The Accident

by Glasko Klein

  Trisha turned all the way around in her seat and leaned back. “How do you do, Gloria?” she asked before turning to Daniel. “Danny, always good to see you. By the way, you seem to have forgotten your hat the last time we all went out together,” she said. She dug around the passenger side of the car for a moment, pulled out one of Charlie’s banded straw hats, and placed it on Daniel’s head.

  “Gee thanks,” Daniel said, smiling and adjusting the hat. He tried to catch a glimpse at himself in the rearview mirror to see if he looked as foolish as he felt, but all he saw was Charlie’s ear-to-ear smirk.

  “Wow, Danny, you really are full of surprises,” Gloria laughed as Daniel blushed.

  They increased speed as they merged onto the highway, which thankfully appeared to be mostly clear of other traffic. “Danny is indeed full of surprises,” Trisha said. “And quite forgetful too.”

  “Uh, what did I forget—besides my, uh, trusty hat?” Daniel asked.

  “I thought you might’ve forgotten that my cousin Laurie is the one who invited us to this party,” said Trisha. “She’s been texting me all night. She’s very interested in when we’re going to arrive.”

  Daniel hadn’t expected it to be a big deal that he was bringing Gloria along. He thought the cousin Laurie thing was just a way to get him to come to the party, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out Laurie already had a boyfriend.

  “Trish,” Charlie warned, “I’m trying to drive over here. We can talk about this later.”

  “I’m just not sure if Danny remembers his priorities correctly,” Trisha continued, ignoring Charlie.

  Daniel pushed his knees into the back of her seat, hoping she’d get the message. He was coming to the party, and he was even bringing an older girl along with them. He’d left his comfort zone. Wasn’t this what they had wanted?

  “Hey, if it’s not all right for me to come you can just turn around and drop me back off at the library,” Gloria said. “I don’t want to make you late or anything, but I’m getting the feeling that this might not be the best night for me to tag along after all.”

  Daniel and Trisha both opened their mouths at the same time, but before either of them could say anything Charlie shouted, “Oh no!” The car jerked abruptly toward the ditch, pressing Daniel into the door and Gloria into Daniel.

  Daniel’s heart was in his throat as his mind filled with images from videos he’d seen in Falcone’s class.

  6

  Charlie corrected the car at the last second, sending up a shower of gravel from the shoulder in its wake before continuing down the highway as if nothing had happened. Everyone was shocked into silence, except for Charlie, who burst out laughing. “Just messing with you guys! See? Everything could be way worse, so why don’t you all just calm down.”

  “Wow, Charlie, not cool,” Trisha said.

  Daniel hadn’t realized he could go from terrified to angry so quickly. “Really, Charlie? This is your idea of a joke? You know what, turn this car around. Take me back to the library. Gloria, do you still want to catch some Twilight Zone?” If his friends wanted him to be Danny, he could be Danny, but he’d do it on his own terms.

  “We’re gonna be there in, like, two minutes,” Charlie protested.

  Daniel looked sheepishly around the car, then out the window. At some point during his outburst, Charlie had exited the highway on the outskirts of Mountain Glen. “It’s just up there on top of that hill,” Trisha said. “I mean, we’ve come this far. We might as well at least check it out. And Gloria, sorry I was being weird.”

  “It’s all right,” Gloria said. “And thanks for the offer Daniel, but I think Trisha’s right. We might as well at least see what this party’s all about. If it turns out to be boring, we can all just go back and catch the end of the marathon at the library. It goes late anyway.”

  Daniel sighed and slumped back in his seat. There was no point in arguing if all three of them were in agreement.

  It wasn’t difficult to figure out where the party was. Cars lined the street in front of a massive house, and the music was loud enough that they could hear it from the end of the block. Charlie pulled onto the side of the road and shut off the car. “Well, it certainly doesn’t look boring,” he said as the group started down the sidewalk. “I told you you’d thank me later, Danny.”

  “Uh, this looks pretty cool and all, but maybe we should actually call it a night,” Gloria said from behind them. “It looks like the cops are here too.”

  Daniel and Charlie turned around just in time to see the first of a line of police cars begin rolling into the neighborhood behind them. “I like this girl more and more,” Trisha said. “Smart and confident. Let’s get out of here, people.”

  Everyone rushed back to the car and jumped in. “Charlie, take it easy,” Daniel said. “They’re going to be focused on the party, so all we have to do is drive out of here and not draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Thanks, Daniel. I’m glad you’re here to give me advice,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes as he cautiously pulled away from the curb. The police cars were lining up in front of the house now, but they’d parked far enough down the road from the party that Charlie still had room to turn around.

  The group sat in silence as Charlie executed a perfect three-point turn. “That was actually pretty good,” Daniel said. “Maybe you’re a better driver than I thought.”

  The atmosphere in the car lightened more as they got farther away from the party—and the police. By the time they reached the edge of the neighborhood, Charlie was back to his mischievous self. At the last stop sign before the highway, he slammed on the brakes, causing the whole car to gasp and Daniel’s seatbelt to dig painfully.

