Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff Read Online Free PDF Page B

would have been the best.” Matt was smiling, and I took his hand.
    She didn’t have to die. She was clean for ten years, and then one day she started up again. Her body couldn’t take it. She passed out, and they couldn’t revive her. They couldn’t make her come back.
    Matt spoke during the funeral. His words were soft and eloquent, and he looked out at Christy’s friends and family and told them how much he loved her, how much he will always love her. He showed his tattoo, the one that he and his sister got together. Some laughed. Some cried.
    The picture that Matt had mentioned to me was perched behind the podium, between lilies and roses. Matt was right. She did look like an angel—red lips and blue eyes, wearing white and angel wings.
    That night, after the funeral, Matt and I went down to the cove where he and Christy used to laugh. “How could she do this? Why? Why did she have to do this?” he asked.
    He cried. I cried, too.
    I talked to Matt the other day. I asked him how he was doing.
    â€œI’m okay,” he said. “Most of the time. Sometimes I can’t sleep. I’m waiting for Christy to come home or for her to call. Sometimes I have these nightmares. I play the guitar a lot, even more than I used to. I have to practice. I’m in a band now, and we play gigs and stuff. The last song of the set is always the best. That’s the song I practice over and over again until it’s perfect. It has to be just perfect because I play it for Christy. The last song is always for Christy.”
    Rebecca Woolf

The Final Act
    Screeching tires, shattering glass,
Twisting metal, fiberglass.
The scene is set, it all goes black,
The curtain raised, the final act.
Sirens raging in the night,
Sounds of horror, gasps of fright.
Intense pain, the smell of blood,
Tearing eyes begin to flood.
    They pull out bodies one by one.
What’s going on? We were only having fun!
My friend is missing. What did I do?
Her belongings everywhere,
In the road there lies her shoe.
    A man is leaning over me and looks into my eyes,
“What were you thinking, son?
Did you really think that you could drive?”
He pulls up the sheet, still looking at me,
“If you’d only called your mom or dad, you’d still be
   alive.”
    I start to scream, I start to yell
But no one can hear me, no one can tell.
They put me in an ambulance, they take me away.
The doctor at the hospital exclaims, “DOA!”
    My father’s in shock, my mother in tears,
She collapses in grief, overcome by the fear.
They take me to this house and place me in this box.
I keep asking what is happening,
But I can’t make it stop.
    Everyone is crying, my family is so sad.
I wish someone would answer me,
I’m starting to get mad.
My mother leans over and kisses me good-bye,
My father pulls her away, while she is screaming, “WHY?”
    They lower my body into a dirt grave,
It feels so cold, I yell to be saved.
Then I see an angel, I begin to cry.
Can you tell me what is happening?
And she tells me that I died.
    I can’t be dead, I’m still so young!
I want to do so many things
Like sing and dance and run.
What about college or graduation day?
What about a wedding? Please—I want to stay.
    The angel looks upon me, and with a saddened voice,
“It didn’t have to end like this, you knew you had a choice.
I’m sorry, it’s too late now, time I can’t turn back.
Your life is finished—that, my son, is fact.”
    Why did this happen? I didn’t want to die!
The angel embraces me and with her words she sighs,
“Son, this is the consequence you paid to drink and drive.
I wish you made a better choice, if you did you’d be alive.
It doesn’t matter if you beg me, or plead on bended knee,
There is nothing I can do, you have to come with me.”
    Looking at my family, I say my last good-bye.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you,