Dinner is still being digested in Tani’s stomach as her and her family drive down Main Street towards their home. It’s the day before her birthday and she’s excited because tomorrow is going to be a very exciting day. Or so she’s been told. She turns up the music on her music player and leans her head back on the head rest of her seat. The size of her family has caused her to have to sit in the very back of the seven passenger car; she is the youngest after all. But tomorrow, tomorrow she’ll be sixteen years old. She’ll mark that one day that makes her one entire year older or younger.
Her stomach hurts. Tonight, they celebrated her sister’s second paycheck. She got a bonus from her job because of her amazing work and corporate manners. What better way to celebrate than with a family dinner at a fantastic restaurant?
Tani sits back in her seat and stares out the back window, watching the streets disappear behind her. Her father talks about something she refuses to listen to. He doesn’t believe in gay rights. They can’t get married. They can’t live together. They can’t adopt children. It pisses Tani off. Who is her father to judge whether or not these people can do what everyone else is doing? Why is it that they are denied the right to love someone? It’s immoral. It’s unethical. It’s inhuman.
She hears her mother tell her father that they need to stop at the convenience store so she can buy some aspirin. Her father pulls into the parking lot of a small convenience store, stopping on the side of the small building where the workers usually take their breaks. He leaves the car on as her mother opens the door and leaves, running into the store. Tani hears her older sister comment about how inconvenient it is that her mother would want to buy medication right when she has to use the utilities. Her brother, the middle child, laughs at her and tells her that maybe she shouldn’t have drunk that many glasses of wine. There’s some banter between them that Tani doesn’t bother listening to. This is such a common thing she can automatically pick up on the spot when they include her in on it.
“Tani ate the most,” her sister says. Tani immediately turns to look at them and pulls off her earphones, turning off her music.
“Excuse me, Miss-Imma-Stuff-My-Face-Tonight?” she asks, “You practically put the restaurant out of business with all the food you engorged yourself with.”
“Come on,” she answers, “You practically choked every time you took a bite from eating too fast.”
“Yeah, Big Mac,” her brother says, “You ate a lot tonight.” Tani feels so powerless and betrayed by now that she doesn’t answer and instead puts her earphones back in her ears and turns the music back on. She resumes looking out the back window.
Eventually, her mother returns. She places the bag on the dashboard in front of her, talking about how she got a few more things because they were half off anyway. Her father groans but doesn’t say anything against it otherwise.
The car is in motion again, stopping only at the exit of the parking lot area. Her dad is checking to see if there are any other drivers coming from the four way intersection to their left, but the traffic light is on red and the street perpendicular to them is busy with cars.
Then Tani sees it.
An instant, there’s nothing there. An empty street. A dark street.
The next instant, there’s a car coming towards them. A suddenly occupied street. Headlights shining into Tani’s shocked face. The light illuminates the entire back side window and shows a square of light on her. The car is completely hidden behind the orb of blinding light and Tani finds herself suddenly caring what the car looks like. It’s coming towards them, out of control, and she doesn’t even know what it looks like. All she knows is that it’s coming straight towards her. Wait, she knows something else, too.
This car is going to crash into them. They will not be able to move out in time. There isn’t any time to move the car out of the way or to make the other car slow down. They are going to crash. And in this crash, Tani will be the one that gets hurt. She is going to be the only one that gets hit directly by the other car.
Tani knows she’s about to die in a car crash. And there’s nothing she can do about it. There’s just no time for any action. There’s no time for her to move out of the way or stop the car. She is going to die. It’s inevitable. It almost makes her want to cry because now that she is going to die, she will never see the day when she is sixteen years old. It’s the day before her birthday and she will never see that day.
And in that instant, Tani’s life flashes before her eyes.
When Tani was three years old, she had blonde hair and blue eyes. Her mother was always concerned about how appropriate Tani was dressed wherever they went; even if it was just to the neighbor’s yard, Tani was always dressed to perfection. This meant that she wore frilly little dresses and tiny white socks with little frilly ends on them. She also wore hair ribbons of a thousand different colors and her shoes were always polished. Tani was a picture of perfection. Of course, her mother could only control what she looked like and where she went. She couldn’t control what Tani did, though.
When Tani was three years old, she ate a nickel.
Tani’s mother is one of those mothers that overreacts to the tiniest of things. When Tani fell down and scraped her knee, her mother brought out a giant first aid kit and made Tani wear knee pads for a month. So when Tani ate that nickel, her mother took her to the hospital.
Tani was only three years old and when her mother took her into the emergency room, she started crying. There were other people in there crying as well.
Entire families crowded around a nurse cried and yelled at her and the poor nurse couldn’t take all that abuse. She was younger than the people in these families and Tani cried not only because she was scared and there were a lot of noises around her, she cried for the scared nurse, too.
Eventually, Tani was taken to a room with a doctor in a long white coat that she found interesting because she thought it didn’t have any buttons. He brought a cold circular object she’d later learn is a stethoscope to her chest and he made her take deep breaths.
But she was distracted.
There was this giant painting of a horse behind the doctor and suddenly Tani found herself imagining what it would be like to be inside that painting with the horse. She imagined the horse and her would be friends and she would feed him people food because horse food looked nasty. She would ride him all day and they’d discover the world together. As they ran the wind would blow the horse’s mane back and she’d twist her fingers in the dark brown hair and revel in its softness and silkiness. She’d hold him tight even though she knew he would never let her fall off of him.
