Gone

Why? Why did it have to be him? There were so many other cars on the highway. Why couldn’t the truck have gone a little slower, a little faster? Why did he have to be on that particular road? There were so many no-drunk-driving assemblies. At each one, I always sat in the back, talking with him, not paying attention. We both knew that neither of us would ever touch alcohol. Those assemblies always tell you to not do things. Don’t do drugs. Don’t get drunk. But what do you do when someone else does those exact things?

We shouldn’t have split up before heading to the park. We should have just done something at home. He wouldn’t have had to drive. He would have been far away from that highway. He would still be here, by my side. He would still be alive…

Right after I got that phone call, I told myself it was just a bad nightmare. I expected to wake up to another phone call, and hear his voice on the other end, telling me everything was okay. But I’m not going to wake up from this nightmare. The only way I can get away from the nightmare of life is to dive into the land of dreams…

That night, I dream of him.  I dream of the day we met, on the first day of high school, when he was talking to my best friend. She introduced the two of us, and he smiled at me.  As if it were a movie, my mind cuts to a different scene:  a day in junior year, when we spent the day in the library together, sharing a chair, trying to study for a math test together but in the end just laughing and talking. In my dream, I see his face, leaning closer and closer to mine. Both of our eyes begin to close – and then suddenly, his face transforms. His left eye is no longer there, his nose becomes squashed. His face takes on a greenish-blue hue. His remaining eye is lifeless, but continues to stare straight at me. Somehow, I am aware of his broken arm, the tire print that cuts across his chest. I wake up to a leg cramp and a heart beating faster than the speed of the truck that had killed him. It is only three in the morning, but I continue to lie in bed, awake, afraid to go back to sleep and see that ghastly image again.  

How could it have happened? It was the middle of the day, for God’s sake! What kind of an idiot would be drunk and high and driving a truck at one in the afternoon?! But there had been an idiot who did that, and now he was gone. Forever.

In the morning, there was a line in the “Police Blotter” section of the newspaper. Yesterday, high school senior Adrian Nguyen was killed in a car accident, it said. Accident.  Accidents are small incidents, like getting rear ended. This wasn’t an accident. It was no accident that that driver decided to get drunk and high before stumbling back into his truck. It was no accident that he drove straight across the cement dividing block, right into Adrian’s rusty little car, catapulting it into the air. It isn’t right to call what happened an accident. People don’t get run over by their killers in accidents. People aren’t proclaimed “dead on arrival” in accidents.

I feel the tears coming on again. By now, I don’t even bother trying to hold them back. It seems like I won’t ever run out of tears. We only knew each other for four years, but those four years felt like a lifetime. I run back to my bedroom and let myself lie limply on the bed, the sheets getting soaked yet again. I curl up and bury my head deep into the pillow. I wish I could have done something. I wish I could have somehow seen it coming. I wish I had been in the car with him. But none of that happened, and no amount of wishing can change that. Nothing can change the fact that he is gone. Dead. Gone. Erased from this earth. He’ll never be back. And my life will never be the same.