story time
I've been bouncing around an idea of either writing a full-fledge story or just writing out some memoir-type deals. I've just been in a writing mood. Anyways, I wrote something today, but I don't know how I feel about it. I like parts of it a lot, but I feel like my ending is super weak. Egh. Anyways, if anyone wants to give me feedback, go for it.
Sirens in my town were so unusual that they would halt whatever activity was going on. TVs were turned off, forks dropped on plates as everyone rushed to their windows or porches. I remember people yelling if they were “amblance sigh-reens” or “farh injin” ones as they waited on the porches. I remember being left at the living room table on my birthday, it was my ninth or tenth one I think, as my parents clamored to the porch. There were ambulance sirens as well as fire engines this time, cutting a sizzling sound into the air as they drove through the rain-soaked streets. Neighbors across the way craned their necks to see what direction they were taking. It had certainly been a car wreck with such conditions.
My parents and several other neighbors piled into their cars to go check it out. This was not uncommon either. A town devoid of excitement clings to whatever it can. I was not allowed to go, so I stood behind the screen door watching cars zip away into the afternoon.
I remember her name being Ashley, but I don’t know if that’s correct. It’s my name too, and perhaps her dying on my birthday caused me to believe such a thing. I’m not sure. Memories are faulty, and emotions surely colored things differently. She and her mother were driving along a stretch of highway, when they swerved for some reason or another. The daughter was not seatbelted and the inertia propelled her out of the windshield.
I used to imagine what it would look like. I saw her, long and elegant, twirling through the air as broken glass joined the gentle rain and swirled around her. She flew, eyes closed, until the pavement grabbed her, tumbled her, battered her. Her body would be broken but her face would be hidden. This is how beautiful people die. I remember snips of conversation between neighbors. Her mother had to be pulled off the body. She screamed and sobbed and it was horrible. I had little memories of the mother. I remember that at a church function she had been short with me about a game I was playing. She took away a plush tiger that I had probably stolen, but was assuring her I won. I had not liked her.
The town was in mourning for the girl. She was 16, I think. She was tall, pretty, with brown hair that always looked intentionally tousled. She played volleyball. She had a tall, handsome boyfriend who played football. Almost the whole town attended her funeral. “Wind Beneath Your Wings” was her funeral song. Her coffin was white. My parents had asked if I wanted to go to the funeral. I did not. I hated her. I hated that my birthday had ended the moment the sirens wailed. I hated that when her song came on, everyone would be silent and comment on what a shame it was.
People would comment on how it was my birthday and how we shared names. One day, I would be tall (I’m not), play sports (I ran away from the volleyball the first time I played), or have a handsome football player boyfriend of my own (nope). I wondered if they also thought I would die at the ripe age of sixteen, sailing out of a windshield. It was probably best that I didn’t voice my concerns. Every time I told someone my birthday, the inevitable comment that followed would be about her death. And then the entire day. What they were doing. I never knew that a dead person could live for so long.
Around that time, or perhaps a little later, a boy in my class had died abruptly. He was fishing with his grandfather in a pond nestled in a forest. He went swimming, well wading really, since he wasn’t really good at it. He waded too far, and the slippery rocks below his feet vanished to a cold undercurrent. His grandfather, watching the boy drown, dived in to save him. He miscalculated, perhaps he was not a good a diver as he was in his youth, and fell into a rock, cracking his skull open. Grandfather and grandson were both found dead, floating in the pond.
I had not known the boy very well. I think his name was Rodney, or perhaps Thomas. He would sit behind me on the school bus, and bother me endlessly. He was moonfaced with thick glasses that magnified his eyes. His hair always looked crooked and he sniffled with a perpetual cold. He would lean over the seat and grab my hair, or throw silly notes at me. He once offered me a plush raccoon (which was my favorite animal) if I would be his girlfriend. I firmly refused. I was not so easily bought (though I do remember considering just taking it from him, as it would not be a difficult fight). I don’t remember feeling sad when told of his death, just as I had not felt sad when told of the girl’s. Just a strange feeling, like a coldness inside of me.
When I was 14 or 15, my grandfather died and I attended his viewing. I did not want to be there particularly, but I was close family, and I suppose that’s what you do. Many people I did not know came up to me and asked if I was “Sammie’s granddaughter.” They said I was the spitting image of my grandmother, “when she was young,” a necessary addendum since in her old age, she had most decidedly let herself go.
I remember a small group of people approaching me cautiously. A small, stocky woman with thick glasses stepped forward and asked if I was again, “Sammie’s granddaughter.” I was, and she smiled, as did the rest of the people behind her. She told me that she was Rodney’s mother, to which I must have not reacted to at all, so she refreshed my memory with a very innocent retelling of the story. “You were Rodney’s little girlfriend, right?” Now, he was most certainly not my boyfriend, but seeing those tired eyes, tired from experiences and emotions I could not begin to fathom, I knew how I had to answer.
With my answer, they all lit up. The father stepped forward, a wiry man with a reddened complexion. “Oh, wouldn’t you two be a pretty couple if he were still around!” An older woman behind him rang in, “She’s as pretty as a little tree!”, a compliment I had received more than once in my life, strangely enough. The mother told me how he had talked about me all the time and how it was nice to see how I had grown. She hugged me, her soft arms around me felt comforting and frantic all at once.
So there I was, the embodiment of a dead girl with a dead boyfriend to boot. I hated how the pretty girl’s death pervaded my life, how it made people draw wrongful conclusions and pin hopes to me I would never fulfill. The family at the funeral affected me in a much different way. I didn’t realize how a tiny part I played in a person’s life could become something far bigger than myself. I didn’t come away with delusions that every life I interacted would be like that, thankfully. Sometimes you live on, in memories or What Might Have Been, and sometimes you are just forgotten or halfway remembered in somebody’s shuffled memories. So it goes.
