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Chapter Seventeen
Point of View: Narrator

Zoe had taken pictures of the tree in her front yard and clipped every news story there was about Nick Carter's accident for her classes. She photocopied them and made them into a Power Point presentation, explaining what had caused the accident, showing them the black skid marks his tires had left on the road, and pointing out all the many things that could've killed him in the crash.

"That guy lived?" exclaimed George, "Damn. And I always thought the Backstreet Boys were pussies."

"George, your language, please," Zoe snapped, rolling her eyes.

"My mom's been following this story like crazy," Heather sang from her seat. "She's been a Backstreet Boys fan for, like, ever."

Zoe sighed, this was not the point she'd been trying to make. The kids were more interested in who had been in the wreck than in hearing about the dangers of reckless driving demonstrated in the crash's logistics. "The point is," she said sternly, trying to wheel the kids back around into the conversation about the hazards of driving, "that accidents happen to everyone."

George laughed, "He was totally shitfaced."

Zoe sighed. "George. Please. 'Drunk', not 'shitfaced', okay?"

"Okay, so the dude was drunk," he said, "Drunk drivers are idiots. Of course he's gonna wrap his stupid Escalade around a tree if he's messed up."

Zoe grabbed her crutches and got up off her stool and started pacing the front of the room thoughtfully as she spoke. "Well, what if there had been another car coming when Nick came around that corner?" she asked.

"That would've been bad," said Sara. "He would've hit them."

"Exactly," Zoe said, pausing to nod to Sara. "He would've hit them and possibly could've killed them. Would they have been in anyway responsible? No. But they would've suffered just as well, if not worse, than Nick has."

George shrugged, "So the moral of the story is don't drive drunk. We get it."

"No," Zoe said, "The moral of the story is that people do drive drunk, and you need to know how to drive defensively." She was glad she'd finally pulled the class back around to her original purpose of bringing the story up to begin with. She quickly handed out a page of pointers for defensive driving - making sure you're aware of the other people on the road. "Other drivers," she said, "are more often than not more of a hazard to you than you are to yourself. So, let's read the sheet and talk about some ways that we can be more aware of the other people on the road, and drive to protect ourselves from those who don't properly respect other peoples' lives."