A photograph of Marissa Lorea, 15, is displayed at a vigil held last night at Lincoln High School. “She was beyond a good girl,” one friend said. “She was the perfect girl.”

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL Ruben W. Perez

LINCOLN — Marissa Lorea had one of those idyllic, suburban summers that seem to hit around the age 15, when planning for the future means, at most, figuring out what’s happening tomorrow, or that afternoon, or that night.

You can just picture her, unwinding after her first year at Lincoln High, in her friend’s backyard, poolside; or at the local pizzeria; or running through the neighborhood during a late night game of manhunt.

SATs, college, and career planning — all those things that loom large on the high school horizon — still too distant for worry. It was the perfect, carefree summer, her friends agreed.

Marissa, a 15-year-old sophomore, was killed Monday afternoon in a single-car accident on Wilbur Road, about a half-mile from her home at 37 Wilbur Rd.

Mourners gathered yesterday evening at an hour-long candlelight vigil on the field where the talented soccer player practiced nearly everyday after school.

Teammates, friends, classmates, and family members took their turns speaking from a stage ringed with framed pictures, balloons and mementos, a PA system echoing their memories of Marissa through the field.

“She was an exquisite girl,” said Brianna Lorea, Marissa’s older sister and a senior at Lincoln High. With “big, beautiful eyes,” Marissa looked “cute, pure, fresh,” said Brianna.

Marissa had just donated some of her hair — the long, silky black hair that Brianna said rarely needed straightening in the mornings — to the charity Locks of Love, and proudly wore it short.

She was a two-sport athlete, a runner and a member of the girls’ junior varsity soccer team that won the Division III championship last year. Soccer team captain Kailyn Domenici said Marissa had recently scored her first goal of the season.

“She was part of a group of freshman last year that really raised the level of the soccer program and one that we were looking to do great things as the group matured as a team,” said acting high school principal Kevin McNamara.

Others remembered Marissa as a girl who loved her family and “knew where her priorities were.” According to one friend, “she was beyond a good girl. She was the perfect girl.”

The police said Lorea was riding in the front passenger seat of a car heading east on Wilbur Road, a narrow, hilly residential street that runs through the wooded area between Jenckes Hill Road and Old Louisquisett Pike, around 2:30 p.m. Monday.

The car went off the left side of the road, clipping some tree branches before going over a stone wall and striking a large tree at the corner of Longmeadow Road. The impact shattered a thick tree branch and demolished the front end of the Chevrolet Cavalier.

The driver, Andrew Bessette, a 17-year-old senior at Lincoln High School and Lorea’s cousin, and another passenger, Amanda Coderre, a 16-year-old sophomore at Lincoln High, were injured in the crash.

They were taken to Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence with injuries that were not life-threatening. Bessette was out of the hospital by yesterday afternoon, but Coderre remained hospitalized, the police said. Lorea was pronounced dead at the scene.

School Supt. Georgia Fortunato said Marissa’s death was yet another blow to a community that has seen too many young lives cut short by tragedy. Counselors were on hand all day at the high school and middle school.

Marissa’s friends set up a group page on the social networking Web site Facebook in her memory yesterday. By evening, “R.I.P. Marcy Babe. Always in our hearts” had nearly 250 members, at least 20 of whom had left loving notes to the teen.

“There is only one way we get through this — we get through this together,” McNamara, the principal, said at the vigil. “We get through this as a community. It is that spirit of togetherness that will help us move on and return to our lives.”

The family said funeral arrangements have not yet been made.

pmarcelo@projo.com