Young Writers Society

The sun shines brightly on two girls, talking, laughing, bells chiming lightly in their voices, echoing down the sleepy street. They speed away on flashes of color, pedaling hard, each trying to outdo the other. They call out challenges, racing each other to the mailbox, the corner, that house. Not a care in the world, still giddy from loss of sleep at the church lock-in. Their heads are full of the moment, full of the speed, their own little joys in the sun’s early hours. They like the echoes, reminding them that others in this quiet little neighborhood have yet to greet the morning, that they are alone on this street, yet not alone.

Then they are there, the big intersection, busy even as the sun has only just gained complete control, only just now banished the moon and her cape of stars. They pause, adrenaline pumping, adding to the excitement of togetherness, of being with a friend on a Saturday morning. They grin at each other, thinking about their mission. They’ve been trusted with going to the grocery store, all alone. It’s so close, they know, yet so impossibly far away as they watch a river of cars flow past them. The ever-faster moving adrenaline reminds them that they are a mere yard from total destruction, from jumping into that river, and never coming back. But that won’t happen, of course, that happens to other people. Always other people.

The light changes, they look up expectantly, waiting for the little blue stick-man to appear across the river. He disappoints them, doesn’t show up. Impatiently, they jab angry fingers at the button, over and over. Finally, one decides they’ve waited long enough. The turn lane is empty, no one is moving at all, just waiting, waiting for the light to change, and then it will, and there will be more waiting, and more button-jabbing. She pushes off from the curb and begins to cross the river. Her friend follows, always hesitant, always knowing that sometimes, in very rare instances, it’s not someone else. She knows, somehow, that something bad will happen. She is afraid, though it has taken her the entire trip to the intersection to admit this to herself. She feels, deep inside, that when she comes away from this, when she crosses the river, something will have changed. Oh, how very right she is.

She is more than halfway across now, and she suddenly feels at ease, knowing that the worst is over, she’s almost there. She’s maybe two yards behind her friend, she’s got two lanes to cross, while the other has one. Nothing bad could happen now. Bad things happen at exactly halfway, she’s certain. It will be a long time before she trusts her gut feeling again, before she is brave enough to venture across a street without holding tightly to someone’s hand, without running, trying to hold back the scream, keeping the memories at bay, half-shutting her eyes. It will be more than a month before her sleep is untroubled, before she can sleep the whole night through. But she doesn’t know that. She is once again reveling in her adrenaline rush, and oh, how lovely it is, how clear it makes the morning seem, how much brighter the rays of the sun. She sits up a little straighter, correcting the hunched, frightened posture she held before. That former posture will soon become her natural reaction to streets.

And then she sees it. Just in front of her, between the lined-up cars. Later she will compare it to a fox, a wolf, sneaking unseen around the victims. It is tan, she is sure, but later they tell her it was silver, the sun was in her eyes, she’s disturbed, she doesn’t remember correctly. I was there! she will want to scream, I am the one with the memories, listen to me! Come and visit my dreams, see if it wasn’t tan. But now, she screams for something else. Her mind shrieks for her friend, her soul crying out, knowing what will happen before her mind has identified the flash of metal behind the still cars. Later they tell her that she’s not the only one who screamed silently, that her friend screamed her name while unconscious, warning her of the imminent danger, begging for help, salvation. Except that they will never know about her silent scream. Or the other silent screams, that come later. No one will ever know how badly she is hurt. She will feel that no one cares, and she will wonder if they do.

She remembers suddenly, in the split second before her world changes forever, that in movies, at moments like these, time slows down. Or maybe she thinks of it later. She can never be quite sure of the order of her thoughts, but they stand out in her mind as clearly as the screaming, and the flash of metal in the sun, and the heavy, overpowering smell of carbon monoxide. In the movies, she recalls, the main character fills the screen, yelling something in slow motion, and all around him blurry figures race, unimportant, only the main events are clear. She will decide later, when she is attempting to pour out her soul through the keyboard, with clumsy fingers, getting nimbler with each attempt, that whoever decided that this shows great confusion, or adrenaline, or whatever it is that they’re trying to show, had never actually been in a crisis. They might have listened to a few descriptions, but they are wrong. Everything is perfectly clear in her memory, the blurriness comes later, with the screaming. She will always wish for blurriness, for amnesia, anything to keep that moment out of her dreams, out of her every waking thought for the next two months. She will wish that the blurriness had come, or that she’d looked away, anything to keep the ghost of that day from haunting her. But the blurriness never came, and it never will. She will never forget any of it. She remembers a small car on her right, it could have been blue, or maybe silver, or gray. A light color, like the sky. Later they tell her that there was a green minivan there. In fact, they challenge just about everything she tells them, even though they claim she’s their best eyewitness. In fact, they won’t even bother to write it down correctly in their reports. They will decide what happened, they who were not there, who did not see what she saw.

