A week passed, Friday arrived, and as always, Mom drove me to school.
We drove in the car my father loved the most, as there were only three beings in this world my father regarded with the nickname "baby," my mother, me, and that old car.
It was a beautiful old Mustang from the sixties, in top shape, and with a pristine green coat. Everything had been fixed, replaced, and tuned to perfection for decades. My father had been working on the car to make it look the closest to the one from the movie "Bullitt," as it had been the movie that inspired his love for cars. And I knew his passion for it was real because every time he cleaned it, he would talk to it like an old friend.
Mom was the only other person who could drive it, and even so, under strict conditions. She couldn't go too fast and take it to certain places like bars or restaurants, as Dad feared drunkards could damage it. Mom never took him too seriously, though, and she would sometimes sneak out with it to see her girlfriends.
But even when she didn't listen to him, he never said a thing, which showed me how much he cared for Mom over everything else, even his precious car.
As we drove up to South Soto Street, Mom began talking about the upcoming birthday of one of her new colleagues at the bank, asking me what could be a nice gift for a young woman, as she thought she was too old to know exactly what to give her. Mom had worked at that bank since I was little, only previously working at the one where she met my dad.
I looked at her from the passenger seat and shrugged, taking the gogurt pack I was eating out of my mouth.
"I don't know. Maybe a cute top?" I said, hoping my idea wasn't seen as stupid.
I wasn't savvy about other women's taste in gifts, but I got why Mom asked me. I was the only other girl she knew, and she was insecure about projecting her own tastes onto a woman who was probably twenty years her junior. When Mom did not answer for a while, I became worried.
But then calmed down as we passed a party supply store, and Mom turned her head to see the sign. She was clearly busy thinking about the birthday; maybe my idea had just become one of several inside her head.
As we finally went from Huntington Park to Vernon, I looked out the window to see the pretty retro building next to the crossing. Then, I heard Mom softly finally reply to my idea, saying that a cute top could be good, but she wasn't sure what it could be cute for a girl.
"What about some chocolate then?" I then said.
Mom shook her head. "No, she's one of those girls who doesn't eat much. A cute blouse in her favorite color would be nice. I just need to find what colors she likes."
I turned my head and smiled at Mom, who then peeked at me quizzically.
"What?" She asked.
"Why are you so pressed to give her the perfect gift anyway? She's just a new girl," I told her, going back to suck on my gogurt.
"I know, I know. I just want to seem friendly, that's all," Mom said. "I'm very professional at work and don't want the new girls to see me as this cold person."
I laughed, and Mom laughed as well, a little confused.
"Mom, you are like the chillest lady I've ever met. You have nothing to worry about."
Mom went, "Awww," and patted me on the leg, smiling.
"Oh, thanks, sweetie! That's very nice of you."
We then continued in silence up the road.
It was quite a lovely morning, and the sunlight shone over the walls of the large buildings that comprised most of Vernon's landscape. I looked out the window on my mother's side, observing the many shadows the sun projected into the empty walls. The shadows of trees, vehicles, people walking, and street poles looked beautiful in contrast to the hard morning light.
"Maybe when I have the chance, I could come at sunset, take some pictures, and upload them to my social media," I thought.
Then, Mom interrupted my thoughts with a soft, confused sigh.
"What?" I asked, looking at her.
"Strange," she said and pointed up the road.
I then saw a small traffic jam at the intersection of South Soto and Fruitland. Several trucks and cars seemed stuck at the traffic light, trying to form a line on one side of the road. Even as a busy industrial place, the streets of Vernon were pretty wide, and although sometimes traffic jams were provoked by very long trucks, it wasn't that common at that hour, mainly because most trucks just kept going or quickly turned right on Fruitland to reach the many industrial warehouses.
As the car got closer, we began to realize it wasn't a regular traffic jam. We could see a firetruck on one side of the street, with several firemen standing by, idling around, and on the other was a cop car, with a policeman talking on the radio.