  “Charlie, seriously!” Trisha growled. “Can you please just stop being stupid until we get out of Mountain Glen? I mean, your license is still probationary—you don’t want to lose it before you’ve even had it for six months.”

  “Wait, your license is still probationary?” Gloria said. “Come on, man! Why on Earth would you bring me along in this car? We could have just taken mine and done this whole thing without breaking the law.”

  Charlie usually knew his plans were risky, but he never reacted well to being called out, especially by a sophomore he’d just met. He turned around in the seat to look at Gloria, who was sitting behind him. “Hey, listen. Daniel was nice enough to invite you along, and I was nice enough to give you a ride, so please don’t give me a lecture—”

  As he spoke, his foot slipped off the brake. The car began to drift past the stop sign and into the two-lane road back toward the main highway, where the oncoming traffic didn’t have a stop sign of their own.

  “Charlie!” Daniel warned.

  “—about how irresponsible we are. I mean, you’re the one who got in the car with a bunch of strangers—”

  “Charlie, look out!” Daniel shouted, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to face forward. Just in time to see a pickup truck roaring over the hill and straight toward them, going far too fast to stop in time.

  7

  Charlie managed to make the only maneuver that would prevent them from getting T-boned—he slammed on the gas. The car jerked across the road, into the ditch, and then into a fence post in a jumble of shouting teenagers, smoke, and airbags. Gloria reacted first, leaping out of the car and racing to pull Daniel from the wreckage.

  “Daniel, are you okay? Hey, Daniel, look alive! Are you all right?” she asked him. His heart was racing and his ears were ringing from the sound of the airbags, which had made a deafening bang when they deployed. But after running his hands over his body he realized that, other than a few scrapes and bruises, he was mostly uninjured.

  Once she’d gotten Daniel out of the car, Gloria moved on to Trisha, who was sniffling in the passenger’s seat. She had gotten a black eye from the airbag, but otherwise she didn’t look too worse for wear.

  That just left Charlie. The trio found him groaning in the driver’s seat w
ith his arm bent at an unnatural angle, like he had two elbows. He must have been holding on to the steering wheel in just the wrong way when they hit the fence post. It was definitely broken.

  “Charlie!” Trisha shrieked. “Are you all right? Your arm!”

  Charlie looked down at his arm and then back at her with a glazed look in his eyes. “Doesn’t look great,” he said with a cough. “At least the police are nearby. It shouldn’t be long until we get some help.” He might have been out of it from the crash, but he wasn’t wrong. The police were on the scene almost instantly, and the paramedics followed soon after.

  Once Charlie had been whisked away in an ambulance with Trisha at his side, Gloria and Charlie slid into the back seat of a police cruiser to be taken down to the station. Their parents would pick them up there and—in Daniel’s case at least—almost certainly ground him for the rest of the summer.

  8

  Gloria didn’t talk to Daniel at all once they got to the police station—not even to say goodbye. She just sat on her phone, waiting for her own parents to come pick her up. He felt really bad for dragging her into this mess. But he felt even worse when he realized she probably wouldn’t want to be friends now.

  As for Daniel’s parents, they weren’t nearly as mad as he thought they would be. They said they were happy that nobody had been hurt worse than they were. Daniel’s father didn’t even say much of anything actually, other than to note that he was “extremely disappointed.”

  But his parents still put a lot of thought into his punishment. No phone except when he had to leave the house to run errands, and even then he’d take the emergency phone with the texting disabled. No electronics at all when he was in the house. His parents wouldn’t even let him sit in the same room as them when they were watching television. They pulled him out of Driver’s Ed with the promise that he could re-enroll once he “learned to be responsible,” or at least did enough chores and yard work to satisfy his dad. And he wasn’t allowed to hang out with Charlie or Trisha until after the Fourth of July—which meant he was effectively grounded for two weeks, since he didn’t exactly want to hang out with anyone else.

  He wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but his summer had managed to get even worse than it already had been. By Monday, Daniel even found himself missing Falcone and looking forward to his mother sending him to the store, which he normally hated.

  He’d done some things he regretted in his life, but he’d never wished he could actually take something back before. Too bad it doesn’t work that way, he thought as he worked on the Tuesday Sudoku, his newest hobby, on the couch in the living room. He heard the garage door open, followed by the rustle of shopping bags.

  “Oh shoot,” he heard his mom say from the kitchen. “Daniel, I forgot to grab Greek yogurt when I was at the store today. Could you run out and grab some for me?”

  She had forgotten the Greek yogurt yesterday too, but apparently the tub he’d picked up had already been used. Or, more likely, given to the neighbors. Still, Daniel was happy for the opportunity to get out of the house and have the reassuring feeling of a phone in his pocket again, even if he didn’t have anybody to call with it. “All right, Mom. Be back in, like, half an hour.”

  “Be careful!” she called out after him as he walked out the front door. “And come straight home.” Daniel let out a bitter laugh as he shut the door behind him. Of course I’ll come straight home, he thought. Where else could I even go?

  9

  When the phone first buzzed in Daniel’s pocket in the dairy section, he figured it must be his mother. She’s probably come up with something else I can grab, he thought. Something she actually needs. But it wasn’t the long, sustained vibration of a phone call that he felt. It was the short burst of a text message, which should have been impossible. His parents had disabled texting on the emergency phone.

