"Zoë, where are the pilots?" 

"Never mind that" Zoë whispered loudly. "How is this plane even flying?"

She was right, how was the plane flying? There wasn't even a pilot or co-pilot to steer it. The next thing she knew, Zoë was rushing up to the pilot's seat and buckling herself in.

"What are you doing?!" I almost scream at her." We could get caught!" 

"No, there aren't any adults left on the plane to get us in trouble. And anyway someone needs to fly this plane." She states the obvious to me.

"But wait, how do you know how to fly a plane?" I ask with panic clear in my voice, already expecting the worse.

"Well, my dad was a pilot. Sometime he would bring me to the hanger and show me how the plane works and how you fly it."

"But you never actually flew the plane did you?" 

"Nope!" she says pulling me into the co-pilots seat next to her. "And if I can't fly the plane very well, you can take over for me."

"This is my first time even stepping foot in a plane. How do you expect me to know how to fly it?"

"Well if you doubt any skill I have, who would be your best guess at someone to fly this hunk of metal?" she asks me with curiosity in her voice, already knowing what my answer would be.

"Oh, sometimes I hate you" I say as I buckle in to the seat.

"Now I am going to address to the other passengers what the situation is." She says as she presses the flashing button closest to her.

"Hello passengers of flight 516, I would like to inform you that our plane is being steered by a seventeen year old with almost no flight experience, and we might have a very pleasant crash landing. Oh, and everyone buckle up, it is going to be a very bumpy ride."

She finishes as I can hear the terrified screams of my fellow classmates on board this plane. I can't blame them for panicking. This is scary stuff that we have gotten ourselves into.

"Do you really think it was such a smart idea to inform them of our troublesome situation we have got here?" I ask Zoë as she presses a couple more buttons and the plane levels out.

"Well, would you want to know to get prepared for your own possible demise?"

"No!" why would she even think that?

"Oh well, too late." She says, pressing more buttons as the plane starts to tilt downwards a little bit.

"Why is the plane tilting? We can't be close to the airport yet."

"Of course we aren't, we need to make a crash landing down in one of those islands over there." She says, referring to the little dots on the water getting bigger and bigger as we drew closer to them.

How could she possibly think that we could land one of those? They don't even have a flat place to even land on. I don't know much about planes, but I know you need a landing platform or something like it.

The island was filling up the whole screen as we came closer and closer to it.  I wondered if we were all going to die on this suicide attempt.

 "Hold on tight now, we are almost there." She says. Then she pushes the button to call the passengers again and tell them that we were about to crash land onto a most likely deserted island somewhere in the Philippines.

I tune out as I face my almost certain death. I wonder how many people had this sort of realization as they knew that they were about to die. There were so many thing that I wanted to do before I died, so many places I wanted to see. Well, I guess I can cross the Philippines off my list if I survive this ordeal.

I could hear the engine stutter and burst as we hit the ground. The impact was like a ton of little icicles pinpricking your nervous system at the same time, or the feeling of hitting a pile of bricks and nails from a great height. I could use so many similes to describe the impact, but I didn't have much time to think as we hit the earth.

I heard the screams of all the other passenger in our plane as we skidded across the island. The plane finally stopped as we hit the beach.

 The realization of the planes stop didn't hit me till a couple seconds later. I had been holding onto the sides of my seat the whole crash. Once I got my hands to unclench from the seat and forced my eyes open, I realized that I couldn't get my hands to stop shaking.

I looked to my left to only see the most horrific thing that I had ever seen in my life time. Zoë was sitting in the same seat she was before, but if you didn't know who was sitting there, you wouldn't have known who it was. Her hair was matted to her face with blood and her body twisted a way that didn't exactly look natural.

You could tell that she was dead, even if you have never seen death with your own eyes. I didn't register that it was my only friend left with me in the world at first. The shock masked the pain too much for that.

"Zoë? I finally managed to get out as I stared at the mangled body that used to be the girl determined to do anything, and who stuck by me and all of my old friends through it all.

"Zoë!" I screamed with all the force of my lungs, starting to cry hysterically. I knew she wouldn't answer, but the un-rational part of my brain expected her to wake up and tell me it was all a joke.

Once I had convinced myself that she wasn't coming back, I choked down my tears and got out of my seat. I actually took a look around the strips of metal and fire that used to be the plane that was supposed to take us lucky 20 seniors to the trip of our lives. 

What I saw was worse than I imagined ever happening to me in my lifetime. I was horrified. Kids were screaming and crying, dead bodies littered the ground in varying states of terrifying deaths. The tail end of the plane was on fire, the smoke curling into the air.

All I could think about as I looked at the wreckage was,

How could anyone possibly want this over death?