Adam, who is a guitarist in a popular local rock band called Shooting Star, concocts a scheme to have Brooke Vega, the lead singer of an even more famous local band called Bikini, play an impromptu concert in the hospital to distract the nurses while Adam and Kim sneak into the ICU to see Mia. Though her grandparents are allowed to visit her, the head nurse does not allow Adam, her boyfriend, and Kim, her best friend, to visit because they are not relatives.

After the surgery, she is brought to the intensive care unit, where her body is stable, though in a coma. In Portland, Mia undergoes an operation to treat her extensive injuries. Mia’s parents are declared dead on arrival, and she is taken to a nearby hospital, where she is then airlifted to a hospital in Portland. She realizes she is having a kind of out-of-body experience: she cannot feel any pain, and appears to be able to move around as she pleases, though no one can see her. Mia finds her mother and father dead from the accident, and sees her own body, unconscious, still in the vehicle.

Mia falls asleep while her parents drive, and suddenly wakes up to find the car “eviscerated.” The car has been totaled by a pickup truck, due to the snow on the roads, which is unusual for their part of Oregon. They plan to visit Willow and Henry, family friends who have a baby daughter, and to have dinner with Dad’s parents, Gran and Gramps, who live nearby. Everyone piles into the family car, and they start to drive. Mia is a talented cellist, and has recently auditioned for The Juilliard School in New York City, where she hopes to study the following year, after she graduates from high school. They eat breakfast, and Mia’s Mom jokes that she’s surprised Mia isn’t spending the day practicing the cello. Mia’s Mom decides to take the day off from her job at a travel agency in order to spend the day with the rest of her family. On one snowy morning, school is cancelled, leaving Mia and Teddy, as well as their father, an English teacher, with the day off. Seventeen-year-old Mia Hall lives in a small town in Oregon with her Mom (Kat), Dad (Denny), and eight-year-old brother, Teddy.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman