Between the Stacks

Chapter 26

At first I didn't quite realize what had happened, as if my brain said No, that's not possible. Over the years I had seen plenty of cars stranded on the side of the road. I never wanted to be one of those people waving my cellphone in the air, desperately looking for a signal to call a tow truck. Then again, those were the lucky people. It was better to call a tow truck than an ambulance.

But there was no doubt as to what had happened. A sickly, metallic jolt sent us slamming into our seatbelts and Wesley managed to jerk into an empty right lane to avoid hitting the car in front of us. The sound of that discordant collision between cars - as if the Civic was being torn in two - was something I knew I would never forget.

"What the hell was that?" I managed to say. Wesley didn't respond. He'd already turned on his flashers and was moving over to the shoulder of the highway. He was so pale I briefly worried he would pass out.

My seat belt was still locked, so I had to quickly undo it to turn around and see what was happening behind us.

"Put it back on," Wesley snapped. He sounded like he was being strangled.

I didn't question him and put the seat belt back on. In the space of a few breathless seconds, I'd seen that other cars were pulling over as well.

We came to a juddering halt. We were still in a forested area of the highway, with trees lining both sides of the road. For a brief moment I wondered about bears. I imagined the ten o'clock news that night: Local Woman Eaten By Bear. I doubted I would be very tasty. I didn't think any bears would believe me.

My thoughts about being eaten alive vanished. Wesley was sobbing into the steering wheel.

"It's okay," I said, leaning over to hug him. "We're fine."

Surprisingly, he relaxed into the hug. It was, to be fair, one of the worst hugs of all time. We were on a weird side angle, and we were both still wearing our seatbelts, so we could barely reach each other.

Wesley said something that was so choked by tears that I couldn't understand. I asked him to repeat himself. "We could have died," he said. He tried to wipe away the tears, although they came so quickly that they were replaced immediately.

"We didn't," I said. This time he didn't say anything when I unbuckled my seatbelt to climb closer to him. "We're totally fine." Unless we get eaten by bears, I thought.

People behind us were starting to get out of their cars. "Look," I said, "I'll go figure everything out."

Wesley weakly protested, but he didn't stop me as I got out of the car.

The first thing I noticed was how fast the cars on the other side of the highway were going. It was easy to forget that millions of people catapulted across the country at incredible speeds every day and didn't think much of it. When I examined the damage - a chewed-up fender and broken taillights - it seemed like a miracle that we weren't hurt.

Still, I knew that some injuries took time to appear. The adrenaline was probably the only reason I was still functioning. That, and I knew I needed to step up, since Wesley needed some time.

The car that had hit us had pulled over as well. I meant to be Cool, Calm, and Collected, when I talked to the man that came out of the driver's seat, but instead I asked, "What the hell was that?"

"Hardly my fault," the guy said. He was dressed in a flannel shirt, despite the sunny weather - a true Canadian. He jerked a thumb behind him to the line of cars sitting on the shoulder of the highway. "I was hit as well."

It took me a few minutes to sort out the story from everyone affected. It turns out a teenaged driver saw a spider crawling across his dashboard, and he freaked out by hitting the gas - causing a chain reaction of cars crashing into each other. I'd been so hyper-focused on my own situation that I hadn't noticed people pushing a car off the highway in the distance. We'd been at the very tail-end of the accident chain.