  He decided that it must just be in his head and continued looking through the endless varieties of yogurt, trying to find the brand his mother liked. But the second time the phone buzzed, he knew it had to be real. He caught himself looking around nervously as he fished the phone out of his pocket, as if everyone in the store knew he wasn’t supposed to be texting. He had two new messages from an unknown number.

  What’s up, Danny? Having a nice day out?

  Hey, Danny, why so nervous?

  He looked around again, but nobody else was in sight. These mysterious messages had all the hallmarks of one of Charlie’s tricks. But even if Charlie’s parents had decided to go easy on him and let him keep his phone, there was no way he could know that Daniel was at the store. Whoever it was, they seemed to know him.

  For a second he caught himself hoping it was Gloria, even though he knew that was impossible too. She didn’t know his phone number, and even if she did, she hadn’t been in the mood to talk at the police station, and he didn’t see any reason that would have changed.

  His thumbs were clumsy and out of practice, but after a few seconds with the phone in his hand and his heart in his throat, Daniel managed to tap out a message. He wasn’t even sure if it would go through, but if he was getting messages, it made sense that replying to them had somehow been re-enabled too.

  Hey, who is this?

  The phone vibrated in his hand from another incoming message as soon as he hit send.

  Just someone who feels bad about what you’re going through. Someone who’s wondering whether, if you had the chance, you’d do it all again, or if you’d do things a little bit differently.

  A chill ran up the back of his neck. There was no way anybody could have typed out that response so fast. He leaned into the cooler and tapped out a reply.

  What do you mean?

  This time, he got a reply before he could even hit send.

  All you have to do is say yes. What’s the worst that could happen?

  Daniel was officially freaked out, but something about the last bit of the message made him pause. He knew somebody who said that more than anybody else. He didn’t know how, but it had to be Charlie. He quickly rattled off a reply.

  Yeah, Charlie, I’d love to. Stop texting me. You’re going to get me in trouble.

  This time the phone stayed still after he hit send, and for the next few minutes, he stood next to the yogurt section anxiously waiting to see if Charlie would keep it up or if he’d reached the limits of his pranking abilities. Daniel had to hand it to him: as much trouble as he could be, Charlie was truly one of a kind.

  He quickly deleted the messages so that his parents wouldn’t see that he’d been texting, then grabbed a tub of yogurt without even looking at the label. If he got it wrong, his mom would just send him back anyway. The brief excitement of the text exchange had given him a burst of energy. He didn’t know how, but he was starting to think that maybe his summer could still turn around after all.

  10

  The next morning, Daniel woke up feeling refreshed. His alarm hadn’t even gone off, but he was alert enough to head straight for the shower instead of going back to bed. He’d mostly avoided looking in the mirror over the last several days, as his chest and shoulder were dominated by an angry, yellowish bruise from the seatbelt. But as he was undressing he caught a glimpse of himself out of the corner of his eye.

  There wasn’t any sign of the bruising at all. It seemed strange, but he’d always heard that bruises looked a lot worse right before they got better, like how it is supposed to get really dark just before the sun comes up. He’d also seen on some documentary that having a positive attitude could speed up the healing process. He figured it must have been some combination of the two. Considering the week he’d been having, he was due for some good luck.

  After a surprisingly ache-free shower—even when he was lathering up his shoulders, which had been especially sore since the accident—he got dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast. As usual, his father had already left for work, but his mother was at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. She’d
even set out a plate of eggs and toast for him, something she’d stopped doing since the accident as part of his parents’ efforts to make him more responsible.

  “Daniel!” his mother said, setting the paper on the table. “I was just about to come get you! You’re going to be late!”

  Daniel’s mind began to race. What had he forgotten to do? His father had put him on a pretty rigorous chore schedule to earn the money he needed to get re-enrolled in Driver’s Ed.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

  His mother looked at him like he’d lost his mind. It must have been a pretty big job. He hoped this didn’t result in another setback with his parents, especially now that things seemed to be getting a little bit better. He’d missed his mother’s scrambled eggs. His always came out runny.

  “You’re pulling my leg,” Daniel’s mother said. “It’s only Wednesday—you’re going to have to wait a little longer for the weekend to roll around. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about Driver’s Ed?”

  “Of course not,” Daniel said, confused. “That’s what this whole thing is about, isn’t it?”

  “Well then eat your breakfast and get going! If you miss too many classes, you won’t have enough instructional hours to start doing your behind the wheel lessons. Now hurry up and eat your eggs. I can drive you down to the school so that you’re not late for class.”

  The situation was so strange that Daniel didn’t know what else to do other than eat his eggs and toast, grab his backpack—which, to his surprise, had the familiar weight of his Four Wheels and You textbook—and head out to the garage with his mother. If it was a prank, she’d have to tell him at some point. But if his parents had somehow miraculously decided to let him go back to class, he wasn’t going to risk them changing their minds by questioning it. He just hoped that, if his mom was serious, Falcone would be willing to forgive him for missing half a week of classes.