Beyond the Surface (working title)

Carly's Time (working)



2001 
 

“Mom was especially on a you tonight don’t you think?” 
 Carly asked as she rolled her eyes. 
She then launched into the exact imitation of their mother’s high pitched, sweet as candy voice that always held a hint of the innocence as she would ask probing questions. 

“So Maggie, when are you going to meet a nice boy and settle down? You spend too much time with your head stuck in a book studying.”

 Maggie laughed turning her head to look at Carly as she grinned and stuck her tongue out. Only Carly could get away with calling her Maggie, her full name was Magdalena and everyone else knew her as Lena, but not Carly. Maggie reached over and smacked her leg playfully. 

“Thanks for driving me home sis. I swear to god if I don’t get a car soon I am going to go insane.”

Maggie focused back on the dark road in front of them as they waited at a red light.

“Go insane? That’s impossible, you’re already there.”

“Ha-ha loser.” 

Grinning Maggie watched the road and then slowly started to accelerate as the light flicked to green. They had moved two inches forward when the blinding light came hurtling toward them and tires squealed in protest right before a bone crunching noise splintered through Maggie's ears and everything went black…


2010



Sitting up suddenly Lena felt the sweat drip down her spine as she clutched her chest tightly. Glancing over to the clock that sat by her bed she watched as the red numbers flicked to 3:21am. s***. Every night the nightmare was the same, it was like a bad scene in a movie that was stuck on repeat and wouldn’t stop. The only major difference was this was her reality and no matter what she did for the last nine years of  her life she had been living with the ugly truth that she had been behind the wheel of the car the night her younger sister Carly had been killed in under twenty seconds. Leaning against the headboard Lena squeezed the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply. She looked over to the picture hanging above her stark dresser of Carly and herself on Carly's 21st birthday and sighed deeply as she closed her eyes and slid down into her bed staring at the ceiling fan as it spun slowly making that irritating, thwump, thwump, thwump with every rotation. Just another thing she had neglected to fix. Lena snorted softly and added it as a mental note, kind of like the rest of her life. With that sobering thought she rolled over onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut willing herself to get at least one more hour of sleep before she had to get up and go to work at 7am but as the seconds turned into minutes she knew sleep was beyond her and as she did every morning she woke up with the sobering thought of, well s***.