The cold air surrounds me, making my lips chap, my breath show, and turning my cheeks rosy. The leaves float gently down from the trees, piling on the icy roads. I hate this time of the year; the time where it isn’t exactly fall but not winter either. Everything is dying and becoming cold. Pretty much, the weather is a pain my butt. What was wrong with my mother? It would be freezing cold and she would make me walk to the bus stop every single morning.
I wish I didn’t take granted of her before the accident.
Before the accident, we always fought. It would be about stupid things: about me not doing the dishes, about what to watch on TV, and about my grades. These things seem so miniscule and unimportant in my life now. Why did I get mad at her? It was only because she cared.
I trudge in my boots through the mud, the product of the rain of early this morning. I don’t mind the walk every morning; it’s a good ten minutes to myself to think. Before the accident, I would think of things like boys, friends, celebrities, etc. I think about my life nowadays. Not the petty things, like how ugly Jennifer is without her makeup. I think more about how I want to see the people in my life, how I want to see myself, my mom, even the weather. I don’t get how I used to do it, always on the phone or texting or watching TV; there was never a moment of silence for me to just think.
I do a lot of just thinking lately.
School is purgatory as always. I try to remain invisible, but that never turns out well. Every day, I’m surrounded by a group of girls that used to my friends. They hug me and tell me everything is going to be okay and that they understand. I don’t need their pity.
The accident was my fault.
It was the week after I turned fifteen. I had just gotten my permit. My mom was taking me for my first driving lesson. I drove through a yellow light, thinking I could make it, against my mom’s advice. I had rolled my eyes and told her to calm the heck down. There was a man driving a truck who pulled out the same time we drove out. He went crashing into the passenger side. I ended with stitches above my eyebrow and some bruises, my mom, on the other hand, got it much worse. She was diagnosed as having severe, and permanent, brain damage. She’s got the mental capacity of someone who has Down ’s syndrome.
I shake my head, trying to get the memory out of my head. A girl comes and sits next to me on the way home from school on the bus. I listen to her babble to, for the first time since the accident, stop thinking.
I walk home and open the door.
“Mom! I’m home.”