No Accident

Anya Koshy

It was early in the morning. I didn't know the time, but knew it was before six because I didn’t want to be up. Suddenly, there was a noise, which didn’t sound distant—instead, closer to me. I then realized it wasn’t any ordinary sound. It was the same sound I heard almost every day at six in the morning. I hit stop on my alarm—it took me a second—but at least the ringing in my head was over. All of a sudden, my mom walked in.

“You have a two-hour delay,” she said as she walked out of my doorway.

“Okay, sounds good."’

And when she said that, I was elated. I was clearly not a morning person. I set a new alarm on my phone and went right back to sleep. What I thought was five minutes became an hour and thirty minutes. It was time to wake up all over again. I had to hit snooze this time. On my third attempt, I finally hit the snooze button. It was easier to roll out of bed this time.

I got ready for school and went downstairs to eat breakfast. As I went down the stairs, I could smell the bacon and eggs. My mom always made breakfast when she felt like there was time, and it was good for today. I peered through the frosted window and saw all the snow on the ground. After I finished breakfast, I picked up my bag, grabbed the keys off the counter, and walked out the front door. My car took a second to start because it had been sitting outside in the cold all night. I was about to pull out, but the first thing I noticed was the shiny pavement of the driveway. I slowly pulled out of the driveway and left the house.

The drive was thirty minutes long since I went to a private school. So, like always, I turned on the radio. I wanted to listen to the news to hear any updates on the snow. The radio also took a second to start. It started back up at the perfect timing. The song had just ended. Which meant that Neil and Marga would come on. They started talking about the usual—jokes, last night’s game stats in Boston, national news, and finally… the weather updates.

“Around 7:15 this morning, a tractor-trailer was driving recklessly, and about five or six cars went with it,” Marga said abruptly.