20 Million Tiny Particles

28. Driving, II

The rain had only picked up while I'd been in the gym, so even racing out to my car didn't save me from getting moderately soaked. Whatever. It seemed appropriate.

I remembered once on the road that I had to take the long way to get back, but all the cars in town had the same idea, so traffic was just as backed up on the backroad as it might have been on the main drag.

The rain splashed onto the windshield with abandon, coming down in all directions and no direction at the same time. Though my eyes saw the drops falling recklessly onto the glass, my mind raced back with superspeed visions of the conversation in the gym.

The primary question remaining was this: would I ever see Sheridan again? Would she fade into the background of my life, a Facebook friend who wished me happy birthday once a year? A leftover memory of a weird and sad summer? A polaroid photo stuffed in a shoebox under my bed, never to be revisited until the inevitable once-every-five-years spring cleaning?

All the other questions circled around it, too, wasps buzzing endlessly in my ears as I turned up the radio to drown out the noise of my brain and the noise of the rain with fuzzy 90s country music.

Was she right? Was I the problem between the two of us? Had all this time when I thought I'd been protecting her -- protecting me -- by ignoring the drinking, by never speaking of the heavy things, had I been judging her? Had I been a bad friend? Had I been her friend at all?

But maybe I was judging, and maybe there was nothing wrong with that. Maybe I was right that Sheridan shouldn't have been popping stimulants and mixing energy drinks with vodka from sun-up to sun-down. There was such a thing as right and wrong, right? And I was in the right -- right?

My head was so crowded with thoughts that I didn't notice traffic was slowing down even further, now to a full stop. I saw the car in my rearview driving too fast for my comfort, and I eyed him with mounting anxiety in my stomach. Slow down, I screamed at the driver in my head.

I was so stuck in the thought of him hitting me that I didn't think to turn my gaze from the rearview to the windshield, and when I looked up, I realized I was too close to the car in front of me, a white SUV with an outline of a cartoon family taking up the bulk of the bottom of the back windshield.

"Shit," I said quickly, pressing my foot hard to the brake pedal.

I felt the brakes slide on the wet road.

"Shit," I said louder this time. But it was too late. The Jeep was skidding into the back bumper of the car.

I had never been in a car accident before. Strangely enough, I don't think any of us had until Mom's. I guess one big one is enough for a family's lifetime.

But now, apparently it was not.

What surprised me the most was how loud it was. Somehow I didn't think to imagine that two huge metal contraptions colliding would be quite so loud, but I suppose I'd never thought of it before. Never thought to inquire about it in driver's ed.

It's funny what you miss when you aren't asking about it.

So now, the sound of it seemed to take up the entire world around me. I smacked my palm against the radio dial to shut off the music. I saw the cars beside me begin to move forward, and I wondered for a brief second if I could do that too, just scoot out of here and disappear and pretend this never happened. But the car I'd hit was already pulling onto the shoulder. All I could do was follow.

"Shit," I kept saying, only to myself. I gripped the wheel, told myself the instructions I knew from some back library shelf in my brain. Pull to the side, put on your hazards. God, it was raining so hard now. I didn't even have an umbrella.