Everything to Live For by Anastasia Green

My shrink says it’s not my fault, but he’s wrong. I didn’t kill my best friend, but I might as well have. I cancelled my plans with her… for a boy! She died. I didn’t. The end.

Or so I wished.

Julie was ready for college, her career path firmly in place. She had a loving family and the most wonderful of friends. Everything was perfect until the day it wasn’t. She relives that day again and again.

Guilt is a life sentence. Shame the cell walls. Isolation the bread and water we force upon ourselves. When Julie takes a timid step from her self-imposed prison, she has a moment of hope, then tragedy attempts to strike once again.

This time… maybe… Julia can save them all.

A deep and emotional coming of age story by Anastasia Green.

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About the author:

Born and raised in Oregon, Anastasia is a wife and mother by day, and lets her wild side free writing at night. She loves travel and has a complete love for lost loves and erotic romance. Her stories will get your hear racing and blood pumping for steamy love making and romance. Immerse yourself in her novels and get lost in the passionate interludes that set Anastasia’s books and stories apart from the ordinary.

What inspired you to write your book?

I saw a news story about a recent high school graduate who lost her life while riding a bike one afternoon. I started thinking about her friends and family. How they might be affected, and how it could all come out fine in the end.

Here is a short sample from the book:

I had dreamt the dream again.
I had been dreaming it for seven months now—consistently. There were a few variations in the details, but otherwise it was always the same: Miriam and I meet up at our usual spot at Spruce Pine Greenway for our training session. We were gearing up for our first 10K. This time, however, I am not in my running clothes. I am in my best jeans, a red sweater, and a long necklace of delicate silver leaves. She whistles when she sees me, tells me she likes my boots—they are really hers that I had borrowed ages ago and have yet to return—and asks me how I am planning on running in that getup.
“I tried to call you,” I tell her. She checks her flip-phone, an archaic beast in the world of smartphones and miniature computers, and she shakes her head.
“This thing. I swear, I’m going to break down and get a new one. I’ve got to upgrade.”
“How long have I been telling you that?” I quip. “Technology has bypassed that piece of shit, and now it’s not working for you at all.”
“So, what gives? You ditching me today?” she asks.
“Trey Austin,” I say, trying to hide my satisfied smile.
Her mouth drops open, and she’s smiling herself. “No way!”
I nod my head, proud of myself for finally snagging a date with this guy. I’ve had my eye on him and had a crush that varies in intensity since the eighth grade, and Miriam knows this quite well.
“You know we got paired together in Humanities to do that project on the intertwining of religious philosophies in The Alchemist,” I say. “Well, I guess finally spending some quality time with me led him to see that I’m not a bad catch after all.”
“That’s awesome,” she says, and I know she is already planning our wedding in her head. She’s about as hopeless a romantic as I am. But I’m trying to play this one cool—not get too giddy or excited about this first date. It’s hard not to with Miriam there, though.
We burst into giggles, and we do our happy dance, stamping our feet quickly on the pavement.
“I wonder what it was that finally won him over,” she says. “Your razor-sharp wit or your gorgeous good looks. Or maybe it was your daunting intelligence.”
I laugh, slightly embarrassed. Miriam had always been my biggest cheerleader for as long as we’d been friends, and that was as far back as I could remember.
“I haven’t won him over yet,” I caution. “It’s just a first date.”
“Well, as far as we know, he’s a goner already,” she says.
Flash to me driving down Austin-Traphill Road, one of the windiest roads in the county, but one I had to take to get home. In my dream, I feel drunk, though until seven months ago, I had never touched the stuff. In my dream I’m driving a 2013 Dodge Charger R/T—electric blue—though I’ve never driven one and hadn’t even seen one before the accident.
Why she had decided to run that road was beyond me. We had both decided that running on Austin-Traphill was getting more and more dangerous as more boys in the county had decided to use it for street racing and seeing what their souped-up engines could take, having no regard for anyone else that may be needing to share the road.
Add to that the fact that the driver had been drinking and she had no chance.
In my dream, however, it was almost like I knew, like I was looking for her or someone, and I feel myself bearing down on her when I spot her. I feel the thud of her body as it hits the front grill of the car, and sometimes, I even feel the splat of her body as if it were my own. I would be out of the car, looking down into the face of Mariam, blood oozing from her mouth, her left leg crooked backwards beside her, and I would be me and her all at the same time, both watching and being.
And then I would scream.