AllFreeNovel
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“What a good girl you are. So handy and brave…Look at you, defying the odds…They said she couldn’t do it, but she persisted…”
Only by the grace of God do I somehow make the turn onto 73 west headed toward downtown Lake Placid. It feels like a race with time; the closer I get to my destination the more brutal the conditions get.
Inching my way down the two-lane highway, the snow banked up the sides gets higher and higher until it closes in around me and I can’t see the road anymore.
That’s when all hell breaks loose.
It happens very fast and simultaneously very slowly––like I’m stuck in a bad Fast And Furious take. The little orange car that can just can’t do it anymore. As my heart pounds with fuel-injected fear, the Cube starts fishtailing, the back wheels spinning and spinning. I freeze, unconsciously holding my breath, because doing anything else is beyond my pay grade.
This is where my luck ends. I never had much to begin with, but right here and now the little I do have peters out. The scream is stuck in my throat as the car slides sideways off the street, crashes through a pile of snow, and eventually into a cluster of pine trees. The driver’s side door slams into an unmovable object, and I slam my head into the driver’s side window.
Once the world stops spinning, I take a minute to assess the damage. Other than my throbbing brain, which I try and fail to soothe by rubbing, I’m alive and in one piece, seemingly unscathed for now. I say seemingly because it’s then I realize that I’m way off road, hidden from any vehicles passing, and the snow is coming down fast with flakes the size of frisbees. It’ll be mere seconds before the entire car is covered. The windshield wipers, working hard to clear the blanket of falling snow, just can’t keep up with the onslaught, and before long I’m sitting in a tin igloo––or a casket. Whichever.
I turn off the engine. The exhaust pipe could be blocked (who knew all the true crime documentaries I’ve binged would come in handy) and dying softly from co2 poisoning is not my preferred choice…not that I have a choice. The thought turns my stomach. I still have a ton of life to live. This is not how my story ends.
The temperature inside the car quickly plummets, and since I’m not a complete idiot, I decide the best course of action is to put on as many clothes as possible. Crawling out of the driver’s seat, I get in the back and start opening the suitcases, which is no easy task when I’m shaking, and my fingers are numb. Teeth chattering, I strip off my sister’s Canada Goose maxi coat and start piling on sweaters, undershirts––anything that I can cram on gets crammed on because it is flipping cold.
“I can’t die here. This is not how my story ends. Hell no. I refuse to die like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.”
Once I get all the clothes on, I lie down in the back, clutching my phone. Going out in this storm would be utter madness and I’m not desperate enough yet. I’ve got a large water bottle and a pack of strawberry Twizzlers to hold me over for the night. Besides, Nicholson’s frozen face keeps flashing before my eyes. No, the best course of action is to hunker down until the storm abates. After that, I’ll venture forth and see if I can flag down a state snowplow. This is a major road in and out of town; they won’t wait long to clear it.
The phone battery icon blinks green. It’s fully charged. And I have an extra battery with me. Little good that does me with a nonexistent signal, but at least I’m not one of those people on the evening news that finds themselves in dire straits with no battery juice.
The quote running in the byline flashes before my eyes. “Yeah, she died. But at least she had a fully charged phone and a back-up battery.”
That doesn’t sound great either.
Save for the dim light of my screen, the cab is dark and it’s getting colder by the second. My focus is waning, and the courage I’ve marshaled begins to slowly seep out of me. All that is left in its wake is a deep fear that I am good and truly screwed and I can’t talk myself out of it like I usually do. Trying to swallow the fear that balls in my throat only helps to drive it to the surface.
You know that oh shit moment? The one that inevitably everyone has at least once in his or her life. Like oh, shit, I shouldn’t have applied self-tanner the night before my big job interview. Or, oh shit, all that cheese and champagne at the big fancy New Year’s Eve party was a bad idea. Or oh shit, did I just send that pic of the suspicious beauty mark on my boob to everyone on my contact list instead of to my sister? Yeah, well, this is definitely my oh shit moment.
