Unlike the sunny days that passed this month, today the sky was cloudy and the weather was rainy. It wasn’t like normal rainy weather, which was comforting. After waking up in the morning, it suddenly made me feel some kind of unpleasant feeling inside. I had places to go, work to finish, so I got out of bed without snoozing the alarm and started to get ready.
I needed to pick up Alice from the cafe that she was working in and take us to the hairdresser that we planned on going to, unlike the other days which I spent in a bookstore. Of course, before that, I had to take back the clothes I gave for the dry cleaning and give Haru the details about the party. There was quite a lot of work to be done.
As soon as I was going to complete my preparations and step out of the house, my phone started to vibrate. When I checked who the caller was, I realized that it was a number that I had never saved before. That was weird enough because even though I don’t normally answer numbers like this, something inside me was telling me that I should make this phone call. With a slight hesitation, I answered the call.
“December 23, 2017,” said the thick voice on the other side of the line, evidently played with an audio device. Even though I was surprised at the voice for a second or two, when I realized what day it was, my blood was almost frozen. Nobody but me, Haru and Anne, who died in the accident, knew the date of the car accident that happened 4 years ago.
“Who are you?” I could hardly say. My voice came out like a whisper, and it showed how much this event had actually affected me.
As the robotic voice whispered the same date once again, I realized that this conversation was making me more upset than it should have been. “I don’t know who you are, but please don’t call this number ever again.” I ended the call without waiting for an answer from the other line.
Without checking my phone again, I threw it inside my bag my bag and left the house. I was going to the dry cleaning, which I had to reach by car, when I thought about what had happened again.
It was raining again like today, we were getting ready for my birthday party with Anne. We were laughing and talking about the most ridiculous things we could think of.
We did not see the car. Neither I nor her… We were both so focused on the funny memory I had two years ago that we didn’t realize that the red light was on and a black car was speeding towards us.
Memories flashed through my mind, realizing how much I missed Anne, the best friend who was like a family to me. My eyes started to fill up and the roads, which were already blurred because of the rain, started to look less clear.
Just as I was wiping my tears with my right hand, I saw two young people walking by, laughing. But it was too late. I witnessed my car crash into someone, the papers in their bags flying all over the place, and the deployment of my airbags as if I were watching a slow motion video. Just like the event that happened four years ago, a black car, which belonged to me this time, had bumped into one of the two teenagers who were enjoying their day. It felt like a deja vu. If I had known I would experience all these, I would have never answered that phone call.