Less Than Five Miles From Home
My mother and I were driving north in the middle of the night from Marathon, Florida, with everything we owned in the back of the car. She was driving, and I was thirteen. Someone screamed from the opposite side of the roadway as we exited an international bridge. I cast a quick glance to the left—a woman with long black hair and a white tank top, who may or may not have had her hands to her mouth, or I may have made that up later—before returning my gaze to the road, just in time to see whatever we were going to run over. In the headlights, a crumple of fabric the size of a throw pillow glows white. We slammed into it hard, soared right through it, the wheels bouncing twice before carrying on. We were fifty yards up the road by the time my mother could slow down and stop aside.