By Ysavelle Buitrago

I thought getting hit by a car would hurt like hell. It would leave my insides looking like a Pringles can that had been shaken up. Sour cream and shattered bone. I imagined the pain almost comically, like you see in movies. Someone gets hit and flies ten feet into the air, landing on the hood. I imagined my bobble head bouncing to the pavement, my brains glistening and splattered, like canned tomato soup in the sun.

In reality, getting hit by a car was so much lamer. 

First, I was hit slowly. Agonizingly slow. As if the driver were doing it in a library. I was on a bike, crossing at the crosswalk, when this massive souped-up truck decided to cut me off. My wheel was sucked under first, the undercarriage of steel having some gravitational pull bigger than Jupiter. My body followed as I watched my bike mush down like Silly Putty. I landed so softly on the pavement that I would have thought I hit my overused mattress. ‘No pain!’ I thought, and then my left shoulder started being eviscerated under the pressure of a trillion pounds of lazy American engineering. The motherfucker wouldn’t stop rolling up to a light that was still red.

The rubber welded itself to my arm and ribs, sucking at them like an ice pop. Despite the agony, I couldn’t help noticing how gentle and almost caring the movement of the wheel was. I made a mental note to seek out more hugs and firm shoulder pats from humans if I had a future after this flattening. Enjoying being gummed to death by a monster truck due to loneliness is just embarrassing.

I heard screaming from beyond my gummy void.

“Stop, someone is underneath your tire!” 

I didn’t care. My bike was destroyed, what else did I have to live for? That’s why when the man got out of his truck and pulled me out of the darkness, I had my eyes closed.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” he whined. His voice, dropping in and out of cigarette coughs, was familiar and incredibly annoying. He wrestled me upright like this was my fault, like I was being scolded for playing in the street. I touched my side and felt the geometric indents of tire tracks. I kept my eyes closed.

“Ow” I said.

“I swear I didn’t see you. You have to believe me. I would have stopped!” 

“Ow” I said again. 

I felt someone grab my arm and finally opened my eyes. A crowd had gathered. People had pulled their cars over. Thick, calloused fingers inspected my face and my new Superman ice cream rib decorations. 

“How do you feel hon?”

“Bet you’re glad you wear a helmet.” 

The strap had cut into my lip, and I tasted blue-frosted piggy bank pennies. 

The crowd surrounded Mr. Monster truck, too, and kept us far apart. His head was in his hands, curled up on the curb like he was the one who had just been run over. A lot of ‘what the fuck were you thinkings’ mixed with ‘I’m calling the cops’. A nightshift nurse had me lie on the sidewalk. I stared up at the sky and wondered how I was going to get to work with a mangled bike and $93.43 left in my checking account. 

The cops put Mr. Monster truck in the back of their car, and after the medic treated me, they gave me a ride to the station, too, saying I had to make a statement. I said my statement was that I had been run over and asked if they had snacks. I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday. 

Two stale cider mill donuts later, I sat in the waiting room of the police station, my thighs slippery and germy with plastic sweat from the fold-out chair. No one had come to take my statement. I don’t think they remembered I was there. 

But Mr. Monster truck did. He burst out of the interview room like a house cat tasting fresh air for the first time. I was his target; another excuse to the girl he tried to kill. 

“You really have to believe me, I never saw you. The truck is too high, my stupid-ass brother Stevie made it way too high and now I can’t see a goddamn thing down there.”

My injuries flamed. It couldn’t be.

“Dad?” I said. 

We hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Not since he kicked me out. Not since he told me he’d pay for college and then told the financial office he didn’t have a daughter. Not since I was a golden ferret of an 18-year-old girl. My waist was bigger now, my hair was blue. 

“Dad?” I said again. 

“Well, I didn’t expect this,” he said.

Then he hugged me. I hated it. The fermentation between us like a knot of hair grown stiff with time and neglect. It hurt worse than his abandonment, worse than his truck.

He mumbled something about time and coming around and strode out the front doors. A cop came up behind me and said I could sue if I wanted; people did all the time.

I watched my dad check his back tire, the one that had tried to stamp me out like a roach in the kitchen. Suddenly, my ribs didn’t hurt so badly.

“What am I gonna sue him for? All he has in the world is that truck.

*   *   *

A Detroit native with a degree in filmmaking, Ysa loves to be anywhere but home. After spending the majority of her twenties teaching English in Colombia and South Korea, she is now backpacking the world one cheap flight at a time. When this Latinx adventurer isn’t hiking to ancient ruins or cooking dinner for everyone at her hostel, she is reading novels about furious women and writing until her head is empty. Blue-Frosted Pennies is her first publication.