Saturday's Storyteller: "It wasn't my fault."
by Belinda Roddie
It wasn't my fault.
I tell myself that over and over. Half-buried in the bleached sheets, the pillow muffling all sound threatening to rattle my skull, the curtains drawn so tightly across the window that there was no such thing as daylight. Outside, the clatter of the wind against the masts of nearby sailboats sounded too much like dry bones clinking together. I'm all too familiar with the sound.
It wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault.
I know that I had been drinking that night, almost three weeks ago. I remember the way she ripped the car keys away from my hand. I had walked home in the cold, bitter dark, my thin jacket hardly protecting me from the elements. She had told me to do that. She had told me it was the only way I could be safe. There were bubbles on her breath, too.
My parents stopped asking me to leave my room about three days ago. They still knock, though. They leave plates of food outside that I hardly touch. It gets cold, and then I don't want to eat it. It's only when they're asleep that I dare to walk to the kitchen to fetch something small. And even then, each edible morsel feels like broken glass in my throat. Cutting into me, scraping open my still raw wounds.
They found my car flipped over on the side of the road. She was planning on driving it back to my place. Her BAC had been off the fucking charts.
The police questioned me heavily, and I told them the truth. It wasn't my fault, they concluded. And I've been clinging to that ever since.
She had been pinned down, trapped, beneath folded in fiberglass and alloy. The blue paint job on my car had hidden the red around her body. My parents didn't want me to have to identify her body. I did, anyway. I still remember the clicking of an exposed skeleton beneath the torn denim leg of her pants.
We were both nineteen. We shouldn't have let our lips touch anything besides juice or lemonade. And yet, there she was. No more effervescent on her throat. No crisp laughter on her tongue.
She had wanted to keep me safe, but she hadn't thought about doing the same thing for herself. I should have been there for her. Torn the keys from her own grip and tossed it into the lake by our mutual friend's house. Told her that we'd walk home together, hand in hand.
I could have done so much more.
Was it really not my fault?
This week's prompt was provided by John Metz.
It wasn't my fault.
I tell myself that over and over. Half-buried in the bleached sheets, the pillow muffling all sound threatening to rattle my skull, the curtains drawn so tightly across the window that there was no such thing as daylight. Outside, the clatter of the wind against the masts of nearby sailboats sounded too much like dry bones clinking together. I'm all too familiar with the sound.
It wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault.
I know that I had been drinking that night, almost three weeks ago. I remember the way she ripped the car keys away from my hand. I had walked home in the cold, bitter dark, my thin jacket hardly protecting me from the elements. She had told me to do that. She had told me it was the only way I could be safe. There were bubbles on her breath, too.
My parents stopped asking me to leave my room about three days ago. They still knock, though. They leave plates of food outside that I hardly touch. It gets cold, and then I don't want to eat it. It's only when they're asleep that I dare to walk to the kitchen to fetch something small. And even then, each edible morsel feels like broken glass in my throat. Cutting into me, scraping open my still raw wounds.
They found my car flipped over on the side of the road. She was planning on driving it back to my place. Her BAC had been off the fucking charts.
The police questioned me heavily, and I told them the truth. It wasn't my fault, they concluded. And I've been clinging to that ever since.
She had been pinned down, trapped, beneath folded in fiberglass and alloy. The blue paint job on my car had hidden the red around her body. My parents didn't want me to have to identify her body. I did, anyway. I still remember the clicking of an exposed skeleton beneath the torn denim leg of her pants.
We were both nineteen. We shouldn't have let our lips touch anything besides juice or lemonade. And yet, there she was. No more effervescent on her throat. No crisp laughter on her tongue.
She had wanted to keep me safe, but she hadn't thought about doing the same thing for herself. I should have been there for her. Torn the keys from her own grip and tossed it into the lake by our mutual friend's house. Told her that we'd walk home together, hand in hand.
I could have done so much more.
Was it really not my fault?
This week's prompt was provided by John Metz.
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