Time does not slow down. Thoughts speed up. Odd thoughts, like camera effects in movies. Like the news. Like the phone, weighing her pocket down just enough to be noticeable. Like the other phone, she can see the outline of it in her friend’s back pocket. Later, they find it on the street, nearly as broken as she feels inside. She takes it home, and gives it to her friend’s mother, who soon gets a new phone. She will almost wish that she could have a new soul, a new heart, a new memory. She thinks about what she’s going to tell people, knowing somehow, what will happen. She imagines calling 911-she’s never gotten to do that, and has always had a longing to do so. She imagines riding in the ambulance, another thing she’s always wanted to do. Later, she wonders how she had time for all these thoughts. She knows she only had a split second, and she will eventually wonder if maybe one day pilots will talk about breaking the thought barrier, having long since demolished the sound barrier.

And then the moment comes. Her soul has been expecting it, but that does not lessen the shock. The flash of metal, which she spotted less that half a second before, comes down upon the friend like a wave. The friend rolls, up, and then flies, impossibly far, in the street. The girl realizes later that her friend made it-she crossed the intersection. She realizes that in that half-second of hurried thought, she slowed down. A survival instinct perhaps? She’ll never be certain. All she knows is that she must speed up, must somehow reach the curb. A small part of her mind is afraid of another car, as though they travel in packs, intent upon striking down innocent little girls. It is then that she makes the first sound, and realizes that she hasn’t been hearing anything, until her own scream shocks her ears, a cry to God, and her friend’s name.

She somehow makes it, she’ll never be sure how, and throws the bike down on the curb. It is as though someone is writing out the story of her life, and this great Writer has suddenly switched styles, from thought to dialogue. She will later wish to tell him that that’s not her style, she’s no good at action, in her writing or her life. But she won’t think of that till later. Now, all she knows is that her friend is tough. She’ll get up and laugh and walk away. Her fear intensifies as she runs to her friend, still lying in the street. Later, she’ll thank God that she wasn’t the first to get there, she would have shaken her friend. No, it is a man who gets there first, someone she doesn’t know. He looks straight at her, directly in her eyes, shocking her into reality. Later, this method won’t work; she’ll be past shocking. But it works now. He orders her to call the girl’s parents. Unthinking, she flips open her phone and dials her own number. The crying begins to come. Her father picks up on the first ring, and she sobs into the speaker, four words are all it takes. He curses, and promises to be right there. Then he is gone. Later, she imagines him leaving, knowing that he did not stop for anything except to tell her mother to call 911. But now, she is only lost, and afraid. Her house once again seems impossibly far away, on the other side of the river. She looks down. People are parking their cars in the lanes, rushing to do whatever they can to help. They all have cell phones out, telling the operator everything they can. One woman takes charge, a doctor, the girl knows, from the precise way she speaks to the operator. The doctor glances up and spots her, and asks for the friend’s age. Except that it is not so much a question, it is an order. The girl sobs out her own age, then corrects herself, adding a year. The woman turns away, continues to direct the operator.

The doctor hangs up, and all the people look to her for directions. She calls for warmth. The girl strips out of her jacket, remembering to take the phone out of the pocket before handing the jacket to someone else. Later, she will not remember much of those first moments, except for the words, the girl who brought blankets from her car, the eyes of the man who got there first, the way everyone pulled together around her friend, working to save a life, doing everything they could, the way they would occasionally pat her on the shoulder on their way to her friend.

