“Really, are you serious? Oh my goodness!” I said in excitement as I cried.
I was test driving a car and my mom asks, “Do you want to drive it home?”
I had not had a car for three months. When I left that day, I was the owner of a GMC Terrain. I no longer had to ask anyone for rides or borrow their car. This feeling was utterly amazing.
As I drove home in my car I noticed all of the bells and whistles that this car had, that my previous car did not. The interior was all black was freshly cleaned with no signs of a previous owner anywhere. The black exterior shiny and sleek just how my 18-year-old self had always imagined.
Go back three months to the summer. One beautiful Wednesday my step-sister and I were driving to her orthodontist appointment. We were almost there. Then all of a sudden, WHAM. We had been hit by another car.
“Oh shit!” I screamed as my face flew forward and my feet slammed on the brake. My heart is beating out of my chest. The cars facing me are stopped and people are rushing to my door to make sure we are alright. When I got out of my car, all I saw was pieces of my gray Honda Pilot all over the road. Car pieces I was not even sure existed, were sprawled out covering the entire lane of traffic. The lanes seem wider than normal. The two-way road had a median with little sections for cars to turn left out of neighborhoods instead of right turn only. Alex, the woman that hit me, was coming out of a neighborhood and turning left. While having a stop sign it is believed that she did not stop. My road was a straight shot, no stop signs until I hit a dead end. As I was coming down the road she came out and hit the back-right passenger door. The momentum slid her car forward, ruining the front passenger door and breaking my front axle.
When approaching Alex after she had just hit my car, she asked, “Were you swerving?” I responded in a sassy tone, “Not until I saw you come at me.”
Alex and I were very nervous and did not want to touch anything that could be considered “evidence” for the police. We left our cars and all the debris where they were following the accident.
There was a moment of silence before she began apologizing and asking me for my information.
We called the police and shortly after, there were lights blocking all traffic and the headlights and other pieces of car debris were being picked up from all over the road. The police officer was a sweet woman with brown hair. Having never talked to a police officer before, I was shaking when she started walking towards me. She had come to me first to find out what had happened.
“Well, I was driving down the road and I saw her coming, but she was still behind the stop sign so I thought I had passed her, but then she hit me,” I said in a shaky voice, all in one breath.
“Okay. Where on your car did she hit you?” she asked very sweetly, as though she had dealt with nervous, freaked out people like me before.
I told her “She hit my car at the back-right passenger door, however, her car slid and ended up damaging the passenger door.”
She began walking around to inspect my car and determined “You can drive your car home today.”
Before she had time to take another breath my dad chimed in and said “Ma’am, both of het front tires are facing opposite directions, doesn’t that have something to do with her axle?”
Luckily the officer turned around inspected the front tires of my car further and agreed with my dad. “We will have your car towed, I am deeming it undriveable,” she stated.
After hearing all that I had to say, the officer walked over to Alex and heard her side of the story and checked out her car. While I was waiting to hear what I had to do next, it started to rain.
“Perfect timing,” I thought as I was standing outside, getting wet.
My parents and I decided to start moving my belongings into their car, since I was not able to take mine home. My car was a mess. I had everything in there, my dance bag, an extra outfit, shoes, a car seat for the kids I babysit, and wrappers/trash that I hadn’t cleaned out in a few days.
The officer came and told me, “She is trying to fight the ticket, but clearly she is at fault for the accident. You can tell by the way the two cars were damaged and where the two cars ended up. I have everything I need from you, so unless you want to watch them tow your car, you are free to leave.”
I decided that I would rather go home than stand in the rain, so I left with my parents. When we were walking to their car you could hear Alex, arguing with the police officer to not get the ticket. Since I left, I do not know if she ended up receiving a ticket or not. What I do know, is that I did not.