December 14th: The Accident

I slowly turned my head towards the old, analog clock that sat on the bedside table of our hotel room. My eyes were heavy, my body still. The red, boxy numbers said it was 12:15 am, but I thought that couldn’t be right. I quickly began resolving how housekeeping must have unplugged it, and the time had never been reset. Or maybe Evan had been screwing around with it, trying to set an alarm that my dad had ordered him to set. Either way, it couldn’t be 12:15. But it was 12:15, and the series of events from the day prior had started to bleed into a new one.

The 14th was a Wednesday, and on that morning, I had been in a car accident on my way to school. I had slept in, and I was probably running five minutes behind the minute when I absolutely had to leave. I knew I couldn’t be late to chemistry class again if I wanted to avoid any more demerits. I knew this would be a morning when I would have to rely on the short-cut my brother had taught me for getting around rush hour traffic.

He’d demonstrated the short-cut route many times before, taking me through all the steps to time it just right. He made danger look easy, and every time we got to one of his known check-points, he explained to me exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it. 

“Now look, every time you get to this house right here, you can look up on that hill. If there’s not a car coming–and there’s almost never a car coming–just roll through this stop sign like this,” he barely paused, quickly turning his head from right to left to right again, “and then you gun it right here.” And off we’d go.

Evan loved adopting the thrill of whatever risk needed to be taken in order to achieve his ultimate goal. Even when it came to something as small as beating the traffic. When it was my turn to get behind the wheel, I couldn’t help but maintain a level of caution that my brother never understood, or wanted to. Where Evan might have taken the short-cut for everything, I felt better only using it in dire situations. I thought, certainly, it would prevent me from the consequences that came from pushing one’s luck.

On that morning, just as Evan had taught me, I reached the house, checked the hill, rolled through the stop sign, and like clockwork, I had timed it all just right. I made it to the final stop sign that sat in front of on-coming traffic, took another rolling stop, and noticed the traffic to my right moving towards me in unison. Now, here’s where it gets fuzzy, because I am positive I checked both directions as I pulled out, mimicking my brother’s quick and shifty glances. But in the split second it took for me to turn my head to the left again, I was suddenly colliding with the bumper of a rusty-orange El Camino, the sedan that was intentionally designed to include a truck bed. The car had seen better days, and I clearly hadn’t helped.  

I was completely frozen in time as I watched the El Camino’s driver-side door swing open, as an angry man stepped out. His gray hair had positioned itself to appear as if smoke was coming out of his ears. I stared with wide eyes and a gaping mouth while he screamed at me, calling me a little bitch, before he demanded I roll down my window. Which I wouldn’t. 

I realized that my flawless efforts of getting ahead of traffic, in exchange for a few less demerits, suddenly didn’t feel like such a great pay off in comparison to a smashed car.  

I scrambled for my black, clunky cell phone, and called home. My father answered. I was crying, of course, and before he knew everything I was saying, he was in his car and driving to meet me. When he got there, he sprang from his car wearing khaki shorts, a white undershirt, and no shoes. His face looked panicked and poignantly angry. I got out of my car once he got there, and after I told him the man had called me a bitch, it wasn’t two seconds before he turned on his bare feet, walked towards the El Camino man and shouted “Hey!” 

I hated the sound of that “Hey!” It made me jump, regardless if it was out of protection for me or not. 

“Did you call my daughter a bitch?” 

Before the man could give a response, the police who had already arrived to the scene got to step in and use their de-escalation skills for the two men standing in the middle of the street, ready to puff themselves up in the name of…something…I don’t know. An accident?

After the situation was handled, as humiliating as it was, I went on to school with a new smashed bumper that wouldn’t let me pretend it didn’t happen.

There were two friends who had driven by the accident. The first was a guy who honked and waved. Idiot. The other was a close friend, who also happened to be in my chemistry class, and who had already vouched for me by the time I got to campus. I was taken aback by how many people had already heard about the accident. I went through the day telling my weird story, brushing it off like it was no big deal. 

After lunch, I walked into my history class where I was met by the headmaster’s secretary, who delivered the message that my father was there to pick me up. I must have given her a strange look before I asked her why.

“It’s not an emergency, everything is okay. But your father is here to pick you up. Go ahead and collect your things. He and Evan will wait for you in the front lot.”

Evan? They’re both here? Why does it feel like things are not okay?

I did as I was told and made my way out front. I saw my dad standing outside of the car, wearing sunglasses and looking straight ahead. When he saw me, he began turning his head to take note of the entire periphery that surrounded me. My brother was in the front seat with his head dropped as he looked down at his hands. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked. 

“Get in the car. I gotta get you outta here.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

I got in the backseat and closed the door as my father walked around to get in. I asked my brother what was happening.

“I don’t know. He’s freaked out. He’ll tell you.”

His short answers only made me feel worse. Evan knew everything that was going on in my father’s mind, but he didn’t want to have to be the one to say it outloud. My father got in the driver’s seat and started telling us what would happen next. “I’m taking you up the mountain to pack a bag, then we’re gettin’ outta town.”

“What? Why? What’s going on?” I demanded. 

