Liz Pusateri

A/N: This is a short essay I wrote for my creative nonfiction class. I’m really trying to improve my writing, so please critique me!!

My Eighteenth Birthday Present

When I was eighteen, I thought being eighteen was the best ever. I was looking forward to prom, senior trip, graduation, and college. I could vote, I could buy cigarettes (even though I would never smoke them), and I could drive after 11p.m. Driving after 11p.m. is a big deal for eighteen-year-olds who grow up in Pennsylvania because Pennsylvania, along with six other states, enforces an 11p.m. curfew for sixteen- and seventeen-year-old drivers. This restriction creates an extra little murmur of excitement around becoming an adult.

The Saturday after my eighteenth birthday I made plans to meet up with a bunch of my best friends from church camp whom I normally wouldn’t have seen for months. Church camp friends are the best friends a person could ever have. I didn’t see them often enough to get tired of them and when I did see them the thrill of the reunion made anything we decided to do twice as fun as it normally would have been. It took two days to make the plans. The group of friends included two of my best friends from my high school and my younger sister, so I would be picking them up and driving about fifty miles north to Butler, PA, a good meeting place because it was about the same driving distance for everyone. Eddie, who was also eighteen, would be picking up some other people and meeting us at the movie theater. I was going to get to see friends whom I never got to see. I was going to have the chance to drive after 11p.m. All through work that morning my stomach was fluttering with excitement. I couldn’t wait to get out on the road.

It was a November day with September weather. The sun was warm and illuminating the ground covered in red, orange, and yellow leaves. The air was crisp and cool as it drifted through the open doors to meet me where I was standing in front of the cash register at work. My job was fun and easy; I worked in a small, local hardware store that was owned by my best friend’s dad. The other employees were like my family and we goofed around constantly. It was and probably will continue to be the best job I have ever had. When I was done with work around mid-day, I left the store smiling, my jacket thrown over my arm, and hopped into my red 1995 Volkswagen Jetta, my gently used and generously loved car that I had saved for, bought myself, and owned since I was sixteen. I started the car, buckled my seatbelt, and stuffed my purse and jacket between myself and the driver’s side door as I always had. I stopped quickly at the ATM and the gas station before heading home to get ready for the night.

I showered clean of the hardware-store smell (a combination of fertilizer and nails) and chose my outfit carefully, hoping that it would get cool enough later so that I would have the opportunity to wear my new Anderson University sweatshirt that I had received as a birthday present. I had just recently decided to attend Anderson the next fall and I was both excited about and proud of my decision. A lot of the friends I was meeting that night were also interested in attending, and one was already a student there. I glanced at myself in the mirror before my sister Emily bounded into my room, her face glowing.

“It’s time for dinner, Lizzie, and then we’re leaving right after dinner, right? Because I just talked to Ben on the phone and told him we were leaving right after dinner.”

“Yeah, right after dinner,” I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Her enthusiasm was contagious and causing me to be even more excited than I already was. “What’s for dinner?”

Dinner ended up being pizza my mom had picked up on her way home from work. We were of course running late and wolfed down the food. I snatched my purse off the table as we were running out the door and managed to give my Mom, Dad, and other sister quick hugs.

“Be careful!” my Mom shouted as she always did.

“I will, Mom, I will! Bye!”

I loved to drive fast. I think this was partly because I thought it was fun and partly because I am a chronically late person. In this case, I was speeding mostly because we were running a little late. The two friends we were picking up lived very close to my house, so in no time Jaime was in the passenger seat, Emily was in the back, and we were pulling into Larissa’s driveway. Larissa is also a chronically late person, so it took her a couple of minutes to rush out to the car. I sped out of her driveway, turned left, and drove up the street. I was steering with one hand and turning up the music with the other. The upbeat notes of a David Crowder Band song filled the car. We bounced over the trolley tracks and up to the stop sign at the top of the hill at the intersection that connected the residential road to the main road.

I stopped for a second, looked left and then right. I didn’t see anything coming. I think I was still looking to the right as I began to turn to the left. Larissa screamed my name in the seat behind me. I didn’t know what she was screaming about. As I turned I gradually looked to the left. There was a white work van with a Christmas tree strapped to the top of it coming straight at me. At first, I didn’t know what to do. My foot came off the gas, my hands flew off the wheel, and my eyes squeezed shut. I couldn’t hear anything except Larissa’s original scream ringing in my ears.

When I opened my eyes we were facing the other way; we must have spun around at least once. I looked around me. Everyone seemed okay. Emily’s eyes were huge and her knuckles were white from gripping the edge of her seat. Larissa was racked with sobs.

“Liz, your hand’s bleeding!” she cried. I looked down and saw that there were bits of shattered glass all over my lap and lodged in the flesh of my left hand. Hot tears filled my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks. I wasn’t crying because I was bleeding or because I was in pain, but because I didn’t know what I was going to say to my parents. My mom had told me to be careful and I obviously had not been. I briefly wondered if I could get away with not telling them at all. And now there was no way we could make it to meet everyone on time, I thought.

Jaime was the only one smart enough to pull out her cell phone and call both her parents and mine. Past Jaime through the window, I could see Larissa’s dad and brother running up the road toward my debilitated car. They lived close enough that they probably could have heard the crash from their living room.

“Is everyone okay?" a stranger asked through my broken window. I couldn’t even answer him I was crying so hard. I looked around. Cars were stopped all over the road and concerned people were getting out to investigate the situation. The stranger at the window must have stopped to see what was going on, and someone must have called 911 because a police car was pulling up with the lights and sirens going. An ambulance and a fire truck were right behind it.

Two firemen pulled us out of the car. I had to crawl across the seats and go out the passenger door because the entire front and drivers side of my car was completely smashed in. I sat in the damp grass on the side of the road while the paramedics picked the glass out of my hand and bandaged me up. I shivered in the cool air; the sun had set during the chaos and now only the red and blue lights from the emergency vehicles illuminated the scene of the accident. The police questioned me and I didn’t know what to say. I knew the accident had been my fault, but I didn’t want to get in trouble. Someone said that the driver in the van I had collided with was okay. I took a deep breath and I almost had my tears at bay until my parents arrived and a fresh flow started.

“I’m so sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t careful,” I sobbed as she approached me. She was crying, too. My parents wrapped Emily and me in a big hug. I had misjudged them; they weren’t mad, they were just glad I was okay. My dad talked to the police and took care of the insurance information while my mom tried to calm me down. All I could do was apologize over and over to my parents, Larissa’s parents, and Jaime’s parents. They had entrusted their children to me and I had almost killed them. I was definitely going to be more careful from now on, like my mom had told me I should be.

My dad came back with my purse and my sweatshirt. I still think my purse had a role in saving my life that night. In its regular place between me and the door, it took most of the impact. Everything inside was in pieces, including my cell phone. Wrapped up in my Anderson University sweatshirt and hugging my knees to my chest, I gazed at my car that I loved so much. It was obvious that it was completely totaled. That’s where overconfidence and recklessness will get you, I thought. So much for driving after 11p.m. It would be six months before I would have a car to be able to do that.