The Dare

The Dare

By Christopher Lapriola

It was because she was a girl I liked.  It was because I was seventeen and full of the invulnerability and insanity of youth.  It was because she dared me. We were on our way to her house down the road at over 100 mph.  She dared me to get her home in five minutes.  It was a twenty-minute drive.  I was an idiot.

I had learned how to drive in my small town where there were lots of kids with fast cars, and not so many cops.  We raced each other, taunted each other, and tested each other on who was the best driver.  Broad slides, power slides, drifting, racing, we did it all.  I could handle my '89 Camaro better than anyone I knew, but not the Ford Taurus I drove the night Samantha dared me.  Still, a dare is a dare and at seventeen I was too stupid and reckless to brush it off.

The late hour was a plus because there were few cars on the road.  Tearing down the road we only came across one other driver.  I swung into the other lane and back as I passed him without thinking twice.  We blew by so fast all I saw was a streak of red from his taillights.  The real test was coming up though and I didn't give passing that car a second thought.  A long curve in the road lay up ahead.  The curve turned a full ninety degrees to the left over about three hundred feet and I had no intention of slowing down. 

I had done this before in my Camaro, but I failed to consider the details this time.  When in my Camaro, I was going in the opposite direction.  That gave me both lanes if I needed them, and the car was rear wheel drive giving me the option to broad slide.  I had neither this time. 

Entering the turn, I glanced over at Samantha.  She was yelling at me to slow down, but that wasn't going to happen.  She shouldn't have dared me if she couldn't handle it.  She had a cigarette in her left hand.  Looking back to the road, what was happening began to dawn on me.  We were going too fast.  We were in the left lane, close to the gravel on the berm and the guardrails beyond.  There was no way I could broad slide this time.  I knew this was going to suck, but by then I was already in the turn.  I couldn't slam on the breaks now; it would throw us into the guardrails.  I desperately tried to think of something, but all I could do was ride it out.  As the car got sucked into the guardrails I glanced at the speedometer.  We were still going well over 80+ mph.  Once I felt the car moving towards the guardrails and the gravel under the tires I knew it was over.  I locked up the breaks and cranked the steering hard to the left.  There were bright flashes of sparks in my peripheral vision coming off the right side of the car.  The horrible screeching and grinding sound penetrated me to my core.  Sam never said a word.

Finally the car cut loose from the guardrails and we shot sideways back out onto the road across both lanes where I finally got the car stopped.  We had ridden almost the entire length of the curve on the guardrails.  I looked over at Sam to make sure she was all right.  She was in the exact same position, her cigarette still in her left hand.  The only difference now was that she was shaking from head to toe.  I asked, "Are you all right?" 

"Yea," she said, "but I'm never daring you anything again."

I pulled the car off the side of the road to survey the damage.  I got off pretty light, all things considered.  It could have been much worse though, much, much worse. Oddly enough, that car I blew past stopped and the driver got out to check that we were ok.  Most people would have thought I got what I deserved, but not this man.  After he was sure we were ok we all drove away and I took Sam home.  I drove well under the speed limit the rest of the way.