That’s when the doctor vaccinated her.
Needles are bad. That was what Tani decided that moment when the doctor vaccinated her and she started crying from the pain. She could swear that thing was as long as she was and ever since then, she was horrified of needles. Their pointed ends and silver glare would forever horrify her.
Although, she did end up getting rid of the nickel she ate. It didn’t even taste that bad when she ate it. It was disgusting when she got rid of it.
Not that long after the nickel incident, Tani entered preschool.
When her mom dropped her off on her first day, Tani felt pretty sure of herself that she’d like this place. She’d seen a playground in the back of the building and the entrance was colored in full with a rainbow splash. There were chairs that finally agreed to her size. Her teacher even looked familiar to her but she immediately forgot about everything because her mom was leaving.
So she started crying.
Oddly enough, her mother did not come back for her. Tani cried and cried for what seemed like hours (though it was only minutes) but still, her mother did not return. The teacher picked up Tani from the spot on the carpeted floor she had set herself down in and told her that her mother would be back in a little bit of time. This calmed Tani down but not so much.
During her stay, she would constantly turn to look at the entrance. When she was coloring, she looked. When she was going down the slide, she looked. When she was learning the letters in the alphabet, she looked. And in one of these instances when she turned to look at the doors in the hope of seeing her mother, a little boy stepped in front of her line of vision.
“What are you looking at?” he asked her. Tani was so shocked that his boy would speak to her that she didn’t answer him. “Girl,” he said, “What are you looking at?” And there he went again, asking her a question. Now that she’d gotten over her shock that he was speaking to her, she went into a different state of shock. This boy looked like the horse painting.
His hair was the exact same shade of brown as the horse’s mane and his eyes were the same deep brown color, too. His skin threw it off, though. He was white and the horse was a beautiful light brown. But still, his appearance reminded her of the horse. Which reminded her of the needle.
“My mom,” she answered, breathing hard. The boy stared at her with confused eyes and stepped closer to her.
“Why are you breathing like that?” he asked.
“I’m scared,” she replied.
“Of what?” he asked, looking around for the source of her fear.
“You.”
“Why are you scared of me?” he asked. But he never got an answer because Tani’s mom entered the doors of the entrance and Tani ran to her. She ran into her leg and her mother started laughing, then she picked up Tani and the teacher came over. They talked for a while but Tani wasn’t listening to them. She had her face buried into her mother’s neck.
Just before they left, Tani turned to glance back. She saw the boy standing there and staring at her. He was still confused but he waved goodbye to her.
Tani didn’t wave back.
Good luck for Tani, this boy was going to enter kindergarten after that year. She learned his name: Allen Delacourt. He would try to talk to her, but she would always avoid him. And when he graduated from preschool, Tani couldn’t have been more relieved.
She enjoyed her last year of preschool. It was the year she also met her best friend, Jaylen. Jaylen was Allen’s sister, but she didn’t scare Tani. Jaylen didn’t have the same shade of hair as her brother; it was lighter. She had the same eyes and white skin, too, but they didn’t look alike aside from that. Jaylen had a skinny nose and a small mouth, a large oval forehead and large eyes. She had a dimple in the center of both of her cheeks whenever she smiled. Tani really liked her because both of their mothers dressed them in the frilly dresses and the spotless shoes and the rainbow ribbons.
When they entered kindergarten, Tani and Jaylen had the same teacher again. It was the same preschool teacher because she had finally gotten a promotion. They really liked Miss Richards. She was nice and she taught them how to spell the days of the week and read the Aesop’s fables. And kindergarten was separated from the rest of the elementary school, so Tani didn’t have to see Allen. It was perfect.
Tani learned something important that year. Boys had cooties and they were nasty and you did not like them. No matter what, boys were the one thing you had to stay away from in kindergarten. Jaylen constantly reminded her of that and Tani would nod her head and when a boy would ask to play with them, Tani and Jaylen would turn the other way and ignore him.
That’s how it went in kindergarten for Tani. She would not interact with the boys if she could help it. Every single girl in that class did the same and most of the boys did the same to the girls. They said they had cooties but Tani knew that wasn’t true at all; she already got her cootie shot.
When Tani passed kindergarten, she and Jaylen were sure that they would have first grade together just like they had preschool and kindergarten together. It was such a surprise when Jaylen got Miss Richards as her first grade teacher and Tani got Mrs. Simmons as hers.
But Mrs. Simmons was nice. She read the Judy Bloom books to them every day and she put Tani in the dolphin group. The dolphin group was the group of the smartest students in the class. Because Tani was in this group, she had to help the other groups. Mainly, she helped the turtle group and the jellyfish group. They were the lowest groups in the class. There were only five groups and Tani felt that they needed the most help. But she wouldn’t hesitate in helping someone in another group. That was the correct thing to do and she wanted to do the correct thing.
In first grade, Tani realized that Jaylen still thought the boys were gross and that they had cooties. Poor Tani, though, got her first crush.
I have to say though, that this is a really good beginning and I think that it's a really interesting story. I like where this is going. 