Some say it would have been different if they hadn’t been on that road at one in the morning. Well, everyone says it that way because that was where we lost them. If they hadn’t been there, at that moment, on that road, we would still have them, right?
Some say he was driving too fast…some blame the fact that they weren’t wearing seatbelts…some say they were just being teenagers and doing the same stupid shit that every one of us has done at some point in our lives…and some say that’s what killed them.
She wore a seatbelt…they did not. Speculation abounds; the driver, he was pronounced gone already, but the other passenger…there’s a lot going around about him. That he’s gone, that he’s on life support that he’s brain dead and they’re going to pull the plug, but no one really knows what to believe. Everyone’s fighting everyone when it’s not their place to do so. There’s another family who is grieving for certain…and people are getting angry at each other because such-and-such says teen number two is gone and so-and-so argues vehemently that he’s not, that he’s holding on.
The driver wasn’t always who he was yesterday. He was always around the wrong people, often said offensive things—though equally as often in jest—but was genuinely a nice person. His life was turning around; he was getting better. And then he is gone, just like that. Unless it’s on a home video, or in a memory or a photograph, no one will hear him laugh, see him smile, or cry, or see the way his eyes lit up when he was excited about something.
And that seems the hardest part of all.
Teen number two was always just as reckless as the driver, and his life hangs in the balance. He’s critically injured and no one knows for sure how bad. He’s a bit of a player, can be a bit of a jerk, but deep down he, too, has a good heart. And the thought that another family may yet be left grieving from the events of a lonely road at one in the morning tears one apart at the very seams.
There are so many prayers for him that it makes one pray they’ll be answered, that he hasn’t already gone.
And then there’s the only girl, teen number three. The only one who wore a seatbelt, the only one who seems likely to survive. She’s the girlfriend of teen number two, and one may not know much more than that but hopes for her sake, and for her family and all her friends, that she will be all right, and that he’ll come out, too.
But there is no guarantee, and life is a fickle thing.
