Wrecked  − 1 April, 2005

I was texting my now ex girlfriend in the backseat when we almost died.

The day was a promising one, with the windows rolled down and the sunshine agreeably warming our faces. The air smelled like cut grass and old fast food. Brian and I were headed to our friend Ericka's house with plans to steal her away for the afternoon. He drove, and I sat in the passenger seat with my phone in hand.

After the car slowed  to a reluctant stop, I climbed out and offered Ericka my seat. She thanked me and sat down, and I slipped into the back. I was uninterested in front-seat banter, and it was this disinterest that saved me from a trip to the hospital.

I lay stretched out in the backseat, tilting my head up to look out the window above me. An upside down world zipped by, trees like rows of jagged teeth against a Crayola blue sky. I sank lower into the seat and closed my eyes.

Eventually, opening my eyes again and squinting against the sun that poured in from the untinted windows, I sat up to see where we were. Just as I did we passed my house, which sat cozily behind a pair of trees about four miles from our destination, a river that eventually swallows the very road we were driving on. Across this river, falling into dilapidation and mostly unused save for a handful of fishermen, stretched a dam that seemed as old as the water that passed through it. It was this dam we were going to see, as well as the ancient houses that looked out over it. Ericka had never been, and I was eager to show both her and Brian around.

Suddenly, the entire front seat was filled with screams. I had just enough time to notice that we were plowing through a patch of pathetically thin tress and into the water, when the car came to an instant and painfully unforgivable stop. I was thrown against the back of the driver's seat as the car slammed into something hidden in the grass, knocking the wind out of me and wedging me into the floorboard. It was a rock fashioned to look like a tree stump that had stopped us from hitting the water, and it was currently planted in the front of the car. An unhealthy sounding hiss was issuing from somewhere. I took a few breaths and pulled myself back into the seat.

Brian and Ericka were looking at each other, both dripping blood from the various affronts their faces had taken. Brian's glassed were in pieces in his lap and blood poured from his nose and mouth into his hands. Ericka sat dazed behind a spiderweb that had appeared in the windshield in front of her. A gash on her forehead leaked a trail of red down the left side of her face. Both seemed unable to speak.

I was fine. I was fine because I'd offered Ericka the front seat.

Taking her by the hands and leading her out of the smoking car like a child, Brian and I helped Ericka to the ground. She sat down heavily on the concrete and lowered her head. A few moans escaped her, but aside from that she was quiet. Brian took off his outer shirt and offered to her. She took it wordlessly and pressed it against her head. A rosebud of blood bloomed in the white fabric beneath her fingers. I called my mother, and we waited by the river to be rescued.

The hissing had stopped, and all that could be heard was the thunder of water rushing eternally onward.