That One Night

• Jessica Wright, Grade 8, Glen Innes High School
• Short Story
• 2017

Excellence Award in the 'Write Here Write Now 2017' competition

I gasped for air and sat on my bed crying. The smell of smoke was in the air and the sound of sirens echoed through the trees, people yelling and crying. I was trapped in something with someone else. No idea where I was or what had just happened.
As the sun rose I woke up crying, upset and didn’t know what to do. I shuffled over to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of hot tea. I kept thinking about last night and the fear that I was suffering from.
I could never remember anything, at least not
much. Ever since the crash everything was a blur. Nothing was ever quite right, strangers would say hello, have a full blown conversation with me, I didn’t even know them. The only people I could remember were my Mum, Dad and my best friend; Hannah. Han was always there for me before and after the car accident. She had such a comforting voice, could calm anyone.
Other than the crash and the sight of my father, there weren’t many memories I had either.
The flashbacks that I kept having were slowly messing me up. I never got a full night’s sleep, never felt very relaxed at night. Always worried, always scared…
Every morning I woke up, had a hot tea in the kitchen and thought about the nightmare I had had the previous night. Well that was before the surgery and all the counselling I had received over the past couple of years.
The counsellors had been able to bring back my memory… well most of it. There were only a few memories that were a little vague, otherwise I was good. The surgeons had repaired the area of my brain that had been hit pretty hard in the accident a long time ago.
I can remember every detail, every little bit about the crash and being with my father. Nostalgia had always brought me back to him. The sound of his reassuring voice, strong smells of his old work shirts and most of all the warm hugs he gave me every night. I dreaded remembering his pale, white face in the flashbacks, it was when I was in the smashed up vehicle that I saw him, I swear. He was never meant to die, it was all my fault.
Hannah had always told me that it wasn’t my fault that we crashed… but I don’t know. I can remember hopping in the old, white car, a little drunk. It was freezing, ice covered the old, dirt road. Dad was driving, he was always careful on these sort of nights. We didn’t see that a truck had swerved towards us.
I didn’t see the oncoming truck and went to show dad a picture on my phone from the party. He went to look but when he did he hit something. He was gone and I was lucky to be alive, I didn’t deserve it... I didn’t deserve anything.