Gizelle Stewart
Professor Tilley
English 101
30 September 2013 A time when following your gut instincts tuned out to be the right thing. Following the little voice inside your head is almost always the best decision a person can make. We have all been at a point in our lives where we were stuck in a certain situation and had to make a decision. I for one can say listening to that little voice once saved my life. It was the summer after graduation, Elmont had never been more beautiful. The smell of the sizzling grill, the sway of leaves and flowers in the slight humid breeze. The sound of lawn mowers in the morning, the sunshine streaming though the bright cloudless skies beating on your skin and the taste of a refreshing frozen icy from the ice cream truck. It was all scenes from a movie, barbeques almost every day, parties every weekend, going to the pool with a bunch a friends and laying in the sand on the beach basking in the sun feeling the little grains between my toes. The nights were even more fun, it was as if everything became alive. Bright lights filled the streets from the open stores and street lights. Parties on very block, people hanging out in front of the twenty-four hour 7 eleven. Cruising the empty streets at two in the morning with the windows down, music loud and feeling the summer wind blowing. My friends and I stayed out late every night and would sometimes wait and watch the sun come up the next morning. I always hung out with the same people, my closest friends Junie, Jeffery, Yasmine, and Miciala. We were inseparable; Yasmine was the one that always wanted to

go out and made plans, she thought she was the boss and tried to tell everybody what to do. She was a sweetheart though, as were all my friends. Junie was always grumpy and sleepy but knew how to have a good time. She was Yasmine’s cousin and would bicker with her every five minutes. They would argue about the dumbest things even about who sits in the front seat of the car. It’s so funny just to sit back and watch them fight, how ironic that people usually argue with your family way more than with friends and strangers. Miciala was short, petite and often got mistaken for a twelve year old. She wasn’t as crazy as the rest of us, she was quite most of the time but always want to go out too, she said yes to everything. Jeffery was the driver; he was the only one with a car so he took us everywhere. We all considered him our older brother; he was very responsible and took care of us. Jeffery didn’t like to go to parties, always saying he wasn’t a party person and preferred staying in the car looking at pictures of cars. He was obsessed with all types of cars and was a bit of a reckless driver. We all got along great, we were a little crew. We each got picked up with Yasmine in the front seat every time of course in Jeffery’s navy blue two thousand and twelve Nissan maxima. It always smelt like black ice flavored air freshener and his beige cloth seats were super comfortable. He named his car cherry stud and kept it clean and in tip top shape. When it came to driving Jeffery was a natural. He was such a good driver that he would do illegal and risky things on the road and get away with it. It never bothered me, I was pretty fearless. I would actually get excited whenever he did anything dangerous while everybody else would be scared out of their pants and screaming on the top of their lungs. It was fun to me and gave me a rush of adrenaline. We sometimes drove around aimlessly wasting gas.

One morning I woke up with a weird feeling in my stomach. It was one I had never felt before. I had breakfast and felt much better a while after. It was so hot outside I decided to stay in bed with the air conditioning on all day. It was a Friday and I knew there were going to be a couple of parties being held and of course my friend Yasmine had already texted me about going out. I picked up my phone and there it was in