Airborne. The car flew, turning over itself. Shell-shocked bodies rocked side to side, back and forth, slamming repeatedly against the interior, a deadly reminiscence of a theme park ride.
Then…it was over.
Sudden stillness shook the air, drowning out all else. The world was upside-down. Shattered glass littered the ceiling and the ground outside. Freezing winter air flooded the shell of the car, dispelling the heat of seconds before.
Alive.
Black ice. That’s what Dad said later. The car hit it and skidded off the road, flipping over several times before finally landing on its top eighty feet away. The skis lay strewn back near the highway, their remarkably straight forms contrasting mockingly with the mess of broken glass and distorted metal.
Are you ok? Are you hurt? Is everyone alright? How can we help? They asked it slow, or very fast, wary of the answers. Their eyes widened as they took in the messy remains of the vehicle, flicking quickly between the battered shell, the strewn glass, the skis, coming to land on the children’s snow pants that lay splayed, unmoving on the hard, cold ground. They saw it happen. Or maybe they saw the car. It didn’t matter. Either way, they were witnesses.
I was not.
It was almost Christmas. Brightly colored lights lent their sparkling cheer to the houses lining the road, as Mom drove us towards the mall, my little sister in the back seat with me. The cool window pressed against my nose, I smiled out at the holiday cheer, my eyes jumping quickly from one house to the next, lighting on glowing deer, inflatable Santas, illuminated bushes and trees. The mall, too, twinkled with lights and decorations, a new tree around each corner. I tailed Mom, skipping along behind as we went from one store to the next. From time to time, I paused to admire the new red bow in my hair in the glass of a nearby storefront.
A sharp ringing, a voice, muffled, drifting out through the speckled holes at the base of the phone. I stood silently peering up at Mom, whose forehead had creased and lips had pursed, whose eyes bored a hole in the floor, whose body held rigid, braced against the words. My fingers stretched out to her, latching onto her arm, tugging her towards me, while my voice called her back to us. The quiet click of the receiver, the angry snarl of the engine, the heavy silence.
Through the darkness, we made our way, our glaring headlights yellowing the air and road before us, Mom’s white-knuckled hands clenched on the steering wheel. The high-pitched screech of skidding tires, the colossal bang of metal on pavement, replayed over and over again in my head, sharp against the fog clouding my mind. My shoulders gradually slumped, my head lolled, and my body shifted to lie curled on the seat. When I finally drifted off, the sound continued. So did the fog.
I knew they lay just a few feet beyond my reach, swallowed by the white that had consumed all but my own feet buried beneath the thick padding and plastic of my ski boots. I felt the muscles in my legs tense as I alternately pushed one against the ground, then the other, steadily making my way forward through the cloud. Still no one. My eyes continued to strain against the fog, summoning tears in their effort to see farther than my skis. Nothing punctured the never-ending white. The cold bit angrily at my frozen cheeks as my body arched forward against the wind, harder now as I neared the edge. I had to reach them before they went over. Just a few feet farther…
I awoke to the cold. It wafted in through the sliding door, which had been opened to admit my brothers. They stood huddled against the side of the car, their backs to the wind. I raised my head, twisting it left and right as my eyes sought answers, the fog of sleep still thick throughout my mind. Dad and Uncle George were climbing in on the other side, rigid limbs slowly bringing them into the car, solemn faces muttering quiet words to Mom in the driver’s seat. My hungry eyes hurried to soak it all in, moving anxiously from one to the next as I tried to absorb everything, pausing only to linger over each of their faces.
I saw it before we left. The mess of dented metal and shattered glass, the upside-down shell, all eighty feet off the road where the car had rolled in those few moments during which the crash had taken place.Under the shroud of darkness, I saw the scene as it would have been, bodies strewn throughout the wreckage, trapped behind the airbags, bleeding on the glass, lying in the legs of those snow pants, unmoving on the hard, cold ground. It was there in the eyes of the witnesses, in the lines on Mom’s forehead, her pursed lips, her white-knuckled hands, in the voices of my family as they said that word over and over again: totaled. I knew they saw it too.