We then saw that amongst the cars that were lining up to drive up one side of the street was a cop instructing them to do so with his hands. He was trying to move cars around, some of which were going in the opposite direction.
We waited behind a few cars and a small truck for a good ten minutes, which made my palms sweat slightly as we were already running late for school. I could even notice some concern on my mother's face, as she didn't want me to be reprimanded by the nuns because of something out of our control. But all those nerves we both felt went away as we finally moved close enough to see what was really going on.
I opened my mouth in shock and heard my mother gasp as we slowly rode past Fruitland behind the other cars and saw the spectacle pinned on one side of the street.
It was a disaster.
Behind a line of police tape, a small car, probably one of those new Chinese ones, had crashed against one of the big wooden electric poles, which lay bent, hanging for dear life from its cables.
And when I say crashed, it didn't mean like a front crash. The poor vehicle looked like a broken accordion smashed against the pole. It had clearly burned down, as I could see the smoke coming out of what I supposed was the carcass of the machine.
It had probably been of some color, but now it just looked like a black charred mess. My heart began to beat a bit harder when I realized there were no ambulances around the accident site, and I hoped the reason was that the people had been taken hours before. But I still averted my eyes after a few seconds of looking at it, in fear I might accidentally end up seeing a dead body.
"What do you think happened?" Mom asked, horrified and curious.
"I don't know," I whispered.
For the rest of the trip and the day, the image of the accident would float around in my mind.
And I wasn't the only one worrying about it.
Lola, one of my friends, also knew about it. She began gossiping with me as we waited for Sister Asuncion to arrive. Her father was a trucker for a Vernon company, and he had mentioned the whole incident in their family group chat that morning. He had even sent some pictures of the firetruck.
"Isn't it weird? Why would a car crash in the middle of Vernon?" Looking at the pictures, Lola asked, "My dad said it looked like the car had been there a while, like hours, and the streets are pretty empty early in the morning."
"Maybe there was a problem with the tires or something slippery on the road?" I asked.
"Well, you were there. You saw it," Lola said. "Did you see something on the road?"
I shook my head.
"No, not that I remember," I said, and inside my head, I cursed at myself, asking why I didn't even check to see if there was something weird on the road. I could have taken a small peek behind me, but I was too scared to do so.
"It might have been a drunk driver or something like that," Lola said. "Maybe the driver got lost and ended up falling asleep at the wheel."
"Did your dad see any bodies or an ambulance?" I then asked, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.
"Let me ask," she said and began texting on the chat group, all while the nun walked into the classroom.
I pulled away from the edge of her table and went back to sit on my chair, taking out my notebook and pen. After a few seconds had flown by and Sister Asuncion began writing on the board, Lola signaled me to her phone. She tried her best to whisper the answer she had received.
"He said not to ask questions like that in group chat," She said, shrugging and rolling her eyes.
I smiled politely.
"It's okay, I don't need to know," I whispered.
But Lola dismissed her father's message and told me that she would ask him later, after he came home from work, and she would tell me tomorrow. I nodded in agreement and returned to the lesson, but inside, I was itching with curiosity.
Even if it was pretty bad, I wanted to know exactly what happened, to at least take it out of my mind.
I relaxed after a few hours of listening to my teachers and talking with the other girls in the hallway. Still, strangely, it all came back as I sat at lunch hour next to my best friend, Lucy, while eating my mac and cheese. It was at that moment that my cell phone began to ring, and I pulled it out to see who it was.
It was Zack, which made me smile.
It was the second time he had tried to call me at school since I gave him my phone number, but he had called too late the first time. Thankfully, this time, he hit me up at the right time.
"Is this the boy from the shop?" Lucy asked, leaning against me, and I nodded.
She smiled and leaned closer, trying to see how Zack looked. I pressed to accept the call, and it launched me into a face call with him. The background of his call was pretty noisy. He was in a school hallway, sitting on some kind of bench. Even with his wild curls falling on his face, he looked pretty cute.
