Accidents Happen
I don’t remember the accident at all. Strange, right? That’s the thing that started this whole . . . I don’t know what to call it. End of the world? Or, at least, our world. But I do remember . . .
“Joey, Joey!” some girl yells. Lana? It sounds like Lana. Who am I? Am I Joey?
It’s happening so fast. It’s really dark. A seat belt is holding me tight. Car accident? But there is a light in my face.
“Oh God. Thank God you’re alive. But the others—the others. Chris. I think he might be dead. Sierra too. They’re all bloody.”
“Chris? Sierra?” I ask. Who are they? Am I Chris?
“Yes! Chris, your brother,” the girl explains. “You must have been knocked out bad. I woke up before you. We were in a car accident. Chris and Sierra were in the front. Oh my God. Oh my God. They’re bad. We need help.”
It’s starting to make sense now. It’s starting to come back to me. Chris and his girlfriend, Sierra. They were driving the car, Chris’s “new” classic sports car. A gift from our dad for getting into college, because Chris wanted something “cooler” than the typical fancy high school car. It was one in the morning. Saturday night—I mean, Sunday morning.
“Lana?” I ask. She doesn’t disagree with the name. “Help me out,” I finish. Under the belts, I can’t move.
Lana helps me undo the seat belt. The door is open. I feel around for my glasses, but they’re not on my face. Don’t I wear glasses? Or do I? “My glasses?” I ask.
She shines a light at my feet, and there are glasses on the floor of the back seat of the car. I grab them and get out of the car. They fit right on my face. They must be mine. I do wear glasses.
Lana explains some more. “I wasn’t hurt, just knocked out a bit, I think. Not as bad as you.” She’s upset, but her talking is anchoring me. I focus on her. “I got out of the car. But you all . . . I had my cell phone light, so I could see.” She holds it up to my face to show me. “You were still out. And then I saw Chris and Sierra . . .” She starts bawling. Her body gives in, and she throws up on the side of the car. It’s so quiet; I can hear every spit, every hack.
It’s also momentarily dark; her cell phone is facing down. I follow the phone and take her hand. I’m still not steady on my feet or in my head. That was just my reaction—to help her.
“They weren’t moving,” she mumbles as she wipes her mouth. “All bloody. I don’t know how to check a pulse. I mean, I’ve seen it on TV. But I didn’t feel anything,” she admits. “I don’t know if I did it right, though. I’m so sorry, Joey.” She wipes her mouth again. “I just don’t know.”
I don’t want to see Chris and Sierra, so I take her word that there’s nothing we can do for them. And I don’t want this to be real. It seems like a dream. Maybe we can still wake up.
I take out my cell phone, which remained in my pocket somehow. There’s no service. “I tried too,” Lana says. “There’s no service here. If you remember from the drive up, it’s spotty out here. It’s the goddamn middle of nowhere.”
“We’ll have to start walking,” I say. I don’t want to feel anything. Can’t this just be a dream? I shut down. I’m numb. “Maybe we’ll find an area with some coverage. I think we have some flashlights in the trunk. Should we walk on the road or through the woods?”
“I have no idea. I’m a city girl,” she replies.
“‘City’? Farmington? We’re barely the suburbs.”
“You know what I mean. The road could be dangerous in the dark, though. Don’t people at accident sites get hit? And robbed?” she asks.
“But there could be bears and stuff in the woods,” I point out. And then she takes something out of her pocket. “What is that? Bear spray?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to some crazy party without something to defend myself,” Lana explains. And then she laughs just a little. It seems weird to laugh in the middle of all this.
“But bear spray? Some city girl. Fine, we’ll go through the woods. We just need a spot with service. And maybe we’ll be headed towards civilization. It was kind of desolate on the way up,” I reply, remembering the winding road through the middle of forests and streams.
The initial shock is wearing off now. Facts start popping into my mind. I’m remembering who I am and why we’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re sophomores at Farmington High School. My brother, Chris, and his current girlfriend, Sierra—he always has one, he’s just like that—are seniors. I don’t really get along with Chris. This was even the first time we were all in his car together.
Lana and I have sort of been together since ninth grade. I’ve always liked her, ever since middle school. She looked lost, like she felt out of place, just like me. But I couldn’t find the courage to tell her. Then, by luck, we were put on a science-lab project together last year, and we really bonded over our love of science. She started talking to me. I was still so scared that I did everything to not talk. So stupid. But she wouldn’t give up. She even told me she would eat our dissected frog if I didn’t hang out with her. That did it. Though we still have never kissed. Or really anything. My friends think we’re crazy. I’m just happy to have whatever this is.
And somehow, our unlikely group was driving back from a crazy party Sierra heard about. It wasn’t a regular high school party. Chris said she’d gotten a random text about it—she apparently has connections to some strange people—so they wanted to check it out. Sierra seemed like she really wanted to blow off some steam. She really didn’t want us there, Chris said, but I convinced him to let us come . . . well, maybe I blackmailed him. I don’t like to do stuff like that, usually. But I wanted to impress Lana. Never again!
