The Wreck

Whitney Robertson

I always hear those old sayings. In the course of one day I can hear them about everything from retraining old dogs to getting up early. I think they make sense and I even ponder on some of them, but I never really thought one might mean as much to me, or become as realistic as it has become in my life. The clichés about telling those you love, how you feel, before it is too late and the ones about living every day like it is your last have an all new meaning to me.

I remember it like it happened yesterday. I am sprawled out on my bed doing homework. The phone rings for what seems like the hundredth time that evening. I answer it with a snap of annoyance. My best friend, Stephanie, on the other end, does not respond to my welcome with the usual "What are you doing?" I immediately know something is wrong. This time, her response is "Who, at school, drives a white Honda CRX?" Stephanie proceeds to explain the fatal car accident she is driving past on Interstate 81.

I begin to think. Most people at school park in the same spot everyday. I suppose the easiest way to figure out the owner is to picture the parking lot row by row, level by level. The car is not coming to mind anywhere. I know it does not sit with all of the muddy 4x4 pick-ups down on the so-called "redneck level." And I know it does not wait all day on the middle level in front of my waiting car. But, at the same time, I have never seen it parked on the top level that I walk through twice a day. I can’t picture a CRX anywhere.

This comforts me somewhat, because I know the cars of all of my good friends and the cars of most of the other people at school. At the same time it troubles me. Maybe someone drove their parent’s or sibling’s CRX. All night long I imagine who the victims could be. Nobody ever comes to mind. By the time I get to school the next morning, I have all but convinced myself that I don’t know anyone who drives a white CRX.

The bell rings and school jumps into action. Immediately the halls worry with the buzz of whispered questions and curious rumors. The bits and pieces of the past night’s events that I over-hear in the hallway on the way to the locker tell me of the trauma. In the ten short minutes before first period, I learned that the white CRX, driven by Kenny Glass and occupied by Dana Starnes, both previous Daniel Boone students, along with two others, lost control and wrecked. It somersaulted at a high rate of speed, flinging all of the passengers out of the car and ripping them against the cold interstate asphalt. Dana died and Kenny lies suffering in critical condition. The walk to my first period class suddenly becomes a blur, as if it in a dream- a really bad dream.

All of this must be wrong. Dana just won’t leave my mind. I keep seeing him and his over-sized Pantera tee-shirt hanging loosely on his lanky body. His scuffed black combat boots are barely visible beneath his too-long, super-wide-legged jeans. The earring and buzz cut give the wrong impression to those who never took the time to find out how smart and caring he was.

He can’t be dead. There he goes, through the hall. No, that is someone else, but his assigned seat is still empty. He’ll come dragging in here any minute. I bet he woke up late or got stuck in traffic.

I float from class to class that day. I keep telling myself that he is gone and not coming back. I refuse to believe it, though. Many Daniel Boone students have died in tragic car accidents, but they sat next to someone else. They survived middle school somewhere else. They worked on geography projects in a different group. Other people wanted to date the others.

Dana was different. I sat next to him. I survived middle school with him. I worked on geography projects in his group. I wanted to date him.

I finally convince myself that I can not let go of Dana because I never took the chances I had to tell him that he was special to me. He died earlier than anyone thought he would, and I knew him. This was supposed to happen to other people, but it is happening to me.

His desk beside me in U.S. History sits empty for the next couple of weeks. Eventually another classroom needs it, Dana won’t come back and use it so it becomes someone else’s assigned seat.

He may not be here to sit in his desk and learn, or to stand up and give a report to teach others, but in his early death, he taught me more than any old saying. Those happen to other people, this happened to me.