He smirked when he saw Lucy's face pressed next to mine. He waved and asked me how I was, and I responded okay while trying to nudge Lucy away.
"So, how's your morning been?" I asked him.
"Oh, nothing much. Classes are boring as always, and I forgot to pack lunch today, so I had to buy something from the vending machine," Zack said, shrugging and looking away.
"Why did you forget to pack lunch?" I asked, feeling concerned about him not eating much.
He then told me he had run late.
"Wait, you ran late?" I then asked, confused. "But you live like six minutes away from your school."
"I overslept. It happens a lot," he said, hiding a chuckle. Then he sighed and asked.
"So, have you heard the news?"
"Which news, the ones about the disease?" I asked him.
In the last few months, a contagious disease began spreading worldwide, and it started affecting people inside the US. However, at least in California, it was still just affecting people who had returned from the place where it had emerged.
"Well, yeah, that too. It looks pretty bad," Zack said, smiling awkwardly, "but no, the one about the crash that happened at Fruitland?"
I gasped, surprised, the memories flowing again. I shrugged and nodded uncomfortably. Even Lucy decided to pull away, as she could see me becoming a bit apprehensive about the subject.
Zack frowned.
"Are you okay?" He asked, and I shook my head a bit.
"No. I mean... I saw it today while my mom was driving me to school," I said. "We passed right by it."
"Really? That's...disturbing," Zack said. "How did it look?"
"Pretty bad," I said. "The car was completely wrecked. I just hope the people inside are okay."
Zack then grimaced, like I had hit a nerve, and moved the phone away from his face.
"Zack?" I asked, a bit scared.
I wondered if I had said something wrong, but I also feared that he knew more than he was telling. After a minute or two, the phone returned to his face, and he looked at me with an uncomfortable expression. He looked like he didn't want to keep talking about the accident.
"What happened?" I asked him, confused. He shook his head and tried to smile at me, but I could see he was keeping something to himself.
"Zack, what do you know?"
He sighed and looked at me, probably trying to guess how to tell me about it delicately.
"From what I heard, they didn't make it," he said. "Sorry."
I pressed my mouth into a sad pout, feeling my heart sink a little. But what did I expect? It was pretty clear the car had been smashed pretty badly, and it had probably burned fast.
"Yeah, I assumed that," I said.
"Sorry for bringing this up," Zack apologized.
I told him it was alright; he didn't know how it could affect me, and I was probably overreacting a little. He then asked if I wanted to talk about something else, and I asked him what he had for lunch that day. When he told me he had bought some chips, I began inquiring about his favorite brand and flavor, shifting the conversation to a lighter, nicer topic.
Finally, after the bell rang, I said goodbye to him and reminded him that I would be passing by the car shop later, which I could clearly see excited him. After the call was cut, Lucy nudged me and pressed my cheek in the way she always did when she teased me about a boy. I brushed away her hand and, laughing, told her to bug off, but I couldn't hide my own blushing cheeks.
"He seems nice. And he's cute," Lucy said. "What's his name again, Zack?"
"Yeah, and he is," I told her, smiling, biting the nail of my thumb. "He's very nice and attentive. And I like his curls."
"I mean, I could see how attentive he was in the way he didn't want to hurt your feelings regarding the accident," Said Lucy, rubbing her hand on my shoulder.
I looked at her, a bit upset that she had brought that up again, but I knew she meant well. She was trying to cheer me up with her touch while reassuring me that the boy I liked seemed like a good guy.
"Yeah," I said, swallowing hard.
The spit was bitter in my throat, and even though I began to think more about Zack, his dark hair, and his kind dark eyes, I could still feel the strange ache that you feel when people you don't know die in horrible ways. It was not sadness but a disagreeable feeling that stayed in your stomach like a stale cookie.
"He's a really sweet guy," I said, almost whispering.