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The next morning I find her still on the couch, the remains of her last cigarette in a cylinder of ash falling from the ashtray. Her bottle of painkillers sits next to her empty glass for a last-night cocktail of Percocet and vodka. Certainly not a healthy combination. I shoulder my bag and step out into what is a beautiful spring morning. It’s unbelievable that three days ago the world was encased in ice. There is damage, limbs that snapped under the weight of the ice, but on the whole, the world has completely returned to spring. My mind is still unsettled, angry, restless. I just don’t understand what that conversation was about last night. I don’t know why she mentioned my father like that. I don’t know how she can think she has no responsibility for what happened. Ever, in her life. It is always somebody else’s fault. There is always somebody working against her, somebody causing her to need a drink. Causing her to mess up.
I let the brisk spring air clear my mind, and I shove all my negative energy out as the wheels of my bike hum on the road. It’s the first day back to school after the ice. I know it’s going to be a bad day. Everybody will be talking about the accident, and I am sure everybody will assume the same thing I did—that my mother was drunk. I’ll have to get through it, survive. My little wall needs more layers, and I am trying to formulate how I will respond to the questions that will come my way. How will I say that it was a terrible accident, caused by the weather and not by alcohol, and not just sound like I am defending my sot mother? Maybe I should just not respond. I am solidly in my thoughts when I ride into the parking lot at school. I’m in the middle of a conversation in my head, my lips moving with the imagined words I will say.
I am not paying attention, really, bicycling into the lot, standing above the seat, muscle memory from the hundreds of times I have ridden into the lot in the exact same fashion, the word “bitch” pulsating on my arch with the pressure of my foot on the pedal. Bitch. It sings, it hums, it throbs. My mind calms with the throbbing of it, and I swerve down into the lot at a pretty good clip. I don’t see the truck until it roars beside me, startling me. I jerk the handlebars, trying to avoid the impact, and for a split second, my eyes lock with Derrick Jessop’s, and he jerks the wheel. I slam into his passenger-side mirror, and my bike falls away. I am hung for a split second, tangled in his mirror. His brakes skid, and his wheels crunch over the front forks of my bike. I fall in slow motion away from the truck, my right arm, shoulder, and chest on fire. My head smacks down onto the blacktop, and my face falls to the side, seeing the mangled front end of my bike still caught under the back tires. The world goes black.
***
When I come to, Derrick is squatting beside me, his truck still running and my bike a mangled heap behind his rear tires. My shoulder burns, and I can’t breathe easily. I am unable to lift my arm or sit up. My head is pounding, and my ears are roaring. “Damn, Derrick,” I say between gasping breaths. “What the hell?”
“I’m sorry. It was an accident.” He looks intently down at me, and others are beginning to gather around, everybody clamoring, talking. “The road must have been slick. I didn’t see you.” I glance at him, and just the comment of slick roads brings everything back into focus. Was it? Was this an accident? There is no malice in his grey eyes. No anger, just a sadness and concern that makes me think I’m becoming paranoid. I let him take my left hand and help me to my feet. I stagger but right myself. “You okay?” he asks. “Not dead.” There is a cold glint in his eyes, a sardonic tilt to his lip, quirked, then controlled and I don’t understand the look at all, but my head is ringing and really my vision isn’t great, so maybe it’s just me, just me.
Derrick reaches his hand to steady me as my balance wavers and I nearly go down again. A quivering draw of breath snakes down my throat, and I nod, tears spilling over my lashes. I nod my head. I’m fine. I’m not dead. He is crumpling, that young man at the hospital, with bones turned to liquid, in my mind, and I turn from Derrick to attempt to extricate my bike from behind his truck. Then it is me, my bones turning to liquid, crumpling to the ground.
***
I wake and the first thought in my head is that I hurt, very badly all along my right collarbone and shoulder. My head is throbbing. The second thought in my head is of the young man at the hospital and of the somebody he lost. I test my fingers and they move. I try to raise my arm, and although it causes the pain to shoot out in sparks, I can lift it. “Careful,” a voice says to me from my left, and I turn my head to see Nurse Janet. She’s a small, round woman, with small, round glasses glinting in the florescent lights. She has been the school nurse for years. “How are you dear?”
I try to speak but only croak, so I clear my throat and try again. “I’m okay.”
“You took a nasty tumble, dear.” She is now standing over me, looking down at me. “I think you should be looked at. That’s quite a bang you have on your shoulder.” She smiles down at me. “Can you tell me what happened?” I try to remember, and I can’t. I remember riding into the parking lot, standing on my pedals, then . . . nothing. I shake my head. “I’d like to take you to the hospital for some x-rays. I don’t believe anything is broken, but we should probably make sure.”
