She didn’t see what happened.

Dazzled by a flickering rainbow light, it took her a few seconds to piece together the crunch of bumpers and the jerk as her seatbelt arrested her forward lurch, which sent a snap of pain down the back of her head and neck, into one horrible fact: She’d just gotten into an accident.

Anna stared at the car in front of her. It was a beige sedan, an older model but nowhere near as geriatric as her more-rust-than-gray Honda Civic. Dust-free paint hinted at a garaged life, something Anna couldn’t provide for her car. The beige sedan’s turn signal blinked in a bemused sort of way before the brake lights flashed an angry red and its driver stopped its unintentional roll onto Denver West Parkway. Anna and her Honda (dubbed “Old Gray” by Livy) sat guiltily on the off ramp while vehicles from the highway pooled behind her like runoff from a river. After another long moment, the beige sedan trundled to the right, and Anna guided Old Gray after it into a shopping center parking lot.

What just happened?

As if it had declared her chest cavity another time zone, her heart belatedly began to pound when she parked behind the beige sedan. On autopilot, she dug her phone out of her purse and flipped it open, but in her mind she struggled to make sense of the accident and she didn’t end up dialing anyone.

She could remember leaving her apartment, driving up Morrison Road, and catching C-470 westbound, just like every other morning on her way in to work. She could remember merging onto I-70 because a King Soopers semi barreled across two lanes of traffic during the weave, scaring the driver of the smart fortwo in front of her. Then, of course, came her exit . . . Wait. She didn’t remember that.

Anna sighed, feeling her eyes sag down her face from lack of sleep. She must have spaced out at the tail end of the painfully familiar drive again. And why not? She’d been thinking of Eddie.

That was it, then. She’d spaced so much that she hadn’t seen the beige sedan. The exit merge was tricky here; she had to turn right on a continuous lane and then cross to the far left side of the street to turn left into the office park at the next intersection, half a block away. Guess she got overzealous and didn’t wait for the car ahead of her to accelerate. Question answered.

Why, then, did she have the tickly sensation in the back of her brain, like a bunch of rainbows at the edge of her vision? Rainbows required rain. It was August, already hot and brassy at six in the morning. It hadn’t rained in weeks.

A sharp tap at her window sent a jolt through her nervous system and she dropped her phone. It clapped shut in her lap. A rumpled, middle-aged man motioned for her to exit her car.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to call the police,” he said as soon as she opened her door. “There isn’t any damage.”

Hope sprang up in Anna. “There isn’t?”

“Well,” he said, in a classic schoolteacherish voice, “there isn’t any to me.”

“Ah,” she said quietly. That was what was important, wasn’t it? As long as you’re okay, screw the other guy.

She trudged past him while he hovered at her shoulder like a constipated mosquito, and knelt in front of Old Gray. Sure enough, the beige sedan’s plastic bumper must have absorbed the impact and bounced back into shape, but Old Gray had taken the hit with much less grace. The front license plate hung at an angle, bent under the frame and held in place by the single remaining screw. She scooped bits of her shattered headlight off the ground.

“Anyway, I have to get going,” the man said in a rush. “If you’ll just give me your information I’ll forget this happened. It would be your ticket, you know, if I called the police.”

Anna lifted up her eyes in amazement but didn’t get the chance to respond, for he thrust a sheet of paper at her. A scrawl at the top read Keith Hammond, followed by an address in Highlands Ranch. Huh. Mr. Hammond could afford to be generous.

“Let me go find a pen,” she murmured, brushing off her filmy floral skirt as she stood.

He snorted impatiently. “Didn’t you write it down yet? Here, use mine. Just tear a bit of paper off the bottom there. Unlike some people, I really have to get to work. I’d rather not wait around here all day.”

“I need to look at my insurance card.” Anna threw herself back into Old Gray, slamming the door behind her. The pieces of her headlight lens scattered unnoticed at her feet.

With a flick of her thumb, she had her phone open and dialing.

“Come on, Livy, pick up,” she muttered. She counted six rings while she scribbled out her info, the sheet of paper propped against the steering wheel. What, no voicemail? After siccing Rob on her at two in the morning, Livy had an obligation to leave her phone on a measly four hours later. With a huff, Anna snapped the phone closed, crushed the paper in her fist, and clambered out of the car.

“It’s all there,” she said, proffering the wad.

“About time.” Despite his obvious impatience, Hammond took several moments to squint at every inch of the paper, as if searching for clues.

Anna bit her lips angrily, aware that this stupid situation was her fault. She had to get to work, too, but she held her complaint in check. After all, she couldn’t afford a fine and the time off she would need to take a trip to the courthouse.

Hammond let her go at last, and Anna was sure, as their two cars swerved into opposite directions and she headed through the green light, that they parted with a mutual desire of never seeing each other again.

According to the report by his mother, Eddie didn’t feel a thing.

Actually, what Mrs. Rothschild said was, “He never knew what hit him.”

What a terrible thing to tell a mother, Anna thought fiercely. A disgusting thing to say, really. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? That because Eddie died like a mouse in a trap – quickly and without a clue – that made it all okay?

She heard snippets of murmured conversations as she walked through the crowd in the lobby in her gray sweater and skirt ensemble. It was a new outfit, purchased at Ross for her new job as an accounting temp. Gray was the best she could do, she thought ruefully as she pushed past people clad in funeral black. Until then, she’d never had a need for a pretty black dress.

“What happened to him?” The whispers trailed around her.

