All she could see was black…
The football game was a total
waste.
Erika Evans quit
shouting, “Let’s go D-fense,” with the other girls on her cheer squad. What was
the point? The score was 45-0 and the spectators were bailing out under a
rapidly falling sheet of rain. Even her parents left at halftime with Shelby
and Mitchell in tow.
The players couldn’t stay
on their feet and the other team was going to get through the line whether she
screamed the words or mouthed them. So, she decided to save her vocal chords
the abuse.
The game had quickly
turned from football to mud-ball. Shaking her black and gold Hornet pom-poms
was hardly worth the effort past the first quarter. But she did another high
kick and mouthed, “First down. Players on the field moved from their formation
and the next thing Erika knew there was quiet groan of disappointment rolling
out from the small crowd still in the stands.
Fumble.
Finally, the game ended
and Erika hustled out of the stadium. She couldn’t wait to get home. On board
the cheer bus, she punched her pillow and propped it against the cold,
rain-dotted window. The rain had pulled every last curl out of her head-topping
ponytail and soaked her uniform, which was now wadded up in a ball at the
bottom of her travel bag. Her dry change of clothes had eased the chill from
her bones, but didn’t eliminated it. She pulled a blanket up around her chin.
Through the window beside
her she saw Cassandra still in her uniform, holding hands with her senior
football player boyfriend Mark. She tossed her limp ponytail from side to side
as they talked. Yvette was next to her, eyes roaming the other players looking
for what Erika assumed was her next catch, since the last guy she dated had
dumped her after graduation and left for college.
Ms. Greene, the cheer
coach, hurried through the drizzly rain and flashed five fingers, giving Cassandra
and Yvette the five minute warning as she passed. Erika closed her eyes, ready
to go home when a loud thud hit her window.
She pulled her pillow
away and saw Caden, rain turning his blond hair dark. He smiled, his lopsided
grin bringing a ray of sunshine to her heart. She pressed her hand to the
glass, over his.
“I love you.” The words
silently passed from his lips through the window.
“I love you too,” she
mouthed back those frightfully intimate words they’d started saying to one
another. The same words that had started the latest mother-daughter standoff. Last
night when Erika had said good-night to Caden and included the words I love you, her mother had shot her a
deep, wrinkly forehead look. Erika knew what her mother was trying to say, You’re too young to understand love. Her
mother didn’t get it that Erika was old enough to have big feelings for a boy.
In her mother’s eyes she was still a little kid.
Erika was giving her the
extreme cold shoulder as payback.
“Oh, how cute,” Yvette
giggled from where she sat down in the seat in front of Erika. “The boy next
door is saying goodbye.” She giggled again and Erika ignored her. For whatever
reason, her friends didn’t like Caden or didn’t think he was cool enough for
Erika to be dating. Every chance they got they tried to set her up with one of
the football or rugby players. And Yvette always called Caden cute—which he definitely
was—but the way she said it made it sound like he was a puppy, not a person.
Lately, Erika had
seriously been rethinking her friends.
Caden stepped back and
turned toward the rally bus he’d come on to watch the game. Erika slowly let
her hand slide down the glass as she watched him climb on board. They’d meet up
back at school and he’d bring her home, now that he had his license and a car.
A white Camry.
“Everybody ready?” Ms.
Greene asked, doing a quick head count from the front of the small bus.
Erika nodded, making quick
eye contact with Ms. Greene before she let her head fall back on her pillow and
popped her ear-buds in to listen to Katy Perry on the ride home.
The lights of the coastal
town in northern Oregon faded as the bus drove down the winding highway that
would take them home.
Erika stared at the seatback
in front of her, letting the music cocoon her and keep her out of the silly
gossip chain she knew was going on around her.
As Katy Perry’s voice
faded out and Meghan Trainor started to croon All About The Bass, the bus made a sharp maneuver. Erika fell
forward. She tried to catch herself, but landed on her bag. An ear-bud fell out.
Music pumped into only one ear.
Screaming—petrified
screaming overtook the vocals. The other ear-bud fell out as the bus bumped and
rolled, tossing Erika to the ceiling and back down.
Ouch.
Pain radiated through her
body.
The bus came to rest on
its side. Erika wasn’t sure which side or if she was still in her same seat.
All she knew was the bus wasn’t moving anymore.
Her eyes were closed. Or
they must have been because all she could see was black.
The screaming faded as
she was sucked into the darkness. The pain she felt, but couldn’t identify
faded too.
“Mommy,” she whispered
before everything went black.
To find out what happens
to this family sign up for Meg’s Insider Club. Their story will be released as
a novel in 2016 and you won’t want to miss the release date!
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