Excerpt: Dumb Ol' Girls

Chapter 1
Snow fall in the Dark

It was just her first name that lit up on my cell phone. “Julie”. I hadn’t had time to enter her friend’s full name in my contact list, because Sara Ann was in a hurry to use my phone. Sara Ann was always in a hurry. That’s how she had passed through all of her 17 years so far. Hurrying to be older. Hurrying to be the first to wear the newest fashions. Hurrying to go on vacation only to want to hurry back home before it was halfway over. Making me hurry to take her to the mall and then suddenly wanting to hurry out of the store so she could meet whichever friend had called with something better to do.

My son and I had only gotten 14 hours into our 33-hour journey to drive his car to his college and neither of us had gotten much sleep. Salt Lake City seemed like the perfect place to get some rest before resuming the drive. What a strange thing to look out the window in early May and see snow on the ground. It didn’t seem real. Lots of white snow had accompanied us on our journey thus far, including near blizzards in the mountains. The blanket of snow only served to make this mother-son journey even more memorable. It was great to have time for just the two of us to share the beginning of my son’s 21st year.

My phone was on the back seat in my purse. It was only when I turned off the car for some much-needed rest that I heard it. That weird vibrating cell-phone-from-within-the-recesses-of-my-purse noise. My phone was ringing. It was 6:00 am Salt Lake City time so even the sound of the cell-phone against leather was disquieting. It shocked me out of my exhausted half-stupor.

I wasn’t fully alert when I answered the phone and heard Julie say. “Geni, Sara Ann was in an accident. The car was going 90 miles an hour, it flipped four times and she was thrown from the car…………… “

“NO, NO, NO, IS SHE ALIVE???? Julie, is SHE ALIVE???? I heard myself screaming at the top of my lungs while total a wall of darkness began to envelope me and Chad. His screams and sobs were the background noise while I repeated this refrain in my head. “I can’t survive this. I can’t survive this. I don’t know how to survive this. “ I barely heard Julie answer, “I don’t know. “