Then, on the other side of the river, she sees her father’s car. Relief consumes her, and makes her knees shake. Someone asks if she is cold, but she barely responds with a shake of the head, watching her father cross the river, knowing that he will not be killed, but no longer trusting herself. She waits, and waits. He is there, suddenly, hugging her briefly before striding away to help, leaving her with shakier knees and the knowledge that her mother will come soon. She murmurs to herself, wanting to call him back, to say Look! I’m here, I’m your daughter, I’m lost, help me! But she is not bold enough, she keeps her mouth shut, and wishes silently for him to come back. In the coming months, she’ll get used to it, to wishing for attention, for healing. She’ll get used to keeping everything inside, because when it comes out, she feels guilty, for wasn’t she the one who got off easy? That’s what everyone tells her, and eventually she’ll stop saying anything about it, trying to bury the pain with jokes and smiles, and it will work, after a while. She’ll get used to waiting, and crying, and knowing that her fingers will never be nimble enough to carry the weight of so many emotions. She tries, but each time, it comes out wrong.

Her mother comes, driving the big SUV, and parks it nearby. She comes and takes her daughter in her arms for a short moment, before taking her to the truck and putting her in the front seat. With a command to stay, she is alone again. Her knees shake again, and she climbs out of the truck, waiting. For the first time, she realizes that she is cold. It is October, nearly Halloween, and she is in short sleeves and jeans. She waits. Her mother reappears, grabbing her phone. She asks for the phone number of the friend’s parents, but the girl is now beyond coherent thought. She might have managed to convey her ignorance of the number, she might not. Whatever it was she communicated, it was received with an order to shut up. She sniffles as her mother finally remembers the number, and makes the call. The answering machine comes on, and her mother begins to talk. She asks her daughter for the time. The girl wails that she doesn’t know, and is again told to shut up. Later she will learn that she is on their machine, wailing, and that her friend heard it and laughed. That will add to the boiling anger, that her friend does not remember, and will not stop asking about it. She will wonder if bottling that up was a good idea. Later she will realize that her mother did not have time to coddle her, but that won’t help.

Her mother is gone again, she is in the truck again, this time with a much firmer order to stay put. Her knees are shaking violently again, the shakes spreading throughout her legs. It is then that she begins to wonder if her friend is alive, and if she will stay alive. The shakes spread, and soon her whole body is out of control, whipping around in the passenger seat, straining around backwards, trying to see around the ambulance, and then coming back again, frustrated. Her arms shake, coming up, and she flails around, unable to think or control herself.

There is a minivan in front of her, a green one. A face is looking out the left back door, talking on a phone. She vaguely recognizes the face. Another head is hung over the back seat, looking straight at her. It is also familiar. She looks at it a while longer, then looks away, thought returning, telling her not to be rude. She thinks about it, and full understanding flows through her. She knows the boys from school, from cross-country. Embarrassment makes her cheeks hot, and she wishes for someone to take her away. She is almost glad for it, though, it distracts her from what is going on in the ambulance.

She hangs her legs out the door, wanting to leave but unsure of her mother’s reaction. She waits, but her mother does not come. Tears come back, as her distracting thoughts go away. One of the boys’ mothers comes over, hugs her, introduces herself. The girl just cries, and wishes silently for her own mother. Later, that night, her mother will come, and sing her to sleep, as she did when she was small. Later.

Eventually the ambulance leaves. Her father takes her home, praying. She never did get to ride in the ambulance, her mother did. Eventually, the friend heals, but neither one of them is ever the same. While the friend goes through various stages of convalescence, the girl suffers quietly, having seemingly random bouts of anger with her friend, which she mostly keeps to herself. Months later, she sees something about the five stages of grief, but she is angry at that point, and does not want to be psychologically analyzed, even by herself. A few months later, she writes a paper for Language Arts, trying to cope with her anger. Her mother reads it, and consoles her daughter, but the girl only hears her own guilt, telling her she’s selfish. She decides never to speak of the incident until the words will flow from her fingers, and show the world that she wasn’t just being jealous, or selfish. She tries again and again, usually discarding everything she writes. Eventually the tears stop coming in the middle of the night, and she tries again, though she knows she may never be able to coax the right words out of her heart, where they have been buried so long. She tries to dig deep into her heart, to find the source of the pain, exactly where she knew it was, in the place she was too scared to reveal to her mother. She was scared, and all she wanted was a hug from someone she knew when she needed it, not that day, but later, while they were healing. All she ever wanted was to be understood and loved.