I finally thought of a new full story idea, and all because of one single song lyric I heard! Yay!
But, this is a little different...more in the tone of "Fight Your Way Out" in the sense that it's more serious. I think it's going to turn out really well, and I hope you all find it interesting.
Amber had always heard it said that just before the deadliest part of the storm, there was a strange clearing; an eerie moment of silence that almost makes you believe everything will be all right. Seventeen-year-olds, however, don't put much thought into sayings that have been passed down for generations; there just never seems to be much of a need for it. Teenagers never assume that anything affects them; not injury, not sickness, and certainly never death.
There had, however, been that moment of silence just before the storm. At least Amber had heard it. It had been right before their car collided with that tree; right before everything had gone dark. It had been a span of no more than three seconds, and all she'd been able to hear was the deafening whir of the tires before the metal crunch of the car, and the sickening thud of hearing Link slammed against the steering wheel. But, no, he couldn't have merely been pushed against the steering wheel. She must have blacked out at that moment, because no one dies from being knocked against the steering wheel of a car. Normal, healthy, seventeen-year-old boys do not die from hitting their heads too hard against the steering wheel. At least that was how Amber saw it. She knew, in the deepest part of her heart, that Link had suffered a fate worse than that. In turn, she also knew that the doctors, nurses, even her mother, had sugarcoated the news for her. Well, as best as one could sugarcoat the news of a boyfriend's death.
The first few days that she'd spent in the hospital after that alcohol-induced crash had been surreal; a band of men and women had worked around the clock tending to her. They changed her bandages, brought her food and drinks, and no one spoke of Link. Even as she woke to find Velma sobbing at her bedside, she hadn't had the courage to ask about him, and Velma had offered no information. A simple, mustered, "I'm sorry," was all Amber could manage, because inside, she knew exactly what had happened, and somehow, she knew it was her fault. She knew that they'd both been drinking, knew that she'd been distracting him, but she didn't know that he'd lost control of that car until it was too late. She couldn't have possibly known that his life, the life of a boy adored beyond measure, was about to come to a screeching halt.
Velma had waited until the night before Amber was set to leave the hospital, exactly three days after the wreck, to tell her that Link had been killed in that car, that dusty black bucket of bolts that he had been so fiercely proud of. Because Amber had known, in her heart, that he was dead all along, she cried, but did not sob. She wept, but did not lose herself in a state of hysterical bawling. She had cried for him a little each night in that hospital bed leading up to this moment, because she had known the truth. Seventeen-year-old girls are not clueless.
Velma had held her, and she had let herself shrink into her mother's arms, all while maintaining a sense of dignity that she herself did not quite understand. She couldn't quite comprehend how an accident that caused Link's death had done nothing more than break a few of her own bones and leave some scratches running along her forehead and cheeks. It was almost like a cruel game, and she had been the winner, or depending how you looked at it, the loser. Link was gone; he wouldn't be forced to replay that scene in his mind, over and over. He was at peace now, and Amber was the one left to suffer, the one left to blame for everything that had gone on.
It didn't seem real, at least not until she'd gone back to school the week after the accident. Until then, no one save herself had blamed her. No one had blatantly pointed a finger at her and told her that she was the reason their Link was gone, not even Link's parents. She had hugged them, crying, apologizing, telling them that it wasn't supposed to be this way, and they had comforted her, of all things. They had told her that they were sorry, that it was a horrible thing she had been forced to experience. They spoke with the wisdom and strength of parents who had lost their only son, and she had felt slightly better afterwards, after she realized that this pain didn't simply belong to her, it belonged to all of them.
The moment she walked into the halls at Patterson Park High school, however, an eerie silence had fallen over the students, and Amber recognized it immediately as the quiet before the storm. For most of that first day, that silence had followed her around the school. When she entered a classroom, clutching her books to her chest, those scratches on her forehead burning, the students fell silent, watching her with dark, heavy eyes as she made her way to her seat. These eyes, the ones that belonged to her peers, were not sympathetic, not understanding. These eyes were accusatory, demanding, hateful. These eyes were the ones that were blaming her for taking their Link from them. That shunning silence only lasted for one day, and by the time the school bells rang, the whispering had begun. The slurs, the hateful threats, the nasty rumors; there had been enough time between that wreck and now for each individual person to think of at least one horrible thing to say about her, at least one way to blame her for everything.
She could have told them that she hadn't forced that alcohol down Link's throat; could have told them that she was no guiltier than any of them, because she knew for a fact that drinking and driving was a regular occurrence among them, especially with the council members. Wanted to tell them that they had simply gotten unlucky, and that Link, the one they had assumed was the most invincible of all, had actually proven mortality to all of them. They, of course, would not have listened, because the finger of blame had already been pointed. She had been the only other soul in the car that fateful evening, which, to them, proved her guilt.
And though she was nothing more than a victim of fate, the fact that Link's life had been taken and hers had been spared meant that she was infinitely responsible for what had happened that evening. But what others failed to realize was that, in so many ways, the moment that Link's life had ended, so had hers.