The second before he hit the gas, my stomach dropped. Really dropped. Like it wasn’t there anymore. Sometimes the premonition of something happening is worse than the actual event, because you know it’s coming and you can’t do anything to stop it. He was going too fast for Wellhouse Turn, even without the ice on the road.
The Westcliff Star likes to lump my dad’s death in with the other accidents that happened there. That band bus. The drunk teenagers. The woman with the kids. They think it was the ice that sent him off the road, but I stood there and watched him and I know that car went straight as an arrow until the moment it disappeared over the hill. I sprinted across the bridge after him, fell on a patch of black ice, smashed my face on the ground, broke my nose. Got back up, kept running. There’s no good way to go down the incline at Wellhouse Turn, and I don’t remember how I tried it, but I know I broke my leg too before I got to the bottom. They were the kind of breaks you don’t feel at the time because of adrenaline and shock and fear. The car was at the bottom, sitting on all four wheels. Only when I got around to the other side of it did I see the smashed front of the car and my dad hanging out the windshield.
He was dead as soon as the car hit the ground. When you go straight off Wellhouse Turn that fast, you pretty much always are. I don’t remember calling an ambulance, but I remember my phone smeared with blood after I pulled it away from my face. I don’t remember trying to yank my dad the rest of the way through the windshield, but I remember sitting in the snow at the nose of the car, staring at his blank eyes while he lay across the accordion folds of the hood. I don’t remember the paramedics getting there and asking if I was in the car with him, but I must have said yes, because that’s how the story came out.
That’s what the Star does, right? Says “a man and his son” when they list off all the people who’ve gone over that turn? I only read the Star once after that, two days after, and I never read it again.
My dad didn’t hit ice. He wasn’t drunk, or falling asleep at the wheel. When they asked me how it happened, I said I couldn’t remember. I still say that. I haven’t even told Vee, but I think she guessed. My dad didn’t want to be here anymore. He was tired of his job, never having enough money, being yelled at by strangers. He was unhappy. Viciously unhappy.
I didn’t stop talking on purpose. It just happened. A year ago I couldn’t talk to anyone for anything. I’d like to say I tried and nothing came out, but I didn’t try. Even trying was terrifying.
I could still write, though. I was into Monstrous Sea before Wellhouse Turn happened, but I didn’t tell anyone about it, because my friends wouldn’t have understood. After Wellhouse Turn, I couldn’t do anything because of that broken leg, so I spent all my time writing fanfiction. I love playing football, but writing makes me happy in a way sports don’t. We’ve talked about this before. Having the breakthrough that lets all the light in.
I spent another year and a half in my old school being That Kid Who Survived Wellhouse Turn and Never Spoke Again. I didn’t go back to football after my leg healed, so most of my friends floated away. I thought about going to Wellhouse Turn, that maybe being back there would help, but every time I drove past I couldn’t bring myself to stop the car. So I never did.
Things got better. Vee married Tim. I started working with Bren and her dogs. I stayed online and practiced my writing. I forced myself to talk at home, and to Cole and Megan and the others when we started hanging out at Murphy’s, though I still can’t do it when big groups of people are around. I started senior year at my old school, but by then I was the local freak show exhibit, so Vee and Tim let me transfer to Westcliff, where only football players might recognize my name.
The only other person I’d ever met in school who liked Monstrous Sea was Cole, and he’s the kind of dick who doesn’t hang out with you in public if it’s not his ideal social situation, so we only talked to each other at Murphy’s. And then I met you. You had this whole sketchbook full of Monstrous Sea fan art, and you actually stood up for me. Most people never do that; what kind of two-hundred-pound guy needs someone to stand up for him? I really thought you hated me at first. Or at least thought I was stupid. Most people think I’m stupid because I don’t talk and I write slow.
But you wrote back. And you love creating things. And you get what I mean when I say I don’t want to spend my life doing something I hate. If you know what you’re meant to do, if you know what you love, why not do that? Find a way to do it, find a way to make money doing it. My dad hated what he did, and I think it made him hate himself. I don’t want to hate myself. I don’t want you to hate yourself.
I know we’re both not the most socially adept people. I’m writing this all to you in an email because I’ll pass out from stress if I try to say it to you in real time, even with a screen between us. I’m almost passing out from it right now, and we’re in different places and I don’t have to send it if I don’t want to. I should end this before something bad happens.
I like being together. I like feeling like nothing is wrong with me. I like being able to think about something else at night instead of Wellhouse Turn. I know I should see someone about the talking, but for now I’m good with this. I’m happy.
I hope you’re happy too.
Wallace
CHAPTER 27
My head is empty and ringing when I scroll back to the top of the email. My fingers feel like jelly. No one has ever told me something this important before. It’s like Wallace took off a mask of his own face. The face beneath it is the same, but now I can watch the expression change.
What a whiny, spoiled brat I’ve been. This whole time.
Then I see the email’s subject line.
Monstrous Sea Private Message
12:05 a.m. (MirkerLurker has joined the message) MirkerLurker: Either of you guys around?
MirkerLurker: I have a question.
MirkerLurker: Really not sure what to do…
12:25 a.m. (emmersmacks has joined the message) emmersmacks: Sorry
emmersmacks: Been falling asleep way early lately emmersmacks: Like whats up with that right Im fourteen emmersmacks: Should be able to crush a Monty D and stay awake emmersmacks: Anyways
emmersmacks: Whats up
MirkerLurker: I don’t know what “crush a Monty D” means, but I’d like to hear about your issues way more than I’d like to talk about mine.
emmersmacks: In college there are these things called projects and if you want a good grade you work hard on them deep into the night for many weeks MirkerLurker: We have those in high school too.
emmersmacks: Haha no you dont
emmersmacks: Come take mechanical engineering and then tell me you do projects emmersmacks: If you really want to hear about it I can go on . . .
MirkerLurker: No no, please.
MirkerLurker: I’m having issues of the Wallace kind.
emmersmacks: Oh no
emmersmacks: Bad issues??
MirkerLurker: No. More like the “He pulled the You Found Me in a Constellation card after telling me some very important things and now I don’t know what to say to him” kind.