Flipped

1.11

He crumpled on top of the car as it screeched to a stop. The driver swore and ran outside.

My dad bounced off the hood of the car and fell to the concrete.

I heard the door open behind me. My wide-eyed friends came out of the house. All of us were speechless.

I ran out into the street. My dad was in a crumpled heap. The driver joined me. "You know him?"

"Yeah," I said.

"He jumped right the hell in front of me! That the-"

"Yeah, I saw," I interrupted him in a tone that conveyed that I couldn't stand for him insulting my dad right now. It was such a sudden movement and I couldn't figure out why he did that. Could it have been my fault?

I got on my knees and started shaking him. "Dad?" I needed him to wake up.

He wasn't moving. Did he have a pulse? I checked and let me breathing slow was I realized that he did.

"I got 911," Mike called from the side of the road. There were a few other cars who were stopped on either side of the road already. 

My friends came out and stood around me as the ambulance arrived. I could feel my breath coming in short shallow gasps. What was happening?

Did I do this?

I was too distracted with my thoughts to notice the man standing right next to me.  "Hi there. What happened?"

I turned around. Some random guy off the street. "Why?"

He shrugged. "No reason. I just saw you and that guy talking out my living room window and it seemed to be getting intense. Then I saw him turn around and walk in front of a car."

I stared. "Yeah, it was really strange."

"I should tell you that I'm a police officer. Can you tell me what the conversation was about?"

"Yeah," I said. "That was my father who I haven't seen him for a very long time. He came back suddenly and I was shocked which led to us fighting. Then he randomly turned around and walked toward the car, I have no idea why."

He cocked his head. "You have no idea at all?"

I could feel panic starting to swell inside me. "What does that mean?" I asked him right back.

He waited a few seconds, looking at me dead in the eyes and nonchalantly said,"Nothing. You just seem quite relaxed about it, is all. Most people would be very freaked out. You're seeming a little more resigned."

I said nothing. What could I say?

"You're sure you don't have anything else to tell me?"

I shook my head.

"Okay," he said. "That's all for now." He took another look at the scene, turned around, and went back to towards his house.

I phoned my mom, gave her the short-form of what happened, then said goodbye to my friends. They were all pretty quiet. - I mean, what was there to say? Ava gave me a shallow, soft, fake smile. Mike avoided looking me in the eyes.

I went inside, straight up to my room and into my bed, in the corner with an attic overhang above. My dark blue walls. Stranger Things and Riverdale posters, a closet, some books from back when I was reading more in a corner. A mini-fridge under another shelf beside my bed. A shelf overhead with my speaker set. A few soccer balls in the corner. Everything was normal. I was just a normal kid.

Sure.

I flopped down on my bed. What in world had just happened? Had I just hurt my father? I couldn't have. That made no sense at all. Yet I had the pounding suspicion that somehow, I was responsible.

How was I responsible?

I was angry with him, and I had the right to be. He deserved to get hurt. And what if I had the ability to actually make my anger do something? 

It came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks.  I was responsible, somehow.  I knew that it was my fault.  And I would have to live with these decisions.  The consequences they caused, even if I couldn't explain how I had done it.

Because I knew what it's like to justify yourself. I knew that there was no limit to how far that could go. I saw that with my dad. Even towards the end, even as my mom found out, you could just tell by how held himself and how he lived. He never lost his self-assuredness. I know that even past the end, as he left us, even as he started over, he believed that he was doing the right thing. He believed that he was right.

"It was your mom. Your mom was cold."

"We've obviously somehow gotten powers of some kind. Anyone else would start celebrating."

"You were in shock, and she was an older and obviously wealthy woman. It's certainly not a big deal. At least, not this time."

Not this time.

Not this time.

I curled in a ball in my bed. I knew what was happening.

We were already justifying. We were already washing away our guilt and shoving down our emotions.

It had been a week and a half. And we were already losing our humanity.