3657

C-c-crash! - Danny

Fifteen minutes after lunch, we saw a moose. And the rest of it's entire freaking family.

Not by the highway, or at the edge of the highway.

Right in the middle. Not even giving a shit that they might kill us.

And we were never going to make it around them all. By the time we realized this, we were too close. If we didn't brake, we get hit with multiple moose. If we brake, we get rear ended by a car behind us.

“Duck!” I yelled. The girls looked up, eyes wide for a moment. Then they ducked. I did, too. Zach didn't take his eyes off the road.

“ZACH!” I shouted.

His phone started ringing, Reed's ring. He ignored it all. And he didn't stop driving.

Six hundred feet. Five. Four. Three -

Zach turned the wheel like mad, shooting us into a different lane in not even a few seconds. The car spun and spun in the same place. Allie screamed. I almost puked. Zach didn't make a sound.  No mooses were harmed in the terror of that moment.

We eventually stopped spinning, and got out of the car. Another car had crashed, the one that had been behind us. It had tried to brake, but the mooses started running so it swerved. All the other cars were okay, though. Including ours. There weren't any scratches or anything, really. It looked fine. but Zach ducked underneath it to check, anyways.

The girls held onto me for dear life as we talked to the other drivers, most of whom had gotten out to asses the damage. Some called the police. Some were checking others for injuries. A woman who said she worked as a nurse checked us out, and then Zach got out from underneath the car. We all looked to him.

“Looks fine.” He said. “Really, it's perfect. I have no idea how it didn't, like, blow up. I was expecting it to blow up.”

“Why?!” Meg asked.

“I dunno, spins like that...”

But the only damage our car had done - to itself or anything else - was leave some impressive tire marks on the road. It was kind of terrifying to look at.

Just then, ambulances and police cars started showing up. The moose were almost all gone, and none seemed to be hurt, but some animal specialists checked them out anyways.

For a long time, a police officer talked to us. He seemed very interested in Zach's last minute save, and asked us every question possible about what happened. We tried to answer as best we could, but we just wanted to crawl under a rock. Meanwhile, traffic was becoming horrible.

Eventually, we got back on the road, half in shock and half exhilarated. Zach elected to take a break from driving, so Allie drove us for the rest of the afternoon. We tried to dispel the freaked-out mood by playing music. Not our typical country, either - the kind of bubblegum pop on the local teen station.  We all pretended to like it, and we rocked out hard.

We drove for about five hours. Meg wrote. I navigated. Allie drove. Zach tried to sleep. We all couldn't help but think of how we impossibly survived the deadly clan of moose.

We ended up in a town about eight hours from Seattle. Eight hours... it was thrilling to think how close we were. By this time tomorrow, we would be done. We'd be at the Alexis Hotel, right near downtown Seattle. I had no idea how much the hotel cost, because our parents refused to have us pay for it. We paid for the trip. They paid for the hotels we stayed at and concert. that was the deal. I was afraid the Alexis was expensive though, being in the heart of the city

Over a somewhat proper dinner in our current hotel's dining room, I mentioned this.

“Wow.” Allie whispered. “Eight hours.”

“Unless we meet another tribe of mooses.” Zach said drily. “I hate mooses now. Seriously. Freaking. Hate them.”

“That's fine, Zach.” Meg said. “You saved us from a really, really bad crash.”

“Thank God you have a vague understanding of cars.” I agreed.

“I just want to go to bed. I think I'm gonna go do that now, actually. See y'all tomorrow.” And Zach got up and left. and then allie said she wanted to check out the library here, so it was just me and Meg. And I liked that. We didn't really talk, just ate our dessert.

“Hey,” I said after a while, “do you know how they make Holy Water holy?”

“Don't they, like bless it?”

I pretended to look shocked. “No, of course not. They just boil the hell out of it.”

Meg laughed. It was nice to hear that sound, particularly after yesterday. I took her hand across the table.

“I think there's an arcade here. Want to check?” I grinned, probably obscenely.

“Okay!” And that's the best part about Meg. She doesn't think my stupid goofy smiles are goofy.

We put away our dishes and trash. Then, holding hands, we search every inch of the hotel for an hour (at least every inch we're allowed to go) for the arcade. It turns out to be in a back corner, about the size of two closets together. We squeezed into the small game room and played old, run down games for twenty minutes until a guy came and told us to leave.

We hung around the hotel, going from lobby to library to our room, as different people told us that each room was shutting for the night. Finally, there was nowhere to go but the room. We came in to find Allie reading and Zach crashed on the couch. I fell onto the cot in the first room, and Meg went into the bedroom with Alls. The girls went to the bedroom, and I fell dead asleep.

“Danny. Wake up.” I swatted the face in front of mine.

“Zaaaaaach. Whaaaaaat.” I groaned, and turned over on the cot.

“I can't sleep.”

“You were sleeping fine a while ago.” I resign myself to sitting up. “What time is it?”

“Two forty-two.”

“In the morning?”

Zach nods.

“Let me go to sleep. Read or something.”

“But -”

“No way. I'm sleeping.”

“But -”

“Night.” I laid down again and tried sleeping.

There were a few “Oh, come on's,” but I didn't get up. Finally, Zach went to bed again, and so did I. I needed sleep for the day ahead of me.

Seattle.