Photo by Lai Man Nung on Unsplashjust like in that drunk driving awareness ad that used to play on TV when you were little. The one with the young couple getting home from a club late at night, and the boyfriend’s car careening off a bridge, and the house music from his stereo cutting to deafening silence at the end.
The day the news gets out, you sit down with the adults for Sunday lunch, and all everyone can say for the first half hour is stuff like no wonder or he must have been high or you were such good friends. When the conversation turns to the jobs your older brother’s not applying for, you catch your mother scanning your face for clues that you’ve been crying. But you haven’t cried; you’re not sure you’ll cry; and so what if you never did?
On the bus back from school on Monday afternoon, you notice someone planted a wooden cross at the end of the bridge. The flowers keep coming for a week. One evening, as dark begins to fall, you walk the long stretch of road with no sidewalk or streetlamps, listening for the whoosh of speeding cars behind you. You linger a while next to the chrysanthemums in florists' wraps, the lilies plucked from neighbours' yards, and the lonely sunflower in a pot, battered by days of unrelenting rain. You look at the plastic-wrapped photo of the girl who made sure you always sat alone at lunch and whisper to her: you weren’t meant for this. It feels right, but strange, like offering up something you never received. You wish you were old enough for driving lessons; you wish for everything that happens in your life to be your own doing.
