story post #1

Please let me know what you think, and how you think I could improve! This is a very rough draft, and I am completely open to suggestions.


“She’s gone, Carter. She’s gone. They tried all they could, but they couldn’t save her.”
The words hit Carter like a ton of bricks. His fiancée, his best friend, his life, his everything. Gone. He was speechless. His heart felt like it had shattered into a million pieces. She was gone, and with her, everything he had ever known.
He sat back in the chair he had spent nearly a dozen hours in, waiting, hoping, and praying. He had seen it happen. He had seen that pickup go a little too fast through a light that had been red for at least 10 seconds. He had seen that pickup slam into the driver’s side of her little Civic. He had seen her airbag deploy. He had seen the driver of the truck reverse and speed away. And there had been nothing he could have done about it.
They had been on their way to the homecoming football game. It was their senior year, and it was supposed to be perfect. That night, they were supposed to dress to the nines and go dance the night away at the Homecoming dance.
After the accident, Carter had been unable to bear the pain of even looking at the accident. They were required to stay at the scene to recall what they had witnessed, but Carter had sat in the backseat of his truck, and tried to feel, think, say, anything. He hadn’t watched the ambulance take his beloved fiancée away to the hospital, he hadn’t watched the police cars surround the scene. He hadn’t even watched when the tow truck had hauled her crushed Honda away. All he could do was stare blankly at the back of the seat in front of him.
He had been driving with Trevor, Chris and Tony. She had been with Taylor, Megan, Shannon and Elizabeth. They had all met at Carter’s house beforehand to grill out and get ready for the game. Everything had been perfect. The perfect weather, perfect day, perfect friends. It had seemed like nothing could go wrong. Trevor had offered to drive to the game, but Hadley had insisted that she wanted to. Her parents had just paid to put gas in her car, and she wanted to drive. The girls had dressed up in the school colors, blue and gold, and painted the windows of Hadley’s car. They had been looking forward to this game since the beginning on the semester.
Now, in the waiting room of Belden Memorial Hospital, the four girls, the guys, and Carter, sat quietly, unsure of what to think of what had happened. The face paint the girls had so carefully applied was in streaks, due to the tears that had been falling down their cheeks almost constantly since the accident. The guys, once “too tough” to cry, had broken down into tears, just as Carter had. Hadley’s parents sat in the corner, her mother sobbing heavily into her father’s shoulder, and her father staring straight ahead, a blank look on his face, unable to feel anything.
They said Hadley was gone. But Carter wasn’t sure how easy it would be to accept it.