Jessika is fumbling around on the seat, her head dipped, her hair falling over her face as she frantically searches for something. “I dropped my drink.”
“What?” I cry out, panicking. This car, it’s expensive. It won’t come out of the seats easily. Especially when it’s mixed with orange soda. My mother is going to kill me. Oh shit, she wasn’t ever supposed to know I took this car out. How am I going to get a stain like that out? Oh shit.
“Was it open?” I ask, keeping one hand on the wheel and glancing back again.
Here’s hoping it wasn’t. Please say it wasn’t.
“Yes, shit, I’m sorry! We hit that little bump and I dropped it. It rolled somewhere. I can’t find it.”
It. Rolled. Somewhere.
Which means that soda is currently unleashing hell all over my mother’s very expensive, very white, car floor.
I’m dead.
Totally dead.
“Let me look, too,” Joanne says, leaning down in the front seat and patting around on the ground, in case it rolled forward.
“I can’t feel anything!” Sophie says, leaning down, too.
Jessika is still fumbling around.
Imagines of brightly colored soda and alcohol staining my mother’s carpet has me regretting this decision almost immediately. I turn, reaching one hand down while keeping my eye on the road. I pat around on the ground. My hand brushes against something cold—a can. “I found it!” I cry out, leaning just a little farther down, still trying to see the road.
It’s that moment.
That exact moment.
That changes my whole life.
A can. Four teenage girls, rummaging around on the floor.
My eyes off the road for a second.
Just a second.
Sophie finds the can too, and I sit up, looking back at the road just in time to see a girl, no older than me. She steps in front of the car, her long blond hair almost white from the glow of my headlights. The moment happens so fast, and yet it feels like it’s in slow motion. Like, if I think about it hard enough, I can see the flecks of blue in her grey eyes.
I will remember she doesn’t seem scared. Just resigned.
I will remember she smiles a little, almost as if to say she’s sorry.
I will remember the exact moment that her body collides with my car.
I try to slam on the brakes, but she’s too close. I hit her.
I will never forget that feeling, not until the day I die. I’ll never unhear the sound. Or unfeel the sickening thud as the car takes her down and she disappears under it. It hits so hard I know, I just know, that she’s not going to be okay.
I don’t need to beg for the best.
She’s not going to make it out of this.
But she knew that.
She knew it.
I spiral out of control the moment we collide. I lose complete control of the car. It spins and squeals, the tires trying desperately to grip the road. I’ve lost control, though. Everyone is screaming. Terrified, horrible screaming.
The car spins and spins, and then we’re flipping. We’re in the air, as if the car weighs nothing. I don’t know what happens in that moment. I don’t know if I hang onto anything. I don’t get the chance to think. The car lands back on all four wheels, spiraling forward and straight into a tree.
It hits so hard my head jerks forward and slams onto the steering wheel, just as the airbag bursts to life and throws my head backwards. Pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt rips through my body.
My world becomes dizzy. Someone is still screaming.
But all I can see is her.
The girl.
And her eyes.
Those eyes.
Those eyes—I’ll never forget them until the day I die.
2
NOW
“You’re free.”
I hate those words. Despise them. The revolting sound rings through my ears as I step out of the large, well-secured prison. The prison that I’ve called my home for the last six years. Six long, grueling years. I spent the first few years until I was eighteen in Juvie and then I was moved to an adult prison. I’ll never forget the day I had to grow up. The day I had to enter the real prison. It was horrible.
Guards are assholes. You learn that really fast when you’re locked away.
Involuntary manslaughter.
Involuntary. Doesn’t manslaughter itself mean it was an accident? So if it was voluntary, wouldn’t it be considered murder? I hate that stupid word. Involuntary. Like, as if you mean to accidentally kill someone.
I’ve had a long time to think these things over. Six years is quite a stretch, really. Mostly about her. Especially her. I’ve relived that moment every single time I close my eyes. Over and over, I see her face, the way she looked at me, the way her eyes held mine. That tiny smile she gave. Her own apology, I’ve decided. Her own way of saying she was sorry for the fact that she was about to royally fuck my life up forever.
