When I was 15 years old, three of my girlfriends and I went out cruising. It was summertime. I had just gotten back from cheerleading camp. I can tell you exactly what I was wearing, my denim jacket and a new cheerleading t-shirt. We were in my friend's bright red Chevy Beretta and we went to the neighboring town and cruised all night long. As we drove up and down the streets, we kept teasing and taunting these "skate or die dudes" as we called them. Week after week, they were uptown on their skateboards. They were your typical skateboard dudes. We were being mean probably, not terribly mean, just silly and stupid and probably a little mean. Finally, the night was coming to an end, we went and picked up a pizza for my parents and started out of town towards Martinsville. And so did the skate or die dudes.
Apparently, they had had enough of our teasing and taunting, I suppose. I don't know, maybe they wanted to follow us and tell us how cute we were...could be...but anyway, they followed us. I don't think we thought much of it at first. Martinsville was just a few miles away and they would probably just scare us a little and turn around. But when we turned out of Martinsville to head to my house, they followed.
My friend who owned this pretty Chevy Beretta was not the best driver. She had had a couple accidents already. This was her second Beretta and she treasured it. Right after we turned, we started to panic about them following us. The roads had recently been chipped and sealed so there was a lot of extra pea gravel along the side of this road. We got carried away and got off in it and started fish-tailing. The passenger friend, in her hysteria, grabbed whatever she could and pulled the emergency brake. We were not going that fast, we had just turned a corner, but when you are going at a steady clip, fishtailing in a small car and someone pulls the emergency brake, nothing good comes from it. We rolled the car a few times and to top it all off, we spun around on the hood in circles before coming to a stop. And then there was complete silence. Weird. I can still hear that eery silence.
But it didn't last long. We scrambled to get out of the car. My backseat companion, the one I call Susan, was bleeding profusely from the face area. It was freaky. There was so much blood on her face. She had smacked her nose into the headrest of the front seat. And that's when the silence stopped. My driver friend started screaming, we all were screaming. We saw the skate or die dudes drive on to the next house. My friend wouldn't stop screaming about her car and how we couldn't just leave it there in the middle of the road. (It wasn't going anywhere, it was upside down.) I remember being so mad at her because she wouldn't shut up about her car.
Here's a funny from that moment. We were trying to devise a plan, what to tell people about what happened. I don't know why really. We didn't drink, do drugs, smoke, we hadn't been drag racing or anything. I laugh now because we thought it was so important to have a story. Someone mentioned that we could say we swerved to hit a racoon and got out of control. I suggested a deer because this was heavily populated deer country. Later in the emergency room, I remember the police questioning one of the others and I heard her say something about seeing eyes, "though it may have been lightening bugs." I about came off the table!!! Susan's boyfriend had asked me if the stuff all over my legs was from the deer. Nope, it was from the pizza...ha.
After the ambulance came, our parents came. Oh and get this, whose parents were the last to arrive although they were probably the closest? Yep, mine. And why did it take them so long? Because my dad couldn't find a clean pair of his good jeans...Typical. None of us were injured seriously. When we went back and looked at the car at the junkyard, it was incredible. The passenger seat had come unfastened, which is why my friend "Susan" had the bloody nose. The hood was smashed almost even with the door of the car. I still cannot believe we climbed out of there basically uninjured. No one was wearing a seatbelt. It was a miracle that we survived and not injured badly. I got one stitch in my foot from climbing out of the car. Jay still teases me about that one stitch. It was my badge of honor and he thinks it's funny.
I remember that none of us had a voice for a couple days. They tell us it was from screaming. A lady living on the other road said she heard screaming that night. Ugh, it gives me chills. There were all sorts of stories floating around about what happened, that one of my cousin's, the one I call Danielle, was killed when the car landed on her...she wasn't even with us. I don't recall every talking to or taunting those skate or die dudes again. Apparently when they drove on past us, they went to the next house to call the ambulance. I'm guessing they were pretty freaked out...I know we were. Maybe we all learned a little lesson that night...
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