When Nobody Was Watching by Carli Lloyd

Author:Carli Lloyd [Lloyd, Carli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It’s the holiday season, and a Christmas cookie party sounds great to me. Aunt Patti has invited me down to her home in Wildwood Crest, near the southern tip of the Jersey Shore, for a bake-a-thon. It’s a Saturday morning, and the weather is brutal, snow coming down hard. Aunt Patti’s house is almost ninety miles away.

“I’m not so sure you should go,” Brian says. “The roads look terrible. Just wait it out for a while and go later.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’ll take it easy. I’ve got four-wheel drive. The roads should be empty. I will take my time.”

Brian tries to dissuade me, but I am in go mode. I want to bake cookies with my aunt and cousin Jaime.

“Just watch out for the black ice,” Brian says. “The first thing you tend to do is grip the wheel tighter and slam on the brakes, and that’s the worst thing you can do. Don’t hit the brake if you fishtail. Just turn into the skid and get the car back under control.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promise.

I jump in my black 2006 Nissan Pathfinder and off I go. I take back roads to the Garden State Parkway and head south. The plows have been through, and it’s really not so bad. I’m cruising along, the roads are pretty clear, and I’m about twenty minutes away, driving in the left lane, which is the clearest. It’s starting to snow harder, but everything is okay until out of nowhere I hit an ice patch and the car starts to skid to the left. I remember Brian’s caution, but I don’t remember soon enough. I tighten my grip on the wheel and hit the brake. Now I am skidding to the right, and I jerk the wheel in that direction, probably too hard, and soon the car is completely out of control, careening across two lanes, heading for a tree. I am powerless and my car is going where it’s going. Time feels as if it has completely stopped. It is the scariest moment of my life. I wait for the horrible impact and the sickening sound and the end. My mind is a blur. I don’t even have time to think of Brian and how much I love him and how sorry I am I didn’t listen to him. I don’t think about how my life and all my soccer dreams are going to end on the way to a cookie party on the Garden State Parkway.

It’s almost as if I am in a trance.

I crash into the tree, and all the airbags blast out, but the car has turned enough that it’s not head-on—my left front tire takes most of the impact. The tree slows me down, but my car is still hurtling forward, totally out of control, heading for tidal water. I have no idea how deep it is, but I do know Pathfinders do not float. The car plows through a small thicket of woods and plunges into the water, which starts pouring into the car, instantly, the fastest incoming tide I’ve ever seen.

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