At first it did work out, though. The party was in some random rural place. In a barn! With a weird mix of high school kids and college kids. Maybe some older grad students too? It was great, at least for our relationship. Lana was loosening up a bit. Maybe we would finally kiss.
And I could tell she was looking to try new things. She was always talking about what other kids were doing, how we should enjoy being teenagers sometimes. By chance, I had heard Chris talking to Sierra about this party. Our parents were away this weekend, so I forced his hand. Never again.
And Sierra isn’t great to be around anyway. All Chris’s prior girlfriends were pretty bad. They’re usually the popular girls. The mean girls. And Chris and them would kind of bully me like I was—am—unpopular . . . well, Lana and me both, when she came into my life. The price of being with me. I was surprised she stayed. My parents never stopped it.
Sierra’s not with the popular crowd, though. She’s hard to pin down. She floats with the slackers, though she’s really intense. Everyone was shocked when they got together. But even if she’s not popular, she’s still just mean. It’s kind of weird they even got together. It shocked the whole school. I had hoped she would be different, but she sort of just treats Lana and I like we don’t exist, and so he does too. Is that better than bullying? It’s strange how his behavior always starts to match his girlfriends’. Like he cares more about them than me. Just like our parents.
So our parents were out of town. I don’t know about Sierra’s parents, but Lana’s mom thought she was staying with a friend, so that’s how she could go too. As Lana told me, she’s never done anything like this before, and she can’t believe her mom said okay.
Chris has done stuff like this all the time. I guess that’s why I thought it would work out. Like I said, he’s popular and I’m not. He’s into sports and finance, like Wall Street stuff. He’s on the high school soccer team, and he keeps talking about getting an MBA (I’m not really sure what that is, but it must be a business thing). I’m into science stuff: chemistry, physics, space . . . I’m a geek and he’s not.
The drive back from the party was okay—no one was fighting—but it was late and dark, and there were no streetlights. We hadn’t been drinking . . . at least, Lana and I hadn’t been. I don’t think Chris would drink and put us in danger; he’s not that bad. But we made that wrong turn. GPS was on the fritz—said we were fifteen miles out of our way. Then he was driving really fast. That’s all I remember. The actual accident is a blank.
I find two flashlights in the trunk. Our parents made Chris pack a first aid kit with things like that in his new car. I look at the bandages, but what the hell is a bandage going to do if they’re dead like Lana says? Luckily, I could get into the trunk because I had the second set of keys in my pocket—my parents were right about that advice too. They are so by the book; it gives them an excuse to ignore everything else about us. They look like good parents. Why am I wasting time thinking about them right now?
“At least we can save our phone batteries,” Lana says, jolting me from my thoughts.
I can easily tell that the front of the car hit a tree, but I just don’t want to look. I don’t want it to be real. Maybe I’ll wake up. Maybe when we come back with help, they’ll pop out of the car yelling, “Surprise!” But I do trust Lana—there’s nothing I can do for him here.
We start walking with our flashlights, checking our cell phones along the way. It’s April, so we’re not too cold. An unusually warm night, even. My flashlight reveals bugs that are drawn to the light and buds on the trees. It really smells like spring in the woods. Like those candles Lana likes from the mall. I’ve always liked spring, with its sense of new beginnings. It’s not supposed to feel like this—an ending. “Were they breathing?” I finally ask Lana after about ten minutes of walking.
“I don’t know! They weren’t moving,” Lana replies defensively. Then she adds, “I’m sorry, Joey. I didn’t mean to sound like that.”
Before I can start to feel or say anything, something catches my eye. It’s a cabin. Maybe we are getting closer to civilization. Maybe there’s a phone inside. “Come on,” I say as I point it out to her. I start jogging. My head still hurts; I can feel it bouncing along with my knees, like there’s a giant softball in there, but I need to get there. Lana must be trailing behind me because I can hear her footsteps still.
We stop alongside the cabin. We check our phones: still no service. “There might be a phone or something we can use in there.”
“It’s just a stupid cabin. Probably some hick hunter or something. What if they’re inside? Or they come back?” Lana argues. I look around and don’t see anything. No lights on inside. I do notice some tiny cave entrance nearby. Weird place for a cabin. I didn’t even know we had caves in New Jersey. “Come on, Joey. We need to keep walking,” she begs. “We just need to find cell service to get them help.”
“No, we need to check this out,” I reply. “I’m sure of it.” For some reason, I know this cabin can help us. Or maybe part of me just wants to be home—any home. To lie down on a bed. To let go. To stop and wake up from the dream.
Ignoring her, I knock on the door. No answer. I try the doorknob and see that it’s locked. The whole thing looks pretty old and worn. Just get inside, Joey. There’s help in there. I don’t know what compels me, but I slam my shoulder into the door. It starts to come off its now loose hinges. I slam into it again. The door blows off and onto the floor of the cabin. And then, right in front of us . . .
“Holy crap, what the hell is that!” Lana screams.
