound. It didn't matter. She didn't want to talk to them. Not to any of them. Grace didn't want words of encouragement or the looks of pity. She didn't want to hear that she was meant to be grateful for surviving, nor the dreaded 'life goes on'.

For three out of four of them, life would not go on. That was nothing to be hopeful or encouraged about, and Grace didn't feel lucky to be alive. More than that, she didn't feel much of anything.

It was very much like her own mother's funeral, when she sat there vacant in the church she'd only attended three times before. Other's stood to mourn the loss in front of family and friends. Some cried behind her while other's would laugh at a memory shared. All she could feel was numb.

Grace remembered wearing her mother's black dress that day. She had her own, but was desperate to feel her mother close by, comforting her. It was too big for her thirteen year old frame, but Grace didn't care. It was obvious that seeing the dress brought her more grief than it did hope, but he hadn't said anything about it.

At the wake was where everyone expressed their sympathies, sharing the same stories they had before in her living room, as if there were so few to express. Grace had tuned them all in favor of sneaking upstairs into her parents bedroom and going through her mother's belongings. She'd cried a bit that day, Grace remembered, falling to pieces on some person's shoulder. But she'd picked herself up, dusted herself off, and returned to her zombie status.

Before her father left, he'd admitted the funerals had already come and gone. Grace wouldn't be suffering through that goodbye, and had no idea if she was grateful or angry about it. Thea's mother would be along to collect her things out of the apartment by the end of the week. Grace didn't know if she'd be back home by then, having to watch her best friend and roommate slowly erased from their place of solace, or if she'd return with it already turned into a memory.