5

It’s crazy what a year can do.

The bond between friends created by a near death experience as a white car exits the mountain with faulty breaks and guilty silence

Dies

Despite the miraculous survival of the crash.

The driver made it out with a possible concussion and a sprained knee or ankle, whichever he could decide he hit. I held his head up when he began to fall asleep, afraid he wouldn’t awake. I thought deeply about what he meant to me and what I wanted him to mean to me..

The passenger, the only one with a seatbelt on, remained unscathed. He said he wished he has been injured. He joked about the incident attempting to make light of the situation and later claimed some bond with the driver, as if they were closer friends than either of them had ever had before.. it only took six months for him to sell the driver out and destroy his life just for the approval of a girl whose bitchy attitude made him feel victimized enough for his liking.

In the back seat there were 3 women.

One of which was more of a stranger than a friend, left with a scratch on her back and little attachment to the rest of us. Another, with a bump on her head and the blame placed on others, later silently vowing not to spend time with those who put her in danger anymore, as though she was more important than the rest of them.

The final girl, whose glasses broke and cut her face, her side aching and her right leg barely strong enough to walk on, was the only one I saw sitting on the tire of the car down there in the brush and debris. She was crying and screaming for help. As I drove up and comforted the driver of the car I was in, praying for reception to call the paramedics,

I remember the ominous feeling that all except her had died. The operator asked me how many people were in the car and what their conditions were, I said I didn’t know.

Eventually, the people in the car I was in would become somewhere between strangers and enemies.

The driver and I, along with the girl with the glasses, were he only people to remain truthful to the people we were in the car that day.

The girl with the glasses slowly became someone distant and slightly angering to me.

The driver and I fell in love.

But even the driver changed. He grew tired of me, grew distant, lost his trust in me until all the love that had once filled his eyes as he looked at me had drained and become a blank stare.