Beneath the muddy water of Silver lake near the town of Baker Pennsylvania, where my mom and her ex-husband live. Where I lived, grew up, and where I died. I drowned in the middle of winter, in the dead of night with my little sister, who would never shut up.
It turns out i was right all along, night is horrifying. But in the winter its worse, it was cold and dark and wet and I scremed until my lungs filled and burned with the icy sea water.
My mother wasn't always divorced. She was married for 18 years. Happily, even. But then, we didn't know about the things my dad would do.
I think sometimes maybe I was asking for this in my first and only 16 years of life. Oh, wait, no i wasn't.
But here's how it happened.
My dad and I were driving back into town. If I had known then what was coming. I would have jumped out, right there from the moving car. But I didn't, so I didn't. Soon we came to an accident. It was bad. There were police and ambulances and fire trucks. And all I could think about was how I knew that car. I had seen it before, in my garage.
My brother had always loved his 1967 Chevy Impala. He would still love it now, even though the driver door was gone and the whole front end had slammed into one of the biggest oak trees this side of the mississippi. He would have just looked at it and said, "I can fix this." But you can't fix a car when you're dead.
When we got to the scene my brothers body was already gone. Carried away in a black zipper bag. Loaded into a metal drawer, waiting for us to come tell the police it was him, as if there would be any doubt. He had been anonouced dead on impact. My dad and I left the side of the highway not 15 minutes after we arived, would you want to stay?
When we got home it was 11:30. The police were pulling away, "that means mom already knows." dad had muttered to himself. We walked inside and the the sobs that I had been holding inside of me came pouring out. And to this moment in my short lived life I still belived that my dad could rule a kingdom, so I colapsed onto his chest and wept. This woke my baby sister Alexis. There's no way she will go back to sleep at this point. "The baby always falls asleep next to brother Jake!" my mom would always say. But the only thing i could think was, You're going to have to buck up darling because he's not coming back.
Still I never found out why my dad killed me. Maybe bacause she wouldnt sleep. She did come down into the water in my arms after all. Screaming all the way with me.
Dad had brought us out to the peer to see if it would quiet Alexis. We got to the end and he just pushed us over the edge. It worked though. Baby stoped crying.
