Seconds Away

Those red brake lights were a sharp contrast to the blackened night. In the glow of the headlights in front of them, I could see the vehicle was stopped on the bridge. It was one of those small pick-up trucks, "death traps" I call them, ironically enough. I slowed to a creep a hundred feet behind it. I don't like to get too close to anything, especially right there – in front of Freaky Jason's house, the house I call "Freaky Jason's house" for no other reason than the house and land have a Camp Crystal Lake feel. It's just creepy.

The passenger door was open, and next to it, I saw the silhouette of a person. Maybe something about the way he/she was moving set off my internal alarm. I still don't know exactly what it was my brain registered in that moment. I let my foot off my own brake and rolled closer, annihilating, incidentally, every arrogant thought I had ever had about how I would act in a Freaky Jason, danger ahead, so get away or run up the damn stairs to certain death-type situation. I got CLOSER.

I could make out a young woman, fighting to get out of a seatbelt while her feet were on the ground. That wasn't good at all, I knew. Something flew from the cab of the truck, hit her, and then hit the ground. She managed to free herself from the seatbelt, and she grabbed the object... Shit, was all I thought before I stepped on the gas, hoping my little car would be enough. Maybe it was; the truck sped off.

"Ask her if she is okay," I said to Jay as we pulled up next to her and I rolled down the passenger window.

"Hey, are you alright?"

"Yes," and then, "No." She stepped away and back again, away and back again. "Can you give me a ride? – It's just down the road."

My mother would have killed me. "Get in the back," I said to Jay. At least I would put the stranger, this young woman, next to me. Jay moved and the girl jumped in, inundating the car with the smell of alcohol. She was shaken, crying. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I need to go to the end of this road and make a right. It's just two minutes away."

"Okay." As I quickly turned around and got the hell out of there (who knew what had happened in that small pick-up which could return any second), I noticed she kept grabbing at her shoulder and hunching forward. She turned her head so that her blonde wavy hair fell over her face. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine." She obviously wasn't, but I guessed she just needed to be for the moment. I took her to a house –cars were in the driveway, lights were on, I thought people were there. She said thank you. I said she was welcome. And then she was gone.

When I got a good distance from the house, I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew I had just taken some chance, not on any real freaky Jason, but on the transparency of the situation and our own safety. My mother warned me about bad people. Worse, I have seen what bad people will do with naïve goodness, sad as that is, and I knew how quickly it could have gone horribly wrong. Sometimes people don't get involved not because they don't care, but because they are scared or don't know what to do. This wasn't the first time I was glad that I had a tendency to react instictively, and then feel and think later. Otherwise, I might feel shame now. These things will never leave me. But had she been my daughter, I would have wanted someone to take the chance, to stop for her, to take her to a safe place, and to hope long after that she was okay.

You never know what you are about to run straight into, seconds away.

Take care, young girl.