Our Little Deadly Secret

I Don't Know You Anymore

I've been told I was lucky I survived. Even though I had no seatbelt on and was ejected from the car through the windshield. I spent three weeks in the hospital with my left arm broken in four different places, a massive concussion that caused them to have to drill into my skull to drain the internal bleeding, and a severely sprained right foot. They said my saving grace was that I had apparently used Ryan as a landing pad. The driver at fault? He died upon impact when we got t-boned by a semi-truck that was on its way to the local grocery store. He, too was ejected out of his vehicle, but had died swiftly, according to the doctors who performed the autopsy. Funny thing, too, was they found some alcohol in his system. Apparently, he was slightly impaired when he got behind the wheel. Why? We will never know. I never noticed either. So as I sat in my wheelchair at his funeral, watching them lower the casket into the ground a month after everything happened, I had no tears to shed. I hadn't had any when I found out what had happened when I came to in the ICU. My parents were there with Kassidy. Maac was nowhere to be found. But I also wasn't ready to face him yet. I was mad at him. But also mad at myself. And I was mad at the driver responsible for my 6 month recovery process. The whole class came out to not only support me, but to pay respect to the deceased. Why they would do that? I have no clue. He was the reason I ended up in this mess. I can't walk for another three weeks since the doctors don't want me to put too much weight on my foot, so it sat in a boot that I couldn't even use. My arm will take 6 months to heal, with the cast coming off possibly in 4 months and 2 months of physical therapy. And my concussion? I now have to wear sunglasses inside and out. Noises bother me. I have to tourment poor Kassidy with keeping the bedroom we shared as dark as possible. She's been very understanding, but it's also not fair to her.

Everyone started to make their way to their cars while I stayed with Kass, Maria, Eliza, Will, Danny, and Ryan's parents. I slowly turned my head over to the tombstone that sat at the edge of the plot: Ryan Weston. Son, brother, and forever our guardian angel. I wanted to throw up.

I didn't dare look at his parents. My parents were already suing them for my medical bills and duress from everything that happened that Halloween night. And thanks to their son, I now had another reason to hate the Halloween season. I was lucky enough to be sent home the day before thanksgiving. But it was hard knowing that we couldn't have a proper meal that afternoon on thanksgiving since we were just starting to figure out how I could get myself around the house independently without having to worry about if I was going to fall. I started using a crutch, which seemed to help. Left one on the main floor, one on the second floor, and said a hail mary when I have to move around in the bedroom. My friends, thankfully, came to my rescue when they would visit, helping get from one spot to another. And they would come visit me in my room during my hospital stay to catch me up on my missed schoolwork.

I now had PTSD just having to sit in the front seat of any car, and if I even had to get into a truck in general, I would shut down. I was crying, kicking, and screaming at first, but then get angry and take it out on whomever I was with for the fear Ryan left me with. It finally took us three days after getting home with no tranquilizers to calm me down to figure out that if I was laying down in the back seat and looking up at the ceiling of the car, it made it much easier to get to places. Especially school. Thankfully, William still had his minivan that his parents let us use, so we all started carpooling to school together. Kass and I were always the last one to get picked up, but they would leave us the back row so I could sprawl out as much as I needed. And we would all chip in for the gas in the car. And if the car needed anything fixed, we were more than happy to help. Including my parents.

And to add the cherry on top, Noah found out about everything. He came knocking at the front door two days after I was discharged. Even after everything he had done, he still cared about me. According to him, and what he told my father while I was on my way home with my mother from a doctor's appointment that day, my accident pretty much made national news in state and all throughout the state next door. I shouldn't have been surprised since we were apparently three miles away from the Connecticut border when Ryan put the car in the path of the semi. So when it played in the common room of his college dorm, he apparently had a hunch that it was me. But it was not like he could text me to find out since he was still blocked. So he did the next best thing, and that was to reach out to Eliza and Maria. They were, at the time, clueless about what was going on. It was not until that Monday when everyone was back at school where everyone was called over for an emergency church service where not only did the principal inform everyone of Ryan's death, but also of my critical condition at the time. From there, they confirmed with him that his hunch was right.