The Upside

Before.

    I'd spent the 4 months that I'd lived in my grandmother's hometown of Georgetown cleaning  up the house she had lived in before dying.
    I knew nothing about Nora Mercer other than that she was my father's mother. She'd never come to visit us although we lived only a couple of hours away. They'd never said why. It was a big family secret, but only for me. My uncles both knew and their wives.
    All I'd been told was that they didn't want to sour my view of my grandmother. But it was already soured by her lack of interest in knowing me. I would get cards with well wishes stocked with 20 dollar bills, which I'd saved up and helped me to buy my first car. Said car was long destroyed after a car accident I'd gotten into.
    Now I was living in her house. The house of a stranger. I'd pieced together pieces of her life over the past 4 months and knew three things.
    One: She'd had Dad at a young age. His childhood bedroom still existed here in the house, not changed since he was a teenager. Two: She never married. Her bright pink bedroom was evidence of this. It was clean and feminine. My father's father had been a rugged manly man. Down to the fishing obsession. There were no signs of this here. Three: She loved color. Her pink room was paired with a similarly bright bathroom. Bright yellow kitchen, orange living room...
    I was sitting in that  same orange living room the  day  my  life changed . I had work today at a bookstore downtown. I liked working there. The owner was a woman who was a little older than my mom. She was kind and let me borrow books, a perk of working there.
    The clock on the wall chimed, and I was able to put my shoes on quickly and go out into the rain. Waiting for me was Nora's baby blue Mustang.
    I ran over to it, getting inside before I could get soacked to the bone. I started the engine and peeled out of the lot, heading to work.
    The radio played quietly on a local radio station. I sang along quietly to a random song while I drove the 15 minutes to town.
    It was a quick and painless drive.
    I got out after parking my car in the special employee lot. It was tucked behind the cluster of businesses downtown.
    I emerged, walking around the buildings till I was facing the road. That was when I saw him. He stood beside a guy I recognized. Jason, my boss's youngest son. They were laughing on the sidewalk right in front of the shop. I was approaching them, my mouth forming Jason's name when I heard the screech and the popping of metal.
     It was pretty disjointed, what I was seeing. A bus was coming the 5 trees down the busy downtown street. People were screaming and jumping out of the way.
    I only knew that the bus was a 30-ton death machine coming right for Jason and the stranger. My body reacted before my brain did. I ran towards them, pushing Jason into the stranger right as the bus came barreling their way next.
    The bus hit me, but that's the last thing I registered before it all went black.