It’s unnerving. The way people stare even though it’s obvious you’d rather be slipping into the shadows. I suppose that’s how I am, living; but not alive. I got the staring a whole bunch after it happened. They don’t know how to talk to me anymore. The gawking would fade, I knew; but so would the memories of my mother. Like the fog in the mirror, she was taken away from me a bit at a time, until all I had was myself.

-Claire Caverly


April 13, 2008

6:37 A.M.
May 1, 2011
That was three years ago, when I was fourteen. Now seventeen, I wake up every morning to the sweet classical music drifting from my dad’s study. Today though, I woke to silence. The quietness is unwelcome, to a girl who practically survives on music. Dad and Garrett didn’t want to make me nervous, I guess. Not that it would help. After waiting years to audition to Eastman, my chance was here, and so, apparently, was the uneasiness. Eastman School of Music; my dream school. Also, the school my mom attended. Not being accepted is not an option.
While I dress, Garrett bellows from downstairs about french toast. Settling at the kitchen table, my dad and Garrett avoid eye contact with me. Looking back, I am always unclear about whether or not they thought I would make the auditions at that point. I’d like to believe that at that moment, one of our last, they had faith in me to make it somewhere important in life. But in that instant, Garrett only seemed to be excited about missing college and his biology final to come and “support” me. Our family is really close, you could say. My brother finally sneaks a glance as he sets down my plate, which I may or may not have checked for poison had he not been watching me so closely. “Eat up,” he says.

7:24 A.M.
We pile into the car, a 2009 Honda Pilot, a present from my grandma. Dad lifts my cello into the trunk, and I watch, to make sure he’s careful. I’ve come too far to lose by an instrument malfunction. Garrett gets shotgun, because it’s an even day of the month, and I don’t argue. No point in getting all riled up before the biggest event in my life. He turns on the radio too, but Dad not so subtly hurries to switch it off. The radio doesn’t matter though, because I can hear the music in my mind, can envision myself playing through fluently, like magic.

7:28 A.M.
My consciousness ebbs away as Dad quietly hums Bach’s Cello Suite n.1.

7:29 A.M.

7:30 A.M.
There is a sickening crunch and a scream piercing the air and it’s not until I see Dad with his blue lips but little blood, and Garrett with blood seeping through his clothes and from his face that I realize I’m the one screaming. And even my screaming is muted as the life leaves me, and I am nothing. It is like the calm after a storm.

7:38 A.M.
It is ironic, in a way. How the radio still works, how I can hear Bach’s masterpieces playing sweetly in the otherwise dead silent atmosphere. There is no pain, only numbness. When I try to open my eyes, I see nothing but smoke, and little fires lapping on my Dad’s almost certainly dead body. As if triggered by my movement, the pain begins to overwhelm me, until I can’t breathe and I can’t think and I’m going to die. Dust choked my lungs, and I knew my body was twisted impossibly, legs and arms everywhere. The excruciating agony stays, my eyes roll up in my head, and I am once again dead to the world. In possibly more ways than one.

7:46
When I arouse, it is because my clothes are being ripped off my body. A scorching light blocks my vision, but I can hear the pattering of rushing footsteps surrounding me, and the hushed whispers. With fumbling fingers, I reach out for Garrett, for Dad, even for Mom. What I get, though is the bitter shock of cold air. My eyes adjust, and I can see the half a dozen of shadows pressing above me. They prod my body unceremoniously, but seem not to notice my widening eyes. Look at me. They don’t. Mortifying shrieking and shouts of pain reach my ears. It is then that my hands begin to shake, and afterwards, my legs. My body convulses as they repeatedly prick me with needles; sharp daggers breaking my skin, and with it, my spirit.


8:57
May 12, 2011
The hospital released me eleven days after the crash with three broken ribs, a broken leg, and ugly scars racing along my back. Walking would never again be easy for me, but neither would living, not without my family. Dad had died, instantly, painlessly. Garrett has been in a coma since that abhorrent day, and I am alone. Today, I feel alone when the social services agent with a fake smile plastered on her face escorts me into my once cheerful, but now empty house. They are giving Garrett the deadline of about one month to wake up and officially sign as my legal guardian before I am sent to live in an orphanage or with my grandma. Until then, I am to collect my things and stay with my uncle that lives about twenty minutes away from here.

They’re making me go back to school either today or tomorrow. I’m going today, to get it over with. I presume everyone already knows what happened. The crash was on the newspaper, front page and all. Disadvantages of living in a remote town in Oregon, I guess. It’s not as if I am unfamiliar to the unashamed gossiping and eyeballing. It would only be worse this time, if you count the people who would almost certainly look at me with pity, and offer me their condolences, while in truth they look at me with dark ruthless eyes and make me feel as if I was a small child, No, I am determined to show everyone that I would be alright, over time. Sure, I will grieve, and cry, and lose myself in memories of the happy times. Learning to walk properly again shouldn’t be impossible, even with having to resort to a wheelchair on some particularly hard days. But I will give respect to my parents, and Garrett who might possibly join them very soon, by making them proud, and live for them.

December 22, 2014
In retrospect, trying to purposefully recall and describe the feeling of agony seeing my brother and Dad lying motionless on the pavement is nearly impossible. It only comes back to me in nightmares and those moments where I clutch the back of a chair until the flashbacks are over and my knuckles are white and my nails have cut crescent shapes into my palm. Looking back and remembering not knowing whether my family was alive or dead, that is when it hurts the most. I can accept the truth, most of the time. The truth in which Garrett lived, barely, but we only have each other. When three years ago, I would never go out of my way to be around my older brother, now we comforted each other because nobody else could possibly understand.

I still play the cello, even though playing it tends to occasionally cause me to cringe in pain when it hurts my back. I plan to audition to Eastman next year, and I know Garrett thinks it’ll be good for me to do something other than reading on the cool window seat in our flat. I want to go so that Garrett will have some freedom, and hopefully meet someone nice rather than stick around with his younger sister all the time. One day he’ll meet the right person, and eventually I’ll meet someone that makes me happy too; when I’m ready. But for now, it’s me and Garrett against the world.