Luck
A Practical Mind by C.M. (March Winner)
I don’t believe in happy endings,
The ones written in fairy tales,
The ones which are fated between the stars.
When they are spoken,
Told from parchment and ink,
There is always a part missing.
Something that was lost in the pages.
A forgotten thought never recounted for when it was retold.
How could one go from dying,
To living happily ever after?
It is no wonder that the beginnings,
The middles.
The almosts,
Are never remembered.
It is always the ending of a story that is engrained,
The part which is rotted into the minds of the young,
The words when written giving false hope to the ones before.
It isn’t a true love’s kiss that brought the princess out of her slumber,
Or the glass slipper that perfectly fit the young woman’s foot.
It was the author.
The writer of these stories,
The one who made it seem all was possible,
The one who made it seem like luck was real.
To put faith in such a scheme would be deadly,
A fatal mistake.
When believing something.
You are vulnerable.
It is when you make your decision known,
When you are just so sure it is true,
Luck sweeps in,
Greedy hands stealing all reason from our bodies.
It is one of the things Luck grips dearly,
The human’s ability of willpower. Instead,
It twists our minds into a false reality,
Where we believe anything is possible.
To be practical,
To be realistic.
I repeat again,
Dear readers,
I don’t believe in happy endings.
The lucky endings.
But I ask you the same question before we part.
Do you?
C. M.
The Day Scars Became a Lucky Thing by Hannah Dyer
The day that I took an airbag to the face was the day that I realized there’s more than one side of luck.
My brother Tre screamed profanities as my 2002 Pontiac Grand Am car sweltered with smoke. It was 2:35 p.m. on February 22nd as the reality of the car accident began to burn my face. I looked to the backseat where my youngest brother Chase was disorientingly clutching his stomach.
“Hannah, I think we need to get out of here, the car is smoking.” Tre calmly said. I looked to the front of my car where fumes of smoke were now seeping out of the busted exterior. My arms were still locked onto the steering wheel, the guilt was now starting to shadow my mind. It didn’t help that I opened my door to the older woman’s totaled car facing towards where I sat. As I went to get out, my foot hooked onto the seatbelt, shoving me onto the wet street.
I took in the scene of glass shards and the dismantled car before me for a moment. It’s just my luck, isn’t it? I thought, of course it happened to us, the one thing you think won’t happen to you really did.
In that moment, I knew I had to, so I picked myself up off the ground and back into the Pontiac. I helped pull my little brother out of the car and sat him down on the curb of County Line Road. His eyes were unfocused as I laid him down on the ground, moving his curly hair out his face. And so, the three of us waited, seated on the side of the road for 10 minutes before my parents were able to see us.
What felt like hours passed by in a matter of minutes. We ended up at home 45 minutes later, the medics said we were all okay to do so, hardly checking any of us over. At most, they pointed out seat belt marks on Chase’s stomach and chest, nothing more. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived home, Chase passed out as he stumbled into the door. It was the first time I ever had to dial the numbers 9-1-1 consecutively next to each other. And soon after, I and my two other siblings were left alone as our mom took a drive in an ambulance with our dad following closely behind.
It’s just my luck, isn’t it? I thought again, still shaking an entire hour after the accident. Of course it happened to us, and of course my little brother got it the worst.
My family had been here before though, and we weren’t so lucky the first time around. In 1993, a recent William Tennent graduate, Jesse Dyer, lost his life at 19 years old in a car accident reminiscent of mine. That’s what scared everyone in my family the most, losing more kids to negligent drivers.
And so, I sat alone in my room not knowing what to do next, reflecting and blaming myself for everything that had happened in the previous hours. But soon enough, one phone call to my Aunt gathered a whole crowd of people into my dining room bearing gifts of food, reassurance, and comfort. Pat drove all the way home from school, and showed up at my doorstep with snacks and flowers. Shannon came back with two pies of pizza. Aunt Bonnie barged into my room with a hug, and Uncle Vince with his jokes. Katrina later with her goofy sense of humor. My sister Cassidy keeping everything together for not just Tre and me, but everyone at that table.
A short time later, we heard the news that Chase was sent to surgery as soon as he arrived at Abington hospital, he wouldn’t have made it to CHOP on time. It was the only way they were able to find out that he was having internal bleeding from two punctured holes in his small intestine. It was caused by the only thing able to keep him safe in the car, his seatbelt.
It was a lot to bare in such a small amount of time. And of course, with seeing all of these people who came telling the story of the accident over and over and over again. I thought to myself again, it really is just my luck, isn’t it? Having to relive the accident like that without the comfort of my parents or little brother was just another blow that I had to endure.
But oddly enough, having all of those people around my siblings and I, joking with us, making us feel better, offering us help made me realize that I am somehow lucky through all of this. The events leading up to me sitting at the dining room table with the people in my life who cared enough to take a drive over to see us gave me that insight that maybe things aren’t so bad. I had already contemplated all the what-ifs. Yes, the three of us had to experience the scary and traumatizing events, but that day, there could’ve been another casualty similar to my Uncle, Jesse Dyer. And therefore I felt lucky. Lucky to hear Chase was at the best place possible for him to be at in that moment. Happy to know that in the midst of it, we were all going to come home safe from the accident. Appreciative of the support from everyone around me. And fortunate to know that I would still get to see Tre and Chase graduate in the future, that the accident didn’t ensue anything permanent and irreversible.
Chase surprised us by coming home a week and a half after being hospitalized. The nurses as well as everyone around me said it’d be a long road to recovery, but Chase being Chase defied those odds. He even went back to school that Monday after he returned home. I still get to wake up to him and his boombox every morning, blaring his cassettes. Nothing’s changed.
It’s been three weeks since the accident, and by the time most people will read this, it’ll have been a month. But in the short time since then, I’ve embraced the fact that what happened, happened. It really was just my luck to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Despite that, I’m lucky to go on with my life, with everyone still intact, stitches, scars and all.