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My junior year of high school was off to a great start. By the third day, I'd finally memorized my class schedule, my locker combination and most of my pep-squad routines. That morning I slipped on my new jeans and sandals, grabbed my books and pompoms, and kissed my mom goodbye. It was a 10-mile drive to school from our house in the country. As I got into my little brown car, I grabbed my seat belt, thinking, I never remember to wear this thing, but I may as well put it on now that I'm thinking about it.

As I came over a hill, I remembered I still needed to put lipstick on. I adjusted my rearview mirror for a quick application. As my eyes returned to the road, I caught a glimpse of something moving, then felt my car suddenly jolt. I had hit something. My initial thought was perhaps it was a farm animal. But I had a sinking feeling it was something much worse.

As I stopped the car and ran back to see what I had hit, my sinking feeling was confirmed. I stood trembling over the body of a curly-headed woman lying face down in the grass next to a mangled bicycle.

Without a cell phone, I looked down the road for someplace to call for an ambulance. I noticed only two houses in sight. I ran to the closest one and pounded on the door. When there was no response, I ran to my car and drove to the other house. I was relieved when an elderly man opened the door and quickly pointed me toward his phone. I called 911. Then, I called home and asked my mom to drive down the road until she saw me. I couldn't bring myself to tell her anything else.

By the time I got back to the scene, another car had stopped, and a man was standing on the side of the road near the woman. He looked at my car and asked, "Did you hit her?" I responded through my tears of panic, "Yes sir, but it wasn't a hit-and-run, I only left to go call an ambulance." My mother arrived within a couple of minutes, and I tried to pull myself together as she ran toward me with her own tears of panic. As we waited for help, all I could think about was that the woman I had just hit was probably someone's mother … someone's daughter … someone's wife.

When a paramedic finally arrived and examined the woman, he coldly explained we would have to call a funeral home because there was nothing he could do. I left the scene not even knowing who she was.

The next two hours were a blur. I remember collapsing on the living-room sofa, sobbing, then waking up later when a policeman knocked on the door, asking to question me. I kept thinking, This wreck was all my fault. I should have been the one killed, not her. Terrified of facing the woman's family, I considered suicide more than once that afternoon.

Later that day, I received a phone call from a man who said he was a neighbor to Marjorie Jarstfer—the woman I had hit. The caller told me that Mrs. Jarstfer's husband, Gary, was out of town. He said he and his pastor had driven to see Mr. Jarstfer, to tell him his wife had been killed in a car accident. My heart sank. The family now knew. I was sure they probably wanted me dead too.

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