bared teeth. I took several deep breaths. I lifted my hands from the steering wheel, moved my fingers. I eased my foot off the brake and wiggled my toes. My neck and shoulder ached where the seat belt had yanked me back, but I wasn’t hurt in any serious way. I touched my head, smoothed back my hair.
I was okay. My hands were trembling. I was okay. It was not that serious. The air bags had not gone off. But I’d heard glass breaking. Something was broken. I tried not to think about Jimmy.
What to do. What to do. The engine was still running. I stepped carefully on the gas and heard a wild spitting sound, but there was no movement. I put the car in reverse, tried again. Going nowhere.
“It’s okay,” I said out loud. My teeth chattered. “It’s okay. It’s fine.”
I turned off the engine, put on my hat, and opened the door. The weeds beneath me crunched under my boot; each stalk and leaf was completely encased in a perfectly smooth sheath of ice. I pressed one hand on the hood, steadying myself as I worked my way around to the front of the car. The light from the clouded sunrise was faint, but I could see that the bumper was caved in over the right front tire. The glass I’d heard breaking was the right headlight.
I leaned against the car and rubbed my shoulder. It hurt where the seat belt had held. The wind blew hard, and tiny drops of cold rain hit my nose and cheeks. I rubbed my shoulder and looked around. There was just the gray ice, the low, silvery sky, and the empty interstate. A station wagon glided by in the eastbound lane. I watched it disappear over a hill in the distance. It was only fair. Nobody should stop for anyone. I could be a murderer, for all they knew.
I got back in the car and rummaged through my backpack for my phone, hoping I’d just overlooked it. But I hadn’t. I’d brought along my physiology book, my magnetic-stripped meal card, my driver’s license, a pack of Life Savers, and several pistachio shells. And that was it.
My father had, of course, given me plenty of advice on what to do if I ever wrecked a car. I was to stay inside with the doors locked and wait for the police or the highway patrol. When they arrived, I was to make them show me their badges before I rolled down the window. Before I did any of this, I was supposed to call my father with the phone that I was to always have with me, the phone that my father had purchased for me, not because he wanted me to better be able to, as he put it, “blah blah blah” with my friends all day, but because he wanted me to have one in case of an emergency.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My nose was running. My face was pale. If he found out about this, he would yell. Later he would say he was sorry for yelling, and that he only yelled because he loved me and because he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. But before he did that, he would yell.
I’m not sure how long I sat there. I’d forgotten my watch as well. It felt like an hour, but it might have been less. The freezing rain turned into regular rain, and then stopped. I got cold. Hungry. I wanted caffeine. The rising sun was a pale dot in the sky, and I looked at it without squinting, trying to guess the time. My physiology lab started at ten. My lab instructor, a PhD candidate from Ethiopia who appeared to be maybe two years older than I was, had informed us that she was aware that people really did get the flu and grandmothers really did die and that there were all kinds of legitimate tragedies that could keep us away; but she also believed that these tragedies were not her problem. In the end, work was work, and it had to be done at a certain time.
And yet there was nothing I could do. In either direction, there was just cold highway and ice, no sign of Highway Patrol. I turned on the radio, moving the dial past country music and scratchy commercials until I heard a DJ’s low voice warning of hazardous driving conditions. Bridges were especially dangerous.