I shake my head again. I can’t afford x-rays. “No, I’m fine. I’ll go this evening, after school.”
“You’re going to stay for school?” It hadn’t occurred to me to do otherwise, what with my mode of transportation destroyed and my only alternate place filled with my mother and probably Cal. She helps me to stand when I am ready and guides to me to the door. “They’ll want to see you in the office.” I make my way there, and on the way, I pass Derrick, who again stops to ensure I am okay and even turns to walk with me back to the office.
As he opens the door for me, he again says “I’m really sorry, Alison.” I nod.
“I know, Derrick. It was probably my fault, I wasn’t really paying attention. I’m okay. Don’t worry.”
“I can give you a ride home tonight, if you’d like.” I smile at his being so nice.
“Thanks. But I’m okay.” I’m thrown a bit by his kindness, his concern. I touch his arm with my left hand before going into the office. “Seriously. I’m okay.” I pass through the door that he holds open for me, and I’m touched when I glance behind me and see him still standing on the other side of the door as it closes behind me, his face an odd expression that I don’t know how to read.
On the counter in the office is a copy of the day’s newspaper. I notice it, but don’t have a chance to really look at it before I am ushered straight back to Principal Tucker’s office where he is sitting at his desk, staring out the window. My head is still roaring, throbbing. He stands when I come in and greets me. “How are you, Alison?” It seems like a much heavier question than what my current situation warrants. But really, doesn’t my current situation warrant exactly that? I’ve been run over in the school parking lot.
I reassure him that I am fine, although I don’t really remember what happened. “Derrick said you swerved on your bike, and he didn’t see you until it was too late.”
I nod, and pain shoots behind my eyes. “Probably.” I don’t remember. “I wasn’t really paying attention, I’m sure.” I look at my hands and realize there are scratches across my knuckles, where I must have hit his truck. “It was just an accident.”
I feel so broken. My head is throbbing, and I surreptitiously lift my hand to the back of my head where a very large mound is forming. There are crusts of blood in my hair. Very efficient, Nurse Janet. I wonder if she even noticed. I feel like I may be sick and lean forward, putting my head between my knees and drawing in breaths. I can see on the floor between the legs of his desk another copy of the newspaper. I can’t miss the headline. I can’t miss the pictures. I reach out and gather it to me, sitting up, drawing the paper with me, feeling dizzy with my rapid upswing. I hear the intake of breath from across the desk, but I do not look up.
There is a picture of a beautiful woman and a little boy—he’s probably five—and a headline that says “Slick Conditions Claim Lives.” Below the bend is a picture of the mangled vehicles, my mother’s and the crumpled wreck of a small, grey sedan. How fast was she going? People died . . . this isn’t a fender bender, this is a crash. How fast do you have to go to make two cars look like that? “Claims Lives.” I am rising to my feet. I hear Mr. Tucker pushing back from his desk, coming toward me. I put up my hand toward him, never taking my eyes from the page. I back toward the door then spin, opening it and escaping through the front office as he calls out behind me. I read as I weave down the hall. When I stumble against the row of lockers, I stop and lean against them before slowly sliding to the floor. The article reads:
Slick road conditions were cited as the cause of the double fatality, two-vehicle crash Tuesday evening on the intersection of highways 130 and 34 east of Charleston.
Lydia Dollman, 27, and her young son, Terry, 5, of Charleston were both killed when their vehicle was struck by the vehicle of Alice Hayes, 32, also of Charleston, when her vehicle crossed into the intersection against a red light, causing her vehicle to impact Mrs. Dollman’s. Slick road conditions have been cited as the cause of the accident. Ms. Hayes sustained injuries as well and was treated at Charleston Hospital.
Services are pending for Mrs. Dollman and her son, who are survived by her husband, Jonathan Dollman, her parents, Mick and Marsha Jessop, and one brother, Derrick Jessop.
I feel the dark edges of my vision narrowing, and I see what’s left of the tunnel. Lydia and Terry Dollman, Jonathan Dollman, Mick and Marsha Jessop, and Derrick, who has just run me over in the parking lot. I close my eyes and force the darkness back, and when I open them, there are shooting sparks, but I can see. Did he swerve toward me? I see the flash of memory, but it is just as quickly gone. I fold the paper and tuck it into my backpack.
I leave the school, struggling with the pain in my shoulder but manage, shouldering my pack on my good side and setting out for the long walk home.