Read Through the Windshield Glass Online
Authors: Kristen Day
Through the Windshield Glass
Through
the Windshield Glass
Kristen
Day
Text
Copyright © Kristen M Day
All
Rights Reserved
To
Hannah:
For
being my Maria
Contents
I died early on
a Monday morning.
I was named
Alice Beth Patterson. That was the name on my birth certificate, my driver's
license; and consequently, my headstone and death certificate.
It was late,
dark, and my timing at an intersection was poor. James, my
older brother, told me the newspapers called my passing 'A
tragic waste of youth', and 'the last act of a dying race of good
Samaritans'. If I'd died while sneaking out in the same way, I still would have
been called a waste of youth and my parents would have been heralded and pitied
for valiantly trying to mentor a struggling teen.
It's funny the
things you remember about your own death. I've talked to some people who
remember the exact time, a certain smell not associated with their demise, a
long forgotten memory that suddenly came to mind. I remember how my hands
looked on the steering wheel of my car. Frigid, clammy, and stark white against
the black of the leather wheel; my hands weren’t shaking, but I was burning up
in the cool of the night.
The message
tone on my phone went off, shocking me out of a terrible nightmare. I rolled my
eyes and laid back on my pillow again trying to chase off the dream and return
my breathing to normal, while silently cursing whatever drunk had accidentally
texted me about how wasted he or she was.
I reached over
to my nightstand to turn my phone off so that I would be blissfully unaware of
any continued texts when I realized the text was actually from my best friend,
Maria.
Maria was
outgoing, ridiculously attractive and the only person from kindergarten I still
liked. We'd been through everything together, but it was still hard not to hate
her for being so perfect. I figured her text was probably to let me know how
her date had gone the night before. That was typical of Maria, she didn't mean
to rub in how attractive and dateable she was, but I wished for her to try
harder sometimes. Nature had been kind to her, and because of that, male nature
could not resist her.
Sighing, I
opened the text just to make sure she wasn't in some kind of trouble or hiding
in the tree outside my window, waiting for me to let her in as sometimes
happened after a particularly horrible date.
My
mom needs me. I'm going to go be with her, I'm sorry.
When you ride a
roller coaster you feel an intense amount of anticipation as you slowly begin
to move forward; followed suddenly by a jolt of adrenaline and terror as
you shoot to the apex of the track before hurtling towards the earth at a death
defying angle. That's how it felt reading that text, except in this instance I
didn't stop safely at my original starting point. My terror kept shooting
upward the longer I stared at my illuminated phone screen.
I kicked the
sheets off and rolled out of bed, landing in a heap on the floor, all desire to
sleep gone. I scrambled around on my dresser for my car keys while trying to
pull a t-shirt over my tank top. I slipped on a pair of flip-flops by my door
and dashed out of my room, down the stairs, and out the front door. I knew my
parents would be terrified and wonder where I'd gone. They'd probably even call
the cops, but I didn't care about the trouble I would be in when they found me
missing from my bed. Mrs. Cole had committed suicide over a year ago, either
Maria was making a very macabre trip to the graveyard, or… I didn’t want to
think about the alternative.
I sped through
an intersection and down a side road that led to Maria's house, horror building
all the way. I barely took time to put the car in park before I was rushing
into Maria’s house; as usual her door was unlocked. I met no one as I bolted up
the stairs two at a time and flung open the door to Maria’s room.
Maria turned to
face me with a sad look on her face, her father’s 9mm already against her
chest. Her wild red hair stuck out from her face at odd angles, as though it
too were terrified of what was about to happen. She was wearing a white
sundress, looking placid, emotionless.
“Maria, don’t!”
I screamed, "You don't have to do this, your mom doesn't need you!"
A single tear
slid down Maria’s cheek, magnifying each freckle in its path for just a moment.
It looked as though she were about to put the gun down, the muscles in her arm
relaxed, but then something changed in her eyes. Her pupils grew so wide her
normally deep green eyes were completely black and her resolve stiffened again.
“I’m sorry,”
Maria whispered.
Gun to
chest and chest to gun
The trigger
is pulled
Her life is
done.
My ears rang
from the sound; the last split second of Maria’s life dancing merrily in the
silence around me, laughing at my agony. Maria’s blood echoed from the whole in
her chest, spraying me lightly and leaving bright red freckles scattered across
my face. She hung there for a moment, suspended between life and death, like an
angel falling from heaven, graceful even in death. Red moved across the white
of her dress, spread down her side and collected in a languid pool on the wood
floor next to her.
“Maria!” I
screamed. I rushed to her and pressed my hands against her chest, I didn’t know
what else to do. Someone must have called 911 because sometime in the
chaos Maria’s father appeared in the doorway with paramedics nearby.
Eventually, my position over Maria’s body was taken over by gloved
hands while someone else led me out of the pink-walled room. Even though I
could hear my replacement trying to save Maria, I knew she was gone. My sight
was stippled with the image of Maria’s blood flying around her.
Despite my
shock, I knew I looked like someone straight out of a horror movie, I felt like
it too. My hair was still ratted and sleep mussed, I probably had bags and
mascara smears under my eyes, all that combined with my carefully coordinated
outfit, terrified demeanor, and blood-soaked hands I probably looked half
crazed. My appearance though, was nothing compared to Richard Cole’s, Maria’s father.
Dressed in a gray t-shirt and long navy pajama pants, he was standing just
inside the door, watching with a lost expression as the paramedics tried to
bring Maria back. Mr. Cole didn't look as bedraggled as me, but he was broken;
the shattered pieces of his life hadn't quite reassembled from the devastating
death of his wife. You could see it in every wrinkle and dimple on his face. He
had been stripped of emotion and stood before us, raw and ghost-like, unsure if
he could even continue breathing. The shock of his wife’s suicide crumbled the
fragile remains of the man who used to be the definition of 'put together',
Maria’s had kicked the fragments into the air and laughed in the face of the
stony man.
I, along with
Maria's twin brothers, had been escorted downstairs so that we were out of the
way. We watched quietly as a stretcher was rushed up to the bedroom and then
held back tears as the same stretcher, occupied now by a black body
bag, slowly descended the stairs in the hands of tired EMTs. Two quiet sobs
burst forth from the boys’ mouth, but they stifled their anguish, held each
other, watched, and listened.
“We did
everything we could,” a woman paramedic told Mr. Cole. She wouldn’t look at the
boys; it would have killed her to see Hunter and Trevor staring at the cocoon
holding their sister. It seemed like a reverse metamorphosis; Maria, a
butterfly in her own right, had been reduced to a caterpillar by some unknown
force.
“Wait!” I cried
desperately to the paramedics who were wheeling Maria out the door. They
stopped and allowed me, with Mr. Cole’s nodded consent, to unzip the body bag.
Maria’s
familiar features filled my gaze. Her vibrant green eyes that had depicted love
so often to so many, her mouth that had laughed more heartily than any, and her
crooked nose, her only imperfection that somehow made her more perfect, were
all still for the first time since I’d known Maria. There was nothing left of
the radiant soul that had once inhabited this body, it was an empty house,
devoid of life, and mercifully devoid of feeling. It was eerie, but I still
couldn't believe it was Maria. This person was too empty, too quiet to be the
girl I knew.