"Virginia, would you quiet down back there? Your mother and I are trying to have a conversation."

I pouted and went back to singing under my breath, until my favorite part of the song came up and I shouted the lyrics at full blast.

"Virginia!"

"Okay okay, I'll shut up, I'm sorry!"

"That's not the point! You don't listen!"

"Mike, that's enough, she's just singing."

"Thank you mom."

At least she understood me. Most almost thirteen year olds didn't respond well to yelling.

"You're wasting your time. You should focus on your studying more, you're not going to be the next American Idol, so why bother?"

"Mike!"

"What? It's the truth. She's already got her entire future planned out for her. Business school at UCM and then she'll join my marketing team. She'll have a solid and secure future."

"What? Dad, I don't want to go to-"

"I don't care what you think you want, you're still juss a-" he cut himself off, swallowing a burp and a hiccup at the same time after slurring his words. "Just a child. You will listen to me, young lady."

I crossed my arms over my chest in protest, but just as I began to speak up, my mother did it for me.

"We both know that is not happening, Mike. You won't have control over where she goes to college and she can do what she wants that makes her happy. Now pull over."

"What? No I'm fine, I only had a few at the-"

"I said pull over now! Or you're going to get arrested if you get pulled over, and you know how bad that will look."

"Okay, okay, juss lemme get through this stop light. See? It's green, green means go-"

Except the light wasn't green. He was looking at the light across from us that had been letting the other line of cars go, and they'd been traveling fast, at least fifty miles per hour, because there hadn't been a yellow light yet.

My dad ran that red, sped right through the intersection and put us right in the middle of oncoming traffic.

Blinding headlights and screeching horns, nothing was louder than the crunch of metal and the ringing in my ears after it was all over.

I was punched in the side of my jaw with an airbag, seatbelt ripping into my skin and I get distinctly aware of something warm and sticky dripping down the side of my head. I didn't have the mind to put it together that it was blood until a little while later, when I saw that same substance stuck on my mother's body, gushing out of her in a river.

"Mom? Mom!"

There was another car inside of ours. And then there was another collision in the front, someone ramming directly into us, smashing the windshield as rain started landing upon us, except this rain wasn't cold or wet, but sharp and cut into my skin.

"Dad?"

No response, from either of them.

I choked back the tears and leaned forward, one of the biggest mistakes of my life thus far.

My dad's legs were trapped underneath him, the smoke and blood blocking most of my vision, but I couldn't mistake his unconscious head bobbing back and forth on the seat behind him.

To his left, my mother's body was half draped over the center console, but...

"Oh my god!"

I turned around and threw up the entire contents of my stomach into the seat beside me, praying that I'd just made that up in my head and it wasn't real.

There was the top of her body, with her gorgeous billowing dark curls stained and dusted with broken glass and deep red, head marred with cuts and blood, and then there was the other half of her, except it wasn't attached to the rest of her like it should've been, severed at the waist.

The hood of a mangled vehicle had smashed into the side of ours, directly on the side my mother had been sitting. I was lucky, I was in the backseat in the middle, but was I really lucky to have my mother chopped up in a car wreck before my very eyes?

Sobs echoed throughout the air, but I didn't realize they were mine until someone was telling me it was going to be okay, to calm down and to take a deep breath. They were going to get me out of there.

"What about my mom and dad? Are they dead?"

They didn't respond, just pried open the car with a giant mechanism I'd only seen in that video in health class from when they told us not to text and drive when we got older, and to always wear our seatbelts...

My mom had worn a seatbelt, though. And she'd been cut in half.

I threw up again, but this time when I tried to open my eyes back up they stayed shut, the ever present pounding on my head a chant of, no, No, NO!

"Wake up!"

Like being doused with cold water, I shot up in my bed as sweat stuck to the side of my neck, the trickle of the liquid feeling far too similar to the blood from the wreck.

I had to get out of that bed, had to get fresh air, had to do...something, anything than staying there in that room in that house with him.

"Virginia? Are you okay? What's going on?"

I didn't know who was talking to me, asking me questions. I was having a panic attack, that much was obvious, but everything else was a giant blur of things I didn't need to pay attention to.

Wait, why was Jared in my room? Why was Sara there with him, my aunt's pinched face observing everything with a keen eye and air of suspicion?

And finally, my father. His wheelchair half in the room and half out, the air was sucked from the room as we made eye contact.

Was it real? Was it really all his fault? Had I seriously disillusioned myself for over six years that my father was a good person, and hadn't been the one to kill my mother?

No, it had to have just been a terrible nightmare, one born of the fact that I was so angry at him that I couldn't see straight. My mind took my trauma and aimed it at my father.

But still...it was so familiar, like a memory finally being called forth to the forefront of my mind.

"Get out of my room!"