Sirens in my town were so unusual that they would halt whatever activity was going on. TVs were turned off, forks dropped on plates as everyone rushed to their windows or porches. I remember people yelling if they were “amblance sigh-reens” or “farh injin” ones as they waited on the porches. I remember being left at the living room table on my birthday, it was my ninth or tenth one I think, as my parents clamored to the porch. There were ambulance sirens as well as fire engines this time, cutting a sizzling sound into the air as they drove through the rain-soaked streets. Neighbors across the way craned their necks to see what direction they were taking. It had certainly been a car wreck with such conditions.
My parents and several other neighbors piled into their cars to go check it out. This was not uncommon either. A town devoid of excitement clings to whatever it can. I was not allowed to go, so I stood behind the screen door watching cars zip away into the afternoon.
I remember her name being Ashley, but I don’t know if that’s correct. It’s my name too, and perhaps her dying on my birthday caused me to believe such a thing. I’m not sure. Memories are faulty, and emotions surely colored things differently. She and her mother were driving along a stretch of highway, when they swerved for some reason or another. The daughter was not seatbelted and the inertia propelled her out of the windshield.
I used to imagine what it would look like. I saw her, long and elegant, twirling through the air as broken glass joined the gentle rain and swirled around her. She flew, eyes closed, until the pavement grabbed her, tumbled her, battered her. Her body would be broken but her face would be hidden. This is how beautiful people die. I remember snips of conversation between neighbors. Her mother had to be pulled off the body. She screamed and sobbed and it was horrible. I had little memories of the mother. I remember that at a church function she had been short with me about a game I was playing. She took away a plush tiger that I had probably stolen, but was assuring her I won. I had not liked her.
The town was in mourning for the girl. She was 16, I think. She was tall, pretty, with brown hair that always looked intentionally tousled. She played volleyball. She had a tall, handsome boyfriend who played football. Almost the whole town attended her funeral. “Wind Beneath Your Wings” was her funeral song. Her coffin was white. My parents had asked if I wanted to go to the funeral. I did not. I hated her. I hated that my birthday had ended the moment the sirens wailed. I hated that when her song came on, everyone would be silent and comment on what a shame it was.
People would comment on how it was my birthday and how we shared names. One day, I would be tall (I’m not), play sports (I ran away from the volleyball the first time I played), or have a handsome football player boyfriend of my own (nope). I wondered if they also thought I would die at the ripe age of sixteen, sailing out of a windshield. It was probably best that I didn’t voice my concerns. Every time I told someone my birthday, the inevitable comment that followed would be about her death. And then the entire day. What they were doing. I never knew that a dead person could live for so long.
Around that time, or perhaps a little later, a boy in my class had died abruptly. He was fishing with his grandfather in a pond nestled in a forest. He went swimming, well wading really, since he wasn’t really good at it. He waded too far, and the slippery rocks below his feet vanished to a cold undercurrent. His grandfather, watching the boy drown, dived in to save him. He miscalculated, perhaps he was not a good a diver as he was in his youth, and fell into a rock, cracking his skull open. Grandfather and grandson were both found dead, floating in the pond.
I had not known the boy very well. I think his name was Rodney, or perhaps Thomas. He would sit behind me on the school bus, and bother me endlessly. He was moonfaced with thick glasses that magnified his eyes. His hair always looked crooked and he sniffled with a perpetual cold. He would lean over the seat and grab my hair, or throw silly notes at me. He once offered me a plush raccoon (which was my favorite animal) if I would be his girlfriend. I firmly refused. I was not so easily bought (though I do remember considering just taking it from him, as it would not be a difficult fight). I don’t remember feeling sad when told of his death, just as I had not felt sad when told of the girl’s. Just a strange feeling, like a coldness inside of me.
When I was 14 or 15, my grandfather died and I attended his viewing. I did not want to be there particularly, but I was close family, and I suppose that’s what you do. Many people I did not know came up to me and asked if I was “Sammie’s granddaughter.” They said I was the spitting image of my grandmother, “when she was young,” a necessary addendum since in her old age, she had most decidedly let herself go.
I remember a small group of people approaching me cautiously. A small, stocky woman with thick glasses stepped forward and asked if I was again, “Sammie’s granddaughter.” I was, and she smiled, as did the rest of the people behind her. She told me that she was Rodney’s mother, to which I must have not reacted to at all, so she refreshed my memory with a very innocent retelling of the story. “You were Rodney’s little girlfriend, right?” Now, he was most certainly not my boyfriend, but seeing those tired eyes, tired from experiences and emotions I could not begin to fathom, I knew how I had to answer.
With my answer, they all lit up. The father stepped forward, a wiry man with a reddened complexion. “Oh, wouldn’t you two be a pretty couple if he were still around!” An older woman behind him rang in, “She’s as pretty as a little tree!”, a compliment I had received more than once in my life, strangely enough. The mother told me how he had talked about me all the time and how it was nice to see how I had grown. She hugged me, her soft arms around me felt comforting and frantic all at once.
So there I was, the embodiment of a dead girl with a dead boyfriend to boot. I hated how the pretty girl’s death pervaded my life, how it made people draw wrongful conclusions and pin hopes to me I would never fulfill. The family at the funeral affected me in a much different way. I didn’t realize how a tiny part I played in a person’s life could become something far bigger than myself. I didn’t come away with delusions that every life I interacted would be like that, thankfully. Sometimes you live on, in memories or What Might Have Been, and sometimes you are just forgotten or halfway remembered in somebody’s shuffled memories. So it goes.