Freshman Year: Chapter One

One Friday evening in the middle of winter, Ash’s parents, cleaning up after their silent meal, saw a silver Honda crawl to a stop on their driveway and watched as Chad helped their seventeen year old daughter out onto the icy asphalt. Neither parent really knew much about Chad, other than the fact that he was dating Ash. Both parents were watching the couple blunder on the driveway, and then stumble to their front walk leading to their front door. There was an awkward silence between the parents, which Ash’s mother, Becky, tried to fill. “So,” she began, “what do you think of Chad?”
“Chad? Who? … Her boyfriend, right? Um, dunno.” Mrs. Vickterson sighed inwardly at her husband’s response, wishing that just once they could have a decent conversation, with actual thoughts or feelings expressed.
“Have you… ever met him?” She questioned, in a desperate attempt to continue their conversation.
“Well,” replied Mr. Vickterson after a short pause, “I think I met him once… When he first came to pick her up. But I’m not sure. I don’t remember anything about him.”
“Carter, do you think it is so awful that we don’t know anything about our daughter, or her life?” The question was dripping with concern.
“Huh? Oh, I know plenty about her…”
“Oh really? How long has she been going out with Chad?”
“Umm… So what does it matter if we don’t know how long they’ve been going out? It’s just a boyfriend.”
“Never mind,” replied Becky. She left the kitchen with a sigh and rolled her eyes. On her way to the stairs leading to her room, she walked by the front door and saw Chad bend over and kiss Ash. Her vision of the two of them blurred as she proceeded up the stairs. She couldn’t help but recall those amazing days with Carter, before the love had left them. The smile she had seen on Ash’s bright, young face brought those memories flooding back and tears dripped down her face as she climbed stair after stair.
Sitting in the dark room all alone, Becky sat on the bed and thought. She had only been sitting there for a few minutes when the door creaked open and Carter entered, seeming to not notice Becky at all. He went into his walk-in closet and Becky heard a voice interrogating her from the other side of the closet door. “Why did you sigh as you walked out of the kitchen?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I just left to go to bed,” Becky responded as she began pulling her turtleneck over her head and slipped a white T-shirt on.
“You and I both know you have some problems with the way things are around here. I don’t know why. After all,” Carter continued, his voice steadily growing louder and more hostile, “I go and work my ass off for some decent money to keep this roof over yours and Ash’s heads! And what thanks do I get? My wife acts like everything that is wrong in the world is because of me!”
“Honey, I never said anything like that.”
At this point, Ash was sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring out the window overlooking their front door, reminiscing about her amazing night with Chad e in, felt the lovely memories begin to run away, fleeing to the unnoticed corners of her mind. Instead, the voices from the room right next to hers, her parents’ room, grew louder and more hostile. She was sick of this! For seven years, she had endured her parents going through extreme screaming matches. She didn’t have to take it anymore. She saw her car keys right next to her cell phone, picked both up, took out a pen and paper, and wrote a note:

Dear Mother and Father,
I need a break from the yelling. I will not be gone long, just for some time tonight. While I don’t worry about either of you missing me, I thought I would leave this note just to let you know nothing is wrong. But do you guys ever drop these nightly arguments? It is tearing this family apart and I can’t take it.
~Me

