retro vi

Imagine a time capsule.

Spring Break, senior year.  

The April night-air slapped me in the face, through the open window. 

Ryan drove.   He drove drunk.

The world was a tunnel of darkness.   Small lights swung by like shooting stars.

I imagined a spaceship instead of Mustang.

Tried to enjoy interstellar travel.

“Is your seat belt on,” he asked, not turning from the road to look.

“It is,” a reflex.

I looked. “It is.”

“Okay.”   He said, “Good”.

Put the scene together.

We’ve both been drinking with Marissa and Darren and Nick and Alicia, under the over pass after the cops broke up Bill’s party.  Jesse was with us.  We dropped him off earlier.  Some one’s party was broken up by the cops earlier.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re going to crash.”

I could see it. And it wasn’t as though checking for safety might excuse the inevitable collision.

Ryan laughed, thinking the same thing. Or at least afraid of the possibility.

He said, “No.”

“Okay, I’m all set. In crash position.”   I crossed my arms and legs.

He turned and looked at me in the passenger seat.  “Dude, I’m not going to crash. And that’s fall position, not crash.

Repeat.

“You can crash now.”

Somewhere in my eyes, the peripheral, I saw it.   Our sudden impact with another car, ahead and breaking short. It cut us off, only to jam on the breaks.   The whole thing had been totally inconspicuous, prior.  

I felt my body jerk forward.

Towards disaster.

     This was the first time he crashed that car.   There would be two more accidents before I left for college.   Each one grew progressively worse.  I got it in my head, Ryan was trying to kill himself.

     After that first crash, I told him, “You made us crash with your mind.”

     “Shut up.”