ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏʏ ᴀɢᴀɪɴsᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ

chapter 1 #session 1

There's things that sometimes happens in your brain when you're the only survive of horrific accident .Part of you is happy because you're alive , but the rest of you is devastated. Then the sad part beats up the happy part until nothing is left , until all you feel is terrible sorrow for the people who didn't make it . And guilt . Guilt because you know you're not any better than those who died .

This is what my therapist says , anyway. Since I don't feel like talking , she's talking for both if us . I hate people like that , people who think they know what you need to hear , people who think they can read your mind , anticipate your responses . "We're not all the same ," I want to shout . But I don't, because if I talk , then she wins . And i have lost enough already.

"Tell me about the car accident. "Dr.sally leans toward me.

I glance down my lap . She doesn't need me to tell her about that . She spent almost an hour " just chatting " with my mom . I'm sure she filled her in on the gory details .

It happened almost five years ago , when I was eleven . My dad , uncle Kieran, my sister casmin, and I were heading home from a day if rock climbing at a park outside of San Luis Obispo , where I grew up .

Casmin and I were fighting about this boy who lived down the street when I saw the giant truck veer dangerously into our lane . Then driver must have lost control of his rig as he navigated the twisting mountain road.

Dad tried to swerve onto the shoulder at the last second , but we were driving along the side of a hill and there was just a few feet of concrete and a flimsy guard rail. The back of the truck clipped us , sending both vehicles straight through the gruadrail and down the incline . Our car flipped end over end , and landed in a rocky ravine . Dad , uncle Kieran and casmin were dead before the paramedics could get to us .

I didn't even get hurt.

I was still in the ER when the newspaper people found me . They called me the miracle kid . I'll never forget how they buzzed around , asking prying questions about what I remembered and why j thought I got spared . I had just lost three members of my family , these people wanted to talk about the luck of the Irish.

My mom tried to shield me from the reporters , but eventually she gave up and posed me for a few pictures so they would go away . She said focusing on how I was alive would help everyone cope with losing my dad and uncle , two of the town's most decorated firefighters . It didn't help me cope ; all I could think was brag I should have been nicer to casmin. She was just teasing me . How can something feel so crucial in that moment and then seem completely trivial after the impact ?

"Mason?" Dr sally manages to sound both authoritative and concerned .

I shake my head . Reaching up , I pull the ponytail holder from around my mini ponytail . I gather my think curly hair in my hands and twist it tighter and tighter until ny eyes start to water. I tied it up and secure it again.

Dr sally taps a couple of sentences into her tablet computer. I'm not close enough to read what they said . " what about the roller coaster?" She asks.

Right. The next year, when I was twelve , a roller coaster car I was riding in careened off the tracks and crashed to the ground at a nearby amusement part. That accident wasnt quite serious - we were at the bottom of the hill when it happened, and at least no one died - but every single passenger in our car had serious injuries , except for me . My best friend at the time broke both legs , another friend ended up needing plastic surgery because he landed on his face . I walked away with a couple of scratches that didn't even require stitches. No one called me a miracle kid that time , but the crazy lady who begs for change at the gas station called me a witch.