Bad Decisions
“So again, if you’re out on the road right now…”
The voice on the radio, no doubt broadcasting from some place safe and warm, was clearly mocking my poor decision-making. A massive gust of wind had just hit the side of my Honda, sending me sliding far enough toward the road’s center line that my tires hit the bumpy rumble strips before I could correct myself.
“Seriously folks, the National Weather Service is saying this isn’t just some normal winter storm. When they call it a bomb cyclone, neither of those words are the sort of thing you want to be out in, you feel me?”
I clicked off the radio, irritated by what I imagined was the announcer’s dulcet I told you so tone, but turned it back on a minute later. It was the only station I could pick up in the storm, and for fuck’s sake, I needed to know what kind of hell I’d driven myself into.
I dropped my speed from forty to twenty-five, probably still too fast for this sort of weather, but the honest truth was, I was scared shitless and could only think of reaching my destination. Or getting out of the storm. Whichever happened first.
Most people checked the weather before they went somewhere. Note, most. I was not most. Clearly.
And now I was fucked.
It wouldn’t be the first time. But if this bomb cyclone thing, whatever the hell it was, had its way, my short life might be over before dawn.
I hadn’t seen anyone else on the road for miles, I was in that big of an empty space. Some people called it the heartland. Others called it flyover country.
Right now, I wanted to call it my final resting place.
But I couldn’t give up that easily. I had my windshield wipers on high speed, and my front and back defrost going full blast, and was inching forward. I planned to do just that until, well, I couldn’t.
One thing I knew about this desolate place was that people judged the distance to the next town not in miles, but in minutes and sometimes even hours. It was where even a simple traffic accident could leave you stranded for god knew how long.
And that was a long time.
Of course, my grandmother just had to be born at the trembling edge of autumn and winter, not quite Thanksgiving and not quite Christmas. No problem for her, retired as she was to the land of orange trees and bikinis. You might sweat your ass off in Florida, but you certainly never had to deal with snow.
If you were stupid enough to try and drive there, as I apparently was.
And when you lived on the other side of the country, and your mother called to say that Grandma’s ninety fifth birthday was coming up, and the family was planning a ‘surprise’ birthday party and family reunion since it was pretty much guaranteed it’d be the old lady’s last chance to be mentally present for anything, you got your ass to Grandma’s house if you had to freaking walk.
Other than that, I didn’t quite know why I jumped on the birthday bandwagon. I wasn’t close to my family, and in fact hadn’t seen most of them in two or three years. I hadn’t seen my grandmother face to face since college, and some of my cousins who were attending? I could count on my fingers the number of times I’d seen them in my life. They probably didn’t even know my name.
But thirty years of being basically a good girl was a bitch to overcome. So, I decided to play the good daughter, and schlep my ass across the country for the reunion.
Which was easy for most people. Once you got past the financial aspect of it and resigned yourself to shelling out the money for a multi-hundred-dollar plane ticket, heading cross country was just an issue of comparing airfares and departure times.
Not so much for me.
I didn’t fly.
I broke into nervous sweats if I even saw an airplane on television. I had issues, there was no denying it. And I had no idea why. It just was, like the sky being blue or something. There was no changing it, preordained by the universe as it was.
It had kind of sneaked up on me, but when I could barely watch Star Wars without having heart tremors, the idea of hopping on a flight to fly across the country was about the same as asking me to step into the ring with a prime, pissed off Mike Tyson. Even if it were for a last chance to see my grandmother, I wasn’t getting on a plane.
Instead, I’d arranged for two weeks off from my job and hit the road. My boss wasn’t happy, giving me a bunch of passive-aggressive grumbling about how it sure was nice to take all your vacay in the same chunk, but to be honest I didn’t care. It wasn’t like the store was going to fall apart without me, or that I didn’t deserve the time off. Truth was, my job was just… a job. I tolerated it.
Like a lot of my life. I pretty much drifted from week to week, month to month, paycheck to paycheck without feeling any of the excitement I’d been sure lay ahead of me back when I was a dreamy teenager.
For the first day of my road trip, things were fine. I drove a reasonable five hundred and some odd miles, stopping at a chain motel that gave an extra one percent cash back on my credit card. I slept, grabbed some vending machine food, and returned to the road next morning without a hitch.
I ignored the first signs of bad weather, figuring it was just regular rain or light snow. I was on the interstate after all, not some backwoods country highway. I could tolerate putting up with driving a bit slowly, or getting off the road early and making it up over the next two days as I made my way to Grandma’s house. Hell, maybe I’d even have a bit of a story to tell them when I got there. It would make the reunion more tolerable and me seem more interesting.
But as the wind pushed me again and my stomach dropped somewhere down into my shoes, I realized my ‘head in the clouds’ approach to life wasn’t serving me well at that moment. I became terrified that my little car—which didn’t have snow or even all-season tires and was barely handling things as it was—was going to become my coffin.
I’d reached the stage where I was looking for a refuge, any refuge. But there was nothing. No motels, no rest stops, no towns.
Just fucking snow.
I was in the middle of nowhere, and things had gone beyond scary.
Should I pull over and wait it out?
I’d seen too many I Shouldn’t be Alive episodes to know I’d be the one person who wouldn’t make it out alive.
And while I might not make that show, I’d for sure end up on the fucking news if I didn’t get off the road soon.
I could see it now. I’d be the lucky subject of a Darwin Award, where people marvel over others’ stupid, deadly decisions.
And now I was down to half a pack of stale peanuts and some bubblegum, stored in my car’s console. I was about as unprepared as I could be. The only thing worse would be if I decided to take my clothes off and walk in the storm.
Actually, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The end might come sooner that way.