“An accident,” chorused the hushed answer.

Anna shut her eyes as she passed the table set up with Eddie memorabilia. Photos propped in silver frames dominated the front of the table; she appeared in some of the photos as well. She could feel the guests, those unfamiliar to her, watching her.

An accident. Anna kept walking while the emptiness inside her grew with a steady buzz. Eddie’s Jeep had broken down late one night on his way home from a gig at the Gothic theater. Anna, Rob, and the rest of the band had gone on to Denny’s for cheap coffee and Grand Slams. It was March. It was snowing. He was alone.

Mrs. Rothschild had told Anna what she’d been told, like a little girl regurgitating a hated lesson. Eddie’s Jeep stalled in the center lane of I-25. Eddie got out of the Jeep and lifted the hood, presumably to fix whatever was wrong. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler coming up behind the Jeep didn’t see the stalled vehicle through the whiteout conditions.

He never slowed down.

Anna tripped as she reached the ladies’ room door, wrecking her attempt at dignity. She stumbled inside the too-white room and fell against one of the sinks. A little plug-in air freshener shot a puff of mist at her. It smelled like roses.

It smelled like mourning.

She sobbed into the sink long after the memorial service started, choking and gasping as she fought to keep her voice from echoing around the tiled room. She wasn’t going to ruin this for Eddie’s family – she wasn’t.

When her cell signaled an incoming text, she gained enough control of herself to stop crying, wash her face, and straighten her gray skirt. The text was from Bethie, Eddie’s little sister.

“ruok”

Anna patted her hair into place with one hand and replied with the other. “y” she typed. “sry b rite there”

The trip back through the lobby, and then up the aisle to the podium and the lily-framed portrait of her best friend, went by like a dream. There was too much white, too much black: white service programs fanning their owners, black suit sleeves hugging the waists of black dresses, the white-painted walls and white flowers, the black carpet below her feet.

Anna stepped up to the microphone when Bethie pressed the play button of a small black CD player. A raw, hesitant piano melody strained through the speakers, sounding like the rough draft of a speech read aloud for the first time. The pianist was Eddie. Anna straightened her program, the lyrics to the unfinished song written in her own cramped hand, and lifted her voice above the recorded music. Eddie would have liked that.

It was the last time she sang in front of anybody.

“Stop obsessing,” Tuyên said.

Anna grimaced. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

Tuyên pushed her glasses higher, so that her dark eyes seemed to press right against the lenses. “The bad thing for today already happened,” she soothed. “You’re not going to get into another accident on your way home.”

The two girls stepped from the sidewalk to the rows of parked cars gleaming in the afternoon August heat. Anna clutched her laptop bag to her hip, trotting to keep up with Tuyên. Even though her Vietnamese coworker was smaller than she was, Tuyên rushed around like a powerboat under full throttle, leaving everyone to bob along in her wake or drown. She also ate like a two hundred pound football player, and Anna winced as a cramp seized her stomach. She shouldn’t have eaten so much at lunch.

“It’s not that,” Anna started, as they neared Old Gray rusting gently beneath its faded paint, but she stopped when Tuyên pursed her lips. “Okay, it is that.”

“Don’t be afraid,” the other girl insisted. “Mind over matter.”

Right. Mind over matter. Anna unlocked her door and slid inside the car. Her hand trembled as she turned the key in the ignition.

Tuyên waved encouragingly, waiting and watching like a diminutive guardian angel, and Anna drove out of the lot. When she paused at a stop sign, Old Gray’s brakes seemed to screech louder than usual. It was getting on her nerves. She flipped on the stereo to drown it.

So she had lied a little to Tuyên. It wasn’t that she was worried about getting into another minor accident like she had that morning. She was terrified.

Cars were dangerous things. No matter what safety features manufacturers came up with and CDOT mandated, people died every day. Like Eddie. It didn’t take much. One second to miss a crucial decision, and game over.

Crumb. She didn’t want to do this.

A quick glance in the mirrors showed her that she was alone at the stop sign. Anna rooted for her phone and, for the umpteenth time that day, dialed Livy.

“Where are you?” she exploded. Frustrated tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and she flung the phone into the passenger seat. Still no answer. That wasn’t like Livy at all.

What if something had happened to her?

Anna drummed her fingers against the steering wheel, debating. She could turn right and go home. She could turn left and go to Golden, and Livy’s house.

Golden was closer than her Lakewood apartment, but Livy shared the house with three other people. One of them was Rob.

A monstrous SUV screamed to a halt behind Old Gray, horn blaring. A Californian transplant, probably, used to breezing through stop signs, she thought with typical Coloradan prejudice. Still, it had given her a fright. She couldn’t hang around at this intersection all weekend.

“Damn it,” she snarled, yanked the wheel around, and roared off in the direction of Golden.

A/N: Greetings and salutations, dear readers. Anna's such a wimp, but she's a loyal friend. Maybe Livy will slap some sense into her, who knows? I hope you enjoyed this installment (leave a review!). It's now time for me to feed my son. He's been wonderfully patient with me this past week!

Reviewer Shout Out! My thanks go to rentedspace, wolfblood82, TheDarkScribe, eternita, Narq, and bonghi. This week, my shout-out goes to:

"The Life Of Someone Anonymous" by Obsession Changes Things ~ The anonymous writer of her schools social column is not so anonymous. What would happen to my life when a certian Hottie finds me out? Well lets just say that my life may just end up being just as publicized as the people I write about.

Go read it and review it!