Right Turn

“Take a right at the next stop sign”, Rosaline implied, looking down at the crumbled up map. I looked to my right at an old dirt road, the only lighting is the gleam of the moon.

“Are you sure?”, I questioned as a deep feeling rolled over my shoulders. I look over at Rosaline giving me the look to just do it. I take a right at the red sign.

This camping trip is exactly what I need, a time to get away and be free from school and work. My friends taking the journey with me also required a break from their lives. Sammi has been going crazy from listening to twelve kids screaming through her household. And Rosaline has been going through what I would wish on no one, cancer. She had been diagnosed a month ago. This is her last trip before she starts her treatments.

“This road doesn't look right,” Sammi comments. The small person in the back of the car, sitting on the window. With her blonde hair taken by the wind. She gives me a concerned face as we continue on the unsettling road.

Rosaline, fluttering around with the map in the passenger seat, starts pointing out every small rock or branch on the road. She is the ‘worrying’ one of the three of us. Every time we go anywhere, she is the one making sure all the ends meet. She is the organized one of us.

As Sammi is trying to direct us to the safest way to get through the road, she points out the window, “A bridge.” I pull over to look at the map. The map is guiding us through this little wooden bridge, that covers a small cliff into water. As far as I could see it looked stable. The map leads us straight through the bridge, onto a small road, that will lead us back to the correct path.

After a while of discussing, we decided instead of turning around and driving back another hour to the original road, we would just go through the bridge. I started the small car and pulled forward, passing the entrance of the bridge. The bridge was holding up for a while. But after a couple feet into the middle of the bridge, we started to hear cracking. I slowed down the car, now we are going about five miles per hour. I soon realized that I had made a big mistake.

The car began to sink through the wooden boards. We were all starting to get very uneasy. Then the back wheel broke through the bridge the car jerked back. Sammi still sitting in the window, was jerked along with the car. The force pulled her right from the car, off the bridge. She fell into the water. The stream took her past where I could see.

“How do we get out without falling?”, Rosaline yelled, “ Katelyn what do we do?”.

I could only reply with “How the fudge would I know?” I started looking around trying to figure out our escape plan. I couldn’t move the car because the back wheel is stuck through the bridge. The bridge is too narrow to just get out of the car and walk out. So we climbed on the roof of the car.

At this point we are trying to slide from the top of the car to the front, to run off the bridge. But before we could, it starts to rain. We are sliding and slipping everywhere, almost falling from the roof into the water. I work my way down onto the bridge. I reach my hand out to Rosaline.

Rosaline slips, she falls in the same manner as Sammi did, too fast to help. I just stand there in shock, trying to imagine what to do. I reach my hand towards my phone. Of course no service. I start running for the next five minutes down the road with my phone raised in the air.

After some time I finnaly get service, I call the police and tell them where I am and they send an ambulance. They spent the next couple of hours searching the river. They found them huddling about a mile down the river. They were brought to the hospital. Just a couple of scrapes and bruises. But for the car, it had fallen completely through the bridge. There was no hope left for that poor car.

The police officer asked, “How did you end up there?”. We all answered with the same words, “We took a right!”.