I was pulling at the ends of my hair while pacing my room, trying to offset the tumultuous emotions running rampant inside of me, and I contemplated slapping myself in the face to try and snap out of it but that would freak everyone else out even more.

"What was it? A nightmare? Quit being such a baby," Sara said, but I couldn't breathe, the air getting choked in my lungs as my brain worked double time to try and separate the past from the present but every time I blinked, every time my heart beat, all I could see was the image of my mother's mangled and chopped up body behind my eyelids, limp and unresponsive as I shook her once, but she never moved. She never woke back up.

I ran to the ensuite bathroom and flung myself over the toilet before emptying my guts up (for real that time) and heaved and heaved until there was absolutely nothing left.

Damn, that dinner was actually good going down. I was going to feel sick every time I thought of McDonald's from that point on. Thanks a lot, nightmare.

Sweat dripping down my brow, I wiped it away with a ferocity I didn't realize I had left in me, and was left to my own devices.

Sara hated my guts (for reasons unknown), Kara followed suit with her daughter, Jared was out of the question and my dad? His wheelchair wouldn't fit through the bathroom door. So, save for calling 911, which none would do, I was left alone to my own anxiety and mental breakdown.

I needed to know the truth. If I didn't go looking for it and disprove it, my mind would nag at me over and over again until I brought it to light.

If my father really was responsible for my mother's death, I'd never forgive him. I would never speak to him again.

He would be as dead to me as she was.

I just had to find the proof first. And maybe get out of that house.

Keys in hand, sweats thrown on and face splashed with water after brushing my teeth, I stole my weekender bag from my bed and tore out of that place like it was on fire, ignoring my father yelling after me as I did so.

I didn't care that it was three in the morning, or that I was breaking my dad's stupid 'deal' with me that I stayed every weekend.

I declined all of the calls to my phone, until a very interesting one popped up on my screen halfway through the ride.

"Eli?" I answered confusedly, cringing at the scratchy hoarseness of my voice.

"You okay? Your dad just called me and said that he doesn't care if he banned you from seeing me or whatever, he still wants me to keep an eye on you. Apparently you scared everyone tonight? What's that all about?"

If Eli's regular voice was sexy, his sleepy, just woken up voice was downright panty dropping.

"It's nothing, I just couldn't stand being in that house anymore with all of them still there."

"When you said goodnight over text, you seemed fine earlier. What changed?"

I sighed into the phone, not sure how much to give away. He still was practically a stranger, but yet I felt so connected to him already, like he was a soft place to land.

"I had a nightmare, and I guess I just went a little off the rails when they woke me up out of it, but I'm headed back to campus now. I'm fine."

"Well, then stay with me on the line until you get there. What was your nightmare about?"

"I don't really want to talk about that right now," I countered, knowing that if I spoke it aloud that there would be a line drawn, crossed, and thrown out the window, and I wouldn't be able to put things back where they used to be. I preferred to stay on the denial side of the line.

"Okay, well how about we talk about how fucked up your cousin and your ex are?"

I laughed, finally a good distraction. This I could get on board with.

"Oh, you mean you didn't hit it off too well with them? What a shame," I joked, noting that the time was passing quicker than it had been than when I was screaming music at the top of my lungs.

We continued talking about everything and nothing on that car ride; his hopes and dreams, my quest for acclaim in the music world, our families, though I spoke of how I remembered my parents, and didn't mention the wreck or the everlasting trauma I'd received from it.

He spoke of his dad, and only mentioned his step father in passing, but I could tell there was a sore subject there somewhere. He spoke of his little sister, a twelve year old girl who was interested in basketball like he was, but his step father wouldn't allow it.

Maybe that was the cause of the bad blood between the two? It was obvious he adored his sister but his mother and step dad? The jury was still out on that one.

When I pulled up to the dorms, I didn't want the call to end, but it did, as it was approaching four in the morning.

"Well, I guess I'll see you at the gym, then. What's your schedule like this week?"

"Why, my dad ask you to get ahold of my schedule so you could spy on-oops, I meant, 'keep an eye' on me?"

"I actually meant so we could hang out, but if that's how you want to play it, fine. I'm going to call him right now and give him a status report."

He laughed after his words and I joined him, but there was still a tiny piece of me that wondered if he was going to do just that.

"I work the night shift every day this week, until midnight."

"Perfect. I'll be front row to the concert. Goodnight, V."

"Goodnight," I whispered, but I still was having trouble breathing.

So, he was the one who'd been listening in while I sang that first night at work on the courts. I wondered if he knew just how much that song I had been singing meant to me, how my mom used to sing it to me as she lulled me to sleep. It was one of her favorites, and I always kept it on my playlist because of that.

If only she'd been alive to meet Eli. With his sarcastic wit and teasing attitude, I had a feeling she would've loved him.