As Ash laid the note down on her desk, she heard her mother’s voice ring loud as she defended herself. “You aren’t the only one who makes a difference in this family! I stay home alone and raise Ash, clean up, and do everything that keeps the house running smoothly!”
“And I am sure you would love to get a medal for that. After all, it is so challenging.”
With that, Ash grabbed her keys and her cell phone, tiptoed down the stairs, and out the front door. As she slid into the driver’s seat, she welcomed the calm, silent night. The car slowly crawled out of the icy driveway and onto the deserted road. It was dark by this time, so Ash was driving carefully. A lot of the roads in her hometown curved a fair amount. Ash had started to calm down and let the depression that sunk in whenever her parents bickered drift away with the gentle swaying of the car. All of the sudden, the car slipped and started spinning on ice on the winding road! Ash, not a fully experienced driver yet, slammed on the breaks, hoping for the best. The car skidded right off the edge of the road, through a useless protective guard rail, and hit the ditch lining the road. As the car hit the incline of a ditch lining the row, it bounced up and flipped over, sliding on the top of the car, crashing through branches into a small clearing in the woods surrounding the road.
Everything was extremely dark and as the car was spinning relentlessly, Ash caught a glimpse of lights. “But this is the middle of a forest,” she thought. “What are lights doing all the way in here?” At that moment, however, the car smashed directly into a tree. There was no immediate reaction to the horrendous crash, and Ash was so shocked she remained in the car. As she was sitting there, now on an odd angle from hitting the tree, she heard voices.
“D’you think we got anything to worry ‘bout with that car o’er there? And that person, whoe’er it is, still in’t.” questioned an anonymous voice.
“What do you mean?” Responded a second.
“Well, ya know, there is gonna be someone in the car, and we have to meet our customer here tonight.”
“We can’t have someone listening in on all that we say tonight. That crash had to have killed whoever it was driving,” reasoned the second man, still unidentified to Ash.
“Ya, let’s just go with that. Ah, look, our friend is arriving.”
“Let’s get this over with, this place gives me the creeps,” hissed the new arrival.
“Patience, Travis. We told you how this works. We can give you some of it now, the rest later. If you have the money,” responded the first man.
Suddenly the second man pulled the first to the side, away from Travis. “I have a bad feeling all the sudden, Keith. Something isn’t right here. Either he is a cop or someone around here is listening… And no one can hear this because we are already suspected crack dealers,” whispered the man.
“Zach, grow up. There’s always risks dealing crack to people.”
“Fine, but I am just saying that something is different tonight; it’s off.” With that, both men joined Travis.
“Here ya go,” said Keith, handing a bag of white powder to Travis in exchange for a roll of cash. As Travis grabbed the bag, it slipped out of his hand. “Dammit,” he cried, as he bent down to pick up the bag, oblivious to the tiny amount of powder that had fallen on the ground. He snatched up the bag, ran to his car, sat down with a sigh of relief, and pulled out of the clearing as fast as he could.
Ash heard voices filtering through the trees, but she was distracted by a blinding pain in her leg. That was when she realized she couldn’t move it and assumed it was broken. She saw the bleary silhouette of two men making their way in her direction and they looked dangerous. She thought it would be best if she tried to slip out of the car and hide. The amount of strength it took her, though, to put any pressure on her leg was draining almost all of her energy. She slid back down in the driver’s seat, panting. Now, with the pain lessening ever so slightly, she was able to concentrate on the conversation a little more.
“Maine’s winters are extremely cold,” shivered Zach.
“We will be back to the warehouse in just a few minutes,” said Keith as the made their way to the car. “It was a good idea to make that abandoned warehouse our hide out. No one’s been there in years.” They were almost to their car, which was on the way to Ash’s, when they heard a slight whimper come from the area around where the anonymous car had landed. Both men looked at each other in shock and horror as they went to investigate. They were almost positive that the crash would have killed anyone; it wasn’t the first time they had been wrong. As they approached the car, they saw a timid looking girl, sitting in the car, looking terrified and in pain. She heard one man, the less educated man she assumed to be Keith from what she had heard, whisper to the other man, Zach if she was correct, “She looks alive. Do ya think she heard anythin’ that we just said?”
“We can’t take a chance of her going to the cops, they’re already onto us. What should we do?”
“There’s always one way to solve problems like this,” he said as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small handgun. Then he turned to the girl. She had just let out a muffled sob in fear, exhaustion, and pain.
“You can’t kill an innocent girl!” exclaimed Zach. “She was only in the wrong place at the wrong time!”
“But what if she goes to the cops?!”
The last thing Ash saw was the man looking at his gun, then her, then Zach, and back at the gun. Then, everything went dark.