Dancing In the Moonlight

Francesca Simon

Final 

December 3^rd, 2019 

It was early Sunday morning, around 8:00 a.m. when 17 year-old Erika Groom’s phone alarm went off. She rolled over in her queen sized bed filled with different colored blankets and different assorted pillows to stop the alarm so she wouldn’t wake up the other 5 people in her house. Still exhausted, she contemplated if she could sleep for 15 more minutes. Erika is not a morning person to say the least. Her weekends usually consisted of staying up extremely late and then sleeping in until about 2 p.m., but her junior prom was in two days and there was a lot that still had to be done. She came to the conclusion that she didn’t have time to go back to sleep, but she didn’t mind because she was about to go to her favorite bagel place with her best friend Katie.

 The Bagel World she was going too was located at 203 Canal street, Salem and was an extremely popular place for teenagers to go on the weekend morning with their friends. Not wanting to have to stand in the long line that usually went outside and wrapped around the building, she quickly threw on her flip flops and grabbed her moms keys on the kitchen table. She ran out the door in her pjs to go pick up Katie who lived about 10-15 minutes away in Marblehead. They usually got Bagel World every weekend, and it was Erika’s turn to drive this time. They try to switch off as much as possible because both of their parents made them pay for their own gas, and since they hadn’t started their summer jobs yet they we’re both a bit tight on money. She didn’t want to take the car that her and her three sisters shared, because she knew there wasn’t going to be any gas in it and she didn’t want to fill up the tank just to drive down the street to Marblehead and then Bagel world. Her mother’s car was a 2009 big black Chevy that had some technical problems in the past, but she took it anyways. 

It was around 8:30 a.m. when Erika crossed the border from Swampscott to Marblehead, her house only being a couple miles down the road. Katie lived deep inside of Marblehead, and it was a drive that Erika had taken many times. As she drove by Kings beach to her right, she looked out over the ocean and saw nothing but clouds, not an inch of sunlight in sight. It was still warm outside, partly humid but a sad day no doubt. Summer was approaching, but today it didn’t feel like it. The weather and the early morning made her feel tired, since she usually was never awake at this time, especially on the weekend.

 In hopes of waking up a little, Erika unlocked her phone and typed in the search bar “Apple Music”. She went into her playlist and picked dancing in the moonlight by Toploader, one of her favorite songs since she was a little girl. She had driven on that road hundreds of times with her friends, blasting music over the car speakers singing along at the top of their lungs. As she clicked the lock button on the side of her phone, she looked up and realized that her car was veering towards the sidewalk. Trying to quickly react, Erika threw her phone down and gripped the wheel to turn the car in the opposite direction going around 40 miles per hour. As the car jolted in the opposite direction, the Civic smashed into a parked car at around 252 Atlantic Avenue. The parked car was a Jeep, and the impact sent the Jeep partway up onto the sidewalk. She was too late, and her car smashed into the black Jeep and then everything went dark. 

As her eyes began to open, the only color she could see was red. Her eyes were stained with the blood dripping down from the 5 inch cut on her forehead that she got from smashing her head off of the drivers window. The car had completely tipped over on the drivers side, and the only thing keeping Erika in place was the seat belt that was gluing her against the seat. She wiped her eyes clear of the blood and looked out the sunroof which was now facing the streets. There were blurry figures running towards her car, she could hear people scream “Call 911!” and “Get her out of there!” but she couldn’t move a muscle. She grabbed her phone from the piles of shard glass and opened up her camera to see what she looked like. As she opened up the camera the first thing she saw was the deep cut on her head. She gently touched the wound and immediately screamed at the pain. Her left eye was swollen from hitting her window and there were cuts all up and down her body. 

She had been trapped inside the car for around 3-4 minutes, and she still couldn’t register what was going on. She had hit her head extremely hard and there was no doubt in her mind that she had a concussion. Her heart started racing and she broke out into a sweat, she felt like she was in the final moments of her life. She could vaguely hear sirens and coming from the distance. She unbuckled her seat belt and got herself to stand up on the ground so she could look out the sunroof. She could see more clearly now and saw that there was a crowd that had formed around her car.  

There was a woman in her mid 40’s knocking on the sunroof repeatedly. “Are you okay? Help is coming!” the women shouted with a cell phone pressed against her ear. She seemed distraught as she yelled into the phone, making Erika more nervous. Erika heard two police cars pull up next to her. The officers got out of their car and rushed over to the accident without shutting their doors.  “Are you hurt?” one of the police officers yelled through the closed sun roof. At this point Erika was hysterically crying. “Yes I hit my head please get me out of here” she said. She saw a firetruck as well as an ambulance pull up about 50 feet away from her car. The firefighters jumped out of the truck, one of them holding a large pry bar that was half the size of the individual holding it. The firefighter ordered Erika to stand as far away from the sunroof as possible and to block her face. She backed up as far as she could against the drivers seat which was covered in blood and blocked her face with her hands.  She heard a giant smash and when she opened her eyes she saw two tan gloves reaching inside of the car to grab her. She grabbed at the hands which slowly guided her out of the vehicle. Another fire fighter helped ease her body out of the window, and they gently placed her onto a stretcher surrounded by EMT’s. 

The police had already notified Erika’s mother, who was currently on her way to the accident. The EMT’s turned around the stretcher to put her inside of the ambulance when Erika looked up and saw her car. It was completely totaled. Glass layered the paved road along with pieces of her mom’s car that spread about 10 feet past the car. She looked to her right and saw the Jeep that she had smashed into. It was pushed up on the side walk with a large dent mark on the left side of the car. “We’re going to take care of that cut on your head right now okay hunny?” said one of the older female EMT’s who was holding an alcohol wipe to Erika’s forehead. “You’re in good hands now. Don’t you worry about a thing, were going to fix you right up!” the EMT continued. Erika showed no reaction on her face, her eyes still glued to the accident she had just caused. The EMT put her had on top of Erika’s, “The only thing that matters is that you’re okay. If you weren’t wearing your seat belt, you would have died. Miracles are real, and you experienced one today.”