Between (Sparse Updates)

One

After yanking open the door, which was partially frozen shut because of ice buildup, I hopped in the front seat, put the keys in the ignition, and prayed to every god I could think of that it would actually start. It turned over a couple times, puttering and stammering sluggishly, but on the third try it thankfully hummed to life.

"Thank you." I patted the dash in appreciation. My words came out as a foggy puff of air. After setting the heat on full blast, I grabbed my ice scraper from the floor of the back seat and returned to the elements to clear off my windshield as the car warmed itself up.

It was probably close to twenty degrees below freezing at this point. My fingers, even when hidden inside a pair of gloves, were already past numb. Now they were starting to ache and burn from the bite of the bitter cold.

"He better buy me a pizza or something after this," I muttered to myself as I chipped away at the icy patches obscuring my window. Once I was back in my car, breathing on my fingertips to try to get some semblance of feeling back into them, I decided that I would not be this generous the next time Ben found himself in such a predicament. 

There were very few things that could make me miss my hometown at this point, but this kind of weather was certainly one of them. The wind was basically making it snow sideways and the flakes were so big and so plentiful that it was unarguably a full blown whiteout.

I couldn't see shit.

Throwing my car into reverse, I was able to pull out of my parking spot, though I had to battle about a foot of unplowed snow to do it. Once out of the parking lot, I debated with myself for a few moments on whether I could see better with my headlights on dim or bright, because honestly, neither option was giving me very much visibility.

I decided on dims and found myself leaning forward on my steering wheel as I watched carefully for each road that I passed. I didn't want to miss my turn, and at this point, the only indication of sideroads were the dramatic slopes of snowbanks marking the edges and the occasional pair of partially snowed-in tire tracks made by another unfortunate soul who was forced to be out in this weather. 

Despite the heavy blanket of white, the roads were icy as fuck, and I had to slow way down—almost to a stop—to turn onto the right road without fishtailing or accidentally sliding into the snowbank.

When I finally rolled up to the frat house, I pulled over as far as I could and fished my cell phone out of my pocket. I tapped in Ben's contact information, pressed call, and brought the phone to my ear.

"Yo!" His response was almost immediate, which I was thankful for. There was no way in Hell I was going into that party to look for him.

"I'm outside."

"You're a lifesaver, bro. I'll be out in a sec. Oh, Aiden and Paul want to know if they can get a ride back too."

They lived in the same building as us, so it wouldn't be any extra driving for me.

"Fine," I agreed.

"Awesome. I'll go grab them."

"Make it quick. I've got work tomorrow."

"Understood."

He hung up again and I found myself sitting quietly in my car, just listening to the engine run and watching the snow swirl through the air. It was soothing in a way.

But that all ended abruptly when three drunk college boys swarmed my car. I leaned over the passenger's seat to manually unlock the door for Ben, and then stretched awkwardly in my seat to unlock the back doors for the other two. Once they were all in and buckled up, I pulled back onto the road and started the slow drive back.

"Dude, did you see the way Fern was flirting with me?" Aiden asked Ben, leaning forward against my seat so he could make eye contact with the boy. "She totally wants me."

I rolled my eyes. I believed that the most unbecoming quality of any human was the way they acted when they were drunk. Which was why I chose not to drink. The only time I ever tasted alcohol was on my twenty first birthday a few months back and it honestly tasted like piss water that left me dizzy and with a roaring headache the next morning. Needless to say, I didn't see the appeal and had no intentions of trying to again. 

"Yeah man, she was cool. Mad beer pong skills," Ben said.

"And nice tits," Paul tagged on, though he seemed more intrigued by the snowflakes swirling outside his window. 

Aiden grinned, and I shook my head at them lightly, focusing back on the road.

I decided to take the highway route, since it was probably more recently plowed than the way I had come, and honestly, I wasn't confident that I'd be able to find the right road to turn on again. The highway was the end of this road, so I'd at least know where I was when I came to the T-intersection.

When the road started sloping downward, I suddenly remembered why I had chosen the other route on my way to pick up the boys. Most of campus was built on large sloping hills that led down to a wide canal running east to west, separating this town from the next. That meant most of the north to south roads had steep inclines. In the winter, many of them were closed off because of how perilous they became. This was one of the few that stayed open because of its more frequent traffic, but that did not mean it was any safer. 

I had hope that the accumulating snow would provide at least some traction for our descent, but judging by the way my car was handling, the treacherous road conditions were determined not to make my life that easy. 

Paul and Aiden were arguing about something in the back, but I ignored them as I focused on my car's responses to my subtle commands and what little I could see of the road in front of me.

I tried to keep us going at a steady speed as we descended the hill, but it was so icy that the car only wanted to go faster the farther down we rolled. My brakes weren't too much help. Every time I tried to use them, we just ended up with sliding tires instead of spinning ones. I tried to listen to the sound of the tires on the road beneath me, but all I could hear was the bickering voices behind me. 

"Will you two shut up?" I yelled to the back, keeping my eyes peeled for the yellow sign that would warn me a stop sign was coming up fast.

Only when the sign came, it wasn't yellow. It was red.

I instinctually slammed on my brakes, feeling the car shudder as the anti-lock braking system kicked in. Without traction, we started spinning, and I swore as I fought with the steering wheel to right the car's trajectory.

We slid past the stop sign, and the last thing I registered was bright light to my left and a sound so deafeningly loud that everything cut to silence almost immediately after it started.