Chapter 6 Flashback 19 years ago

Lauren doesn't remember much, but from the stories she's been told, a drunk driver tried to pass a car in the opposite lane. He passed on the wrong side hitting the other car and pushing both of them head on into the car she and her parents were in. The adults in both cars and the drunk driver were all killed instantly, but at 5 years old she didn't know that. She had been strapped into a car seat, and was not injured. After unbuckling her seat, she tried to wake up her mom and dad, but they never answered.

She climbed out the broken window and tried to wake up the people in the other car to help her parents. No one was waking up. She looked in the back seat and saw a boy sleeping on the floor. She opened the door and shook him to wake him up. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

"We need to help our mommies and daddies. None of them will wake up and I'm too little to pull them out," the little elf girl told the older, so he must be stronger, boy on the floor.

He was almost 10 years old, and knew enough to check if his parents were breathing. When he discovered they weren't, he got out to help the little girl check her parents. Neither of them was breathing either.

"What's that funny smell?" the cute little girl asked.

He sniffed, gasoline? From the tanks?

"Hey, what's your name, cutie?" the boy asked the little girl.

"I'm Lauren Short. What's yours?" the curious little girl didn't understand the immediate danger.

"My name is Joshua Franklin. You can call me Josh. Do you know what happened here? I fell asleep so I didn't see it." Joshua asked Lauren.

She pointed to the very banged up red SUV.

"That guy tried to go around that guy" pointing to the black Mercedes his parents drove. "He went on the wrong side and pushed that car into daddy's car. Now no one will wake up," Lauren told him.

Since she was shorter than him, she was the first to notice a fire had started under the red SUV.

"Uh oh. We have to move far away. There's fire. Mommy always said get far away from fire. It hurts. We need to wake our parents up now so they can get away from the fire too," Lauren told the boy.

Joshua knew everyone was already dead, but he didn't know if the little girl understood.

"How about I take you away from the fire, then go back to wake them up?" he asked her.

She cocked her head to the side as she thought about it.

"Okay. Mommy always said I need to get away from fire first so I can grow up big like her," she said as she took the boy's hand.

He leads her further up the road. He looked back just before they passed a curve and saw both cars engulfed in flames. As soon as they got around curve, a huge boom and a blast of heated air passed by them.

"What was that?" little Lauren asked.

She looked at the older boy who sat down with tears in his eyes.

"That was the bad fire. It got our parents before we could go wake them up. I'm sorry, Lauren," he cried.

She didn't understand how the fire made such a big noise, but she did understand that the fire hurt her parents. And since he's crying, his parents got fire hurt, too. Lauren crawled on the boys lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Are you still going to protect me from the big fire?" she asked with tears in her eyes, too.

"Yes. And when I grow up, I'll protect you from everything," he told her.

He was alive because this brave girl was looking for someone to help her parents. Parents who taught her that fire was dangerous, so she got them away from the explosion. She probably won't remember much of this as she grows, but he will. The crying girl fell asleep against Joshua's chest. That's how the rescuers found them when they came to check the source of the fireball that was seen miles away. When they tried to take the sleeping girl from the boy, she refused to let go of his neck, so he offered to carry her. She wasn't very heavy. The fireman led them to an ambulance so they could be checked for injuries. Surprise of surprises, the little girl had done so much, with a broken arm. The boy had a large bump on his forehead from hitting the seat. While the paramedic splinted the little girl's arm, Joshua told the cops what Lauren had told him and how she saw the fire that led them to get away to safety.

"Do you know her name?" the cop asked.

"She said her name is Lauren Short. If you let me use a phone, I can call my grandparents to meet us at the hospital," josh told him.

When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, 2 sets of very worried grandparents were waiting for the children. Lauren ran to hers, showing them her nice new sleeve, Joshua went to his. The police couldn't notify Lauren's mom's family, because they weren't in town. Which is why Joshua couldn't find the little girl for many years. He thought he'd found her once, when he was the guest speaker at the nearby college. But it was just a girl that looked similar to her.

Lauren tells him how she was adopted by her Aunt Amy, and went by her married name until she was older. Her grandparents thought it was too fishy that 5 people died for no reason. They just weren't sure if Victoria and David were the targets, or the Franklins. After all the tricks Victoria's evil twin sister pulled to get a hold of Victoria's property, they started to believe it was Victoria and Lauren who were the targets. They just couldn't find proof since the driver was also killed. When they hid Lauren, they told Valerie Lauren had died too. Valerie went around telling everyone she was really Victoria, and it was Valerie who died in the crash. That David was having an affair with Valerie, and the girl in the car was Valerie's daughter with David, Kaitlyn, not Lauren.