A few days before my 14th birthday, I witnessed and possibly caused a horrific, fatal car accident. I was walking home from school, alone because I had to stay after for detention for bouncing a ball too high and onto the roof. A guy who donated books to my middle school drove by, and I waved to him in the car, and he waved back. Just then, a truck just smashed into him head on, driving on the wrong side of the road. There was a really loud sound.
I uncovered my eyes, but I looked to the ground first and saw all this shattered glass. I ran over to the car with the guy I knew. I couldn't see through the window, it had too many cracks in it. I tried opening the door, but it wouldn't open. I tried to push the glass in with my hand, since it was already broken. After I cleared enough glass out to see, he was unconscious. I put my hand on the other side of his head to turn his face toward me and I felt blood and slime and I saw a fragment of his skull with the hair fall onto his shirt.
I backed up immediately, realizing the extent of the damage, and backed up too far and fell iver the curb. Then I realized my hand was cut up really bad and bleeding from pushing the broken glass. It didn't hurt at all, it must've been been the adrenaline. That guy is dead, I was thinking over again in my head. Then I remembered, the other guy in the truck. What about him! I looked toward his truck, but instead found him behind me, crying. I told him to call 911, and he said he already did and they're on their way.
We were sitting on the curb waiting for the ambulance to show up. I remember watching all these cars drive by and looking at the car and looking at the full grown guy crying near me. Nobody stopped. For some reason I wasn't crying. I didn't understand the full damage. When the ambulance people came, the cops were also there. The paramedics took the guy's body from the car, trying to revive him. I kept thinking: he's dead, why are they trying to revive a dead body? The police went to go talk to the guy in the truck. They pulled him to the other side of the road and were talking to him. And making him walk around. I didn't understand why.
Before I could go follow them, another cop came to talk to me. He was calling me buddy and saying it'll be ok and such. He poured water on my hand and put a large bandage over the cut as I explained what happened. I could tell he was getting emotional and he walked me over to his cop car and said he would drive me home. I got to sit in the passenger seat. I was asking him what's going to happen to the guy with the truck, and where will they take him? He said that they're taking him home too.
When we got to my house, nobody was home. He said we could wait in the car in the driveway until my parents came home. I was telling the cop what had happened and he was asking how I felt and then I started crying. He was so nice. We waited for an hour and my parents didn't come home and they wouldn't pick up our calls. He talked to my neighbor and I stayed there until my parents came. My parents brushed it off and forgot about it, but it changed my life.
A few days later, I saw an article about the crash. He was a drunk driver. That's why they were making him walk around, to test if he was sober. I was too young to understand. This is the first time I've ever said or typed any of this. It was hard, but it needed to be said. The guilt of causing the accident haunts me daily. If only I didn't wave, he could've seen the car and swerved out of the way. The sound of the sirens is in my head all the time. Thanks for listening.
