I just graduated from high school. I feel we had a curse on my class. Six people died. The worst was Shannon, my best friend. She was free- spirited, the last person you'd expect to die.

One day she's great.

The next day she's dead.

I wasn't prepared for it.

Leticia, age seventeen, the narrator in a chapter entitled "Death Hurts" in Janet Bode's book Death Is Hard to Live With: Teenagers Talk about How They Cope with Loss, tells about the death of her friend Shannon. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver who stole a car and hit her and a group of pedestrians. "Actually, Tommy, the one driving, went to elementary school with us," Leticia explains.

The story that Leticia tells is not really Shannon's story but Leticia's own. She goes on to tell about how she put her life back in shape after the...