“I knew something wasn’t right with him,” my father said, looking out the window. “I just didn’t think it had gone this far.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think it’ll be okay.”
My father shook his head. “I hope so, kid.” He glanced over at me. “Thanks for coming along.”
“Sure,” I said, eyes on the light. I took them off for a second, looked over and smiled at him.
“Green,” my father said, pointing.
I returned my eyes to the road and stepped on the gas, going through the intersection, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye that wasn’t right. It was a flash of red, coming toward me when there shouldn’t have been anything coming toward me.
“Amy—” I heard my father say, before everything slowed down. It’s a cliché, but it was true. And I think it only happened when there was no point to having things slow down. I knew, somehow, that I wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. It was like I was just getting extra time to see what was coming.
And what was coming was a red SUV running the light, trying to get through the intersection that I was currently in the middle of. There was more honking behind me, and then the other car slammed into us with such force I was thrown back against the seat, my teeth knocking together, and we were spinning around the intersection, and I kept my hands on the wheel the entire time, and I kept pressing my foot down on the brake, as though that would stop all of this from happening. There was a horrible scraping sound, metal on metal, and I saw the pole about a second before we slammed into it, on my father’s side. And that’s when the car finally stopped. But my father had stopped moving and my forehead felt like it was burning, and someone was screaming and they wouldn’t stop. And it wasn’t until the ambulance came and a paramedic pulled me out of the car and shook my shoulders firmly, that I realized it had been me.
If you don’t mind, North Carolina is where I want to be.
—Eddie from Ohio
I got back into the passenger seat and slammed the door, staring ahead at the dashboard. After I’d finished telling Roger what had happened, it had looked like he was about to say something, but I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. I’d just pointed to a roadside diner, and we’d headed in to eat an almost silent meal. I didn’t know what was going to happen now. But slowly, I was beginning to feel lighter, like I’d just put down something that I’d been carrying for so long, I hadn’t realized how heavy it had grown.
Roger slammed the driver’s door shut and looked at me. “Amy—,” he started.
“How would you feel about Richmond?” I interrupted.
Roger blinked, looking a little thrown by this. “What’s in Richmond?”
“Charlie’s roommate, Muz,” I said. “He was from there, and gave me a note to give to this guy Corey who hangs out at the Dairy Queen. Apparently, the life of a fish hangs in the balance.”
“A fish?”
“I know,” I said, as Roger started the car up. “I didn’t understand that part either.”
“And what kind of name is Muz?”
“It’s an acronym,” I said. “It stands for Messed-Up Zach.”
“Ah,” Roger said. “Naturally. Well, we can go to Richmond. Why should a fish die in vain?”
Looking down at the atlas, I gave him directions, then took out the envelope that Muz had given me and smoothed out some of its creases.
“How’s the money holding out?” Roger asked, after he’d pulled back onto the highway.
“We have one hundred and eighty-five dollars,” I said. Hopefully, it would be enough to take us to Richmond, and then Connecticut.
I looked at him sitting across the car from me. At some point it had become the sight I’d gotten accustomed to. I couldn’t believe that so soon, I wouldn’t be seeing it anymore.
We drove on I-40 for a few miles in silence. Roger kept looking over at me, and I knew him well enough by now to know he wanted to say something. Every time I saw him take a breath, I turned up the volume on his mix. After this had happened three times, and the music was blasting in the car loud enough to rattle the windows, Roger reached over and turned the music off.
“I need to say something,” he said.
I looked out the window, bracing myself. I had known that things would change once I told him what had happened. And it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to put off finding out how any longer. “Okay,” I said. I looked back at him. He was looking out at the road, but glanced over at me before beginning.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
I shook my head. This was like saying that the sky wasn’t blue. Saying something like that didn’t make it true. “Of course it was,” I said. “I was driving the car.”
“That doesn’t mean it was your fault,” he said.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“I’m serious,” he said, in a voice that was free of all humor. He took one hand off the wheel and pointed at a blue van that had switched lanes and was driving next to us. “If that van suddenly swerved and plowed into us, would that be my fault?”
“No,” I admitted. “But—”
“So it wasn’t your fault,” Roger said. “I’m not just saying that.”
“It’s not just the driving,” I said. “I overheard two of the paramedics talking at the scene. They were saying that it was one of the very rare instances. But that if he hadn’t had his seat belt on, he most likely would have been thrown into the backseat and suffered only minor bruising. But I made him put it on. And so he was trapped in his seat, and a streetlight pole crushed his skull.”
I expected Roger to flinch at this, but he didn’t. “No,” he said in the same serious tone. “That was just speculation. Nobody knows. He might have not had it on, and been thrown forward through the windshield. Or he might have had it off and not gone into the backseat. There’s no way of knowing. But it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”
I shook my head against these words, not wanting to let them in. This fact was what I had been living with for the past three months. I had ceased to believe in a world where it wasn’t true. “But if I’d run the yellow,” I said. “If I hadn’t forgotten my shoes—”