That night was unforgettable and Katie made sure to take a ton of pictures to remember the night by, not that she would ever forget a day like this. As she lay in bed sadness washed over her, tomorrow she was spending with her friends. She was too preoccupied with whom it might be and the emptiness she would feel afterwards that her mind would wander in the middle of a conversation and her eyes would just swell up with tears. She wanted to smack herself for all the times she did not take advantage of what she had. The times where she told her family that she did not feel like going on that picnic, or her friends that she was too tired to hang out with, or the times she was just too lazy to get up. Now she wanted to make it all up but time was running out.
That morning Katie woke and felt something was different; she could not pinpoint the exact feeling but after a couple of minutes, she figured out what it was. There were no more nightmares. Instead of feeling happy and lighthearted, her heart dropped down to the pit of her stomach and she felt faint. Today would be the day, she knew, today someone was going to die. Fast Katie got up from her bed; today there was no time to waste. She needed to call all her friends and family and tell them how she felt about them, tell them all the things she might never have the chance to tell them again. She looked at her cell phone and decided to go down her phone list. She talked to each person for a few minutes a bit about the past, some about the future, and with each call, she hopped that this was not the person to die. After being done, she went down to spend the rest of the day with her family. They spent the day together talking, and laughing. They sat remembering their summer vacations and some of the funny stuff that happened to them as a family over the years. Just as they were getting in one incident where one of her cousins had thought it a good idea to bury herself in the sand at one of their beach trips, Katie felt herself momentarily step out of her body and she was looking at the whole scene as from above. She saw all the laughing and talking but it was as if she was looking in from outside. This looked like a normal happy family, but she was still an outsider to the whole scene. As fast as it came, it went, and she was back laughing with the family. Katie excused herself “for just five minutes” she said and went up to her room. She sat down on her rocking chair by the window and smiled. It was just five minutes and she would go back down. She leaned back and closed her eyes.
When Katie did not come back down her mom decided to go see if her daughter was ok. She went up the stairs and as she got to the room, she saw that it was open. Katie had her head leaned back on the chair. She looked so peaceful, something her mother had not seen in her in a long time. She wanted so bad to talk to her daughter and see what was bothering her. She began to smile at the peacefulness and serenity that surrounded Katie, and thoughts of her as a little child began to flood her mind. She stood there a few minutes right hand on her heart, a few minutes passed and the smile faded from her face. Something was wrong. Katie’s mother proceeded into the room and by her child. She looked down at her; hand shaking, she carefully put it on her daughter’s chest. There was no heartbeat.
Katie was gone.
Not believing herself, she got down on her knees; unaware of the tears streaming down her eyes she held her daughter’s hand. Still, no pulse. An agonized moan, one holding all a mothers fears and only understood by a mother, a whimper came out of her. She held her baby to her body until the rest of the family came up and stood there disbelieving what had happened.
It was later understood by friends and family alike that Katie knew that her time was near. That was why she was acting so different in her last few days. She knew they told themselves. She knew.
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