Episode 2 The Accident
The Girl of Sugar Beach
*Based on the interview with Gretchen Sebold
With the parents out of town, the party raged well past midnight.
Predictably, the small gathering originally planned had bloated to include most of the junior and senior class.
Sarah Cayling frantically tried to clear her house and stop the destruction that was occurring, from spilled beer to sex in her parents’ bed.
She was ready to call the police, but instead recruited two guy friends from the football team to empty the house.
The jocks gathered their friends and started shoving.
At first, small scuffles broke out in the foyer.
Then more kids joined in. Sucker punches were thrown, and before long, the fighting turned into a riot that spilled onto the front yard.
The smart kids ran. The drunken kids stayed to watch.
“We’re leaving,” Grace said to Marshall.
“No way,” he said. “Somebody threw a sucker punch. I’m not leaving my teammates.”
“The hell you’re not. The cops are coming, you idiot. You want to get thrown into a paddy wagon with a bunch of meatheads? Mom and Dad will kill us.”
Marshall tried to walk back toward the house and the riot. Grace grabbed him by the back of the shirt. “Let’s go.” She cocked her head sideways and gave him a look when their eyes met. Her lips moved, but her voice stayed silent. Come on.
“Your recruiting days will be over if you get arrested,” Ellie Reiser said.
A far-off police siren screamed through the night. When they heard it, all three ran.
“Gimme the keys,” Marshall said. “You’re shitty drunk.”
“Screw you,” Grace said. “You were just doing shots.”
“You can’t even run straight,” he said as Grace veered off the sidewalk.
“Let me drive,” Ellie said. She had never had a sip of alcohol in her young life.
They found their car on a side street two blocks over from Sarah Cayling’s house, where they had been instructed to park to avoid detection by the neighbors. Ellie sat behind the wheel and stuck the key in the ignition.
“Let’s go!” Marshall said, climbing into the passenger seat.
Grace slammed the door as she sat in the backseat behind Ellie, who put the car into gear and hit the accelerator. A police car streaked past on a crossroad ahead of them, causing Ellie to take a sharp right turn down a side street. Marshall veered with Ellie’s sudden jerk of the wheel.
“No one’s chasing us, Ellie,” Marshall said. “The cops are going to break up a party. Just drive like a normal human being.”
Ellie took a deep breath to calm her nerves, closing her eyes momentarily.
“Stop,” Marshall said. “Stop! Ellie, there’s a goddamn stop sign!”
Ellie opened her eyes in time to see the red hexagon, but it registered a second too late.
The sign was already past her, and the nose of the car was well into the four-lane highway before she lifted her foot from the accelerator and slammed it onto the brake pedal.
It was in that moment that Ellie looked to her left to see the car speeding toward her.
She flipped her foot back to the gas and punched the engine, hoping to squeeze past the oncoming car in just enough time to make the left turn.
Her hopes came true. The car, screeching and veering, narrowly missed her, coming within an inch of the rear bumper as Ellie skidded across the lanes, pulling the car hard into a left turn.
She never saw the U-Haul truck speeding from her right.
The impact of the truck’s front grille was square to the right passenger-side, where Marshall was sitting.
His head connected with the side window, producing a sickening impact that rose above the screeching tires and crunching metal like a gunshot fired into the night.
When the cars stopped spinning, nothing was left but the bleached aftereffect of a collision: ringing ears, blurred vision, and the smell of rubber burned across the pavement.
Grace looked from the backseat at Marshall, who was slumped and unconscious in the passenger seat.
A spiderweb pattern clouded the glass to his right.