“That guy you hit this morning has been circling our house all afternoon. I called the police and they said he’s a convicted rapist, and they were concerned you may not be safe. So I gotta get you out of town.”

“What? Are you serious?”

He snapped back. “Yeah, I’m fucking serious!”

I didn’t know what to think. The image of the angry man in the El Camino flashed through my mind before I imagined him kidnapping me and hurting me. As the story played out in my mind, I noticed how terrifying the possibility felt. We rode in silence until my father pulled into a grocery store.

“I’m going to cash a check. I’ll be back.”  

Evan and I watched my dad walk into the store in a way that didn’t look anything like the father we’d grown up with. 

“Evan. What is going on?”

“Shit, Courtney. I really don’t know. He busted in my room and told me he’d seen the guy you hit this morning circling the house. He said he talked to the police and said the guy had tied up girls and stuff. I don’t know if any of it’s real. He was freaking out so I just got in the car.”

“So, was the guy really circling the house?”

Evan threw his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes, “Ugh, I don’t know. I never saw anything.” He raised his head again turning it as far as he could without looking at me.“I wouldn’t worry about it too much. He seems really paranoid. He’s been saying a lot of strange things, so let’s just go with it until we can meet Mom.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s been at work all day. I don’t even know if she knows anything is going on yet. Dad was trying to get a hold of her. She’s probably doing rounds.”

My mother was a nurse for a group of anesthesiologists in Chattanooga. Pagers were still a thing, so that was our standard way of trying to get a hold of her. There was something about knowing that she may not be clued in yet that made me feel both envious and sad for her at the same time.

We saw my dad walking back to the car, and I remember hoping this was all just a big mistake. Or, would it be better if it wasn’t? Trying to discern the truth felt too messy and confusing, so I opted not to try. That was the moment I felt the vortex. The snapshot in time when no matter what I thought, or what I tried to justify and explain to myself, every angle was more terrifying than the next. I didn’t want to think about what was happening. I didn’t want to think about what wasn’t happening. I didn’t want to think about anything at all. 

My father opened the car door and plopped down in the driver’s seat. His wallet was hanging halfway out of his back pocket, and when he sat down, it maneuvered in such a way that it fell out and landed against his back. He reached back to grab it, but he couldn’t reach it without lunging forward, which caused the wallet to fall under his bottom, and he had to get out of the car to get it. 

“Goddammit,” he growled as he got out. He grabbed his wallet without completely getting out the car and tossed it to my brother, “Do something with this, would ya?”

He caught my brother off guard, causing him to fumble the wallet before he picked it up and tried to put it on the dashboard.

My father snapped at him, “Well, don’t put it up there!”

“Well what the fuck do you want me to do with it then?”

My father ripped the wallet from his hands and threw it in the backseat, where it landed next to me. I looked at it like it was a piece of garbage. Every little thing could be turned into a big thing at the drop of a hat.

Evan huffed at the exchange, which likely occurred 20 times a day for him, and my father quickly moved on saying, “We’re going to your grandfather’s house to wait for your mother. I’m not going back up the mountain without her.”

I felt relieved at the change of plans, the first release I’d felt since my rage had started to build for being forced into this situation. I would have chopped off a finger to be in history class, learning about the Roman empire or whatever it was we were learning about. The subject would have bored me, but at least boredom was a normal problem to have, solved with passing notes or doodling with gel pens.

I wondered how I would ever explain this to my friends. I remembered the girls who were standing there when the secretary approached me. Two of them held concerned looks on their faces. Regardless, I hoped that no matter what my explanation would be, I could come up with something that wouldn’t lead to more questions for that which I didn’t have answers. I wasn’t crafty at coming up with alternate scenarios that were still believable. Up until that point, telling the truth seemed simplest in most instances, except this was the kind of truth I never wanted to tell anyone.  

My mother got off work and met us at my grandfather’s house. My father began to explain everything to her, while he pleaded with her, saying he had seen the man with his very own eyes driving the same car around our house multiple times. He talked about the conversation he had with the police, and how they told him that he should get us away from the house for a few nights. He was very convincing, perhaps because he was so convinced, so when my parents decided it was time to go home and get our things, I wondered if I may actually be in danger.

Because my father knew I would always ride with my mother when given the choice, he demanded we drive up the mountain caravan style. He knew how much I hated that he was a smoker now, and the car was the one place he never cared to hide it. Once mom and I were alone in her car, I asked her if she thought I was in trouble.

“No, Courtney, I don–...” Her words stopped as she clenched her jaw and pursed her lips. Then she let out a well-known sound of frustration, “Uhhhhh…what has gotten into him?” 

I stared at the headlights as they zoomed past us, wondering where the other cars were going and if it was better than where we were going. Of course it was. Anywhere was better than where we were.

 My mother had proven to be the level headed one. She had also proven to be highly protective of Evan and me. So, the fact that she wasn’t scared for me, but instead, was questioning what was wrong with my father, suddenly confirmed this was the worst case scenario. If the El Camino man was dangerous, I could at least let myself believe that law enforcement would know how to protect us. But if my father was the dangerous one, who would protect us then?