Lying and Kissing by Helena Newbury

wrestle it in for me.
    Now we were deep into the back roads of Wisconsin, surrounded by thick forest, and even the GPS just showed a spider web of faint lines that could be anything from logging roads to footpaths. We’d already had to backtrack twice and the sky outside had turned from dark blue to black. We could see the snow whipping past in the headlights but little else.
    Inside the SUV, though, it was warm and snug and we were taking turns to Bluetooth music to the stereo and it would be my turn next so I was going to put something decent on instead of dad’s endless seventies rock.
    My mom craned her head to look up at the sky through her window. “The moon’s over there. That means we should be going that way.” She pointed behind us.
    “You’re navigating using the stars, now?” My dad was smiling. Being lost was just another adventure, to him.
    “Can’t be any worse than relying on the Force, or whatever the hell you’re using,” she told him.
    He leaned across to her. “You should show me some more respect. Or I might just—” He whispered in her ear in a way that made her blush and swat at him, and he chuckled.
    I groaned and lifted my book in front of my eyes. Gross. Going back to Berkeley couldn’t come soon enough.
    I felt the car slow, just a little. “Does it…?” said my mom.
    I lowered my book. They were both straining to see the road ahead through the windshield.
    “I think it does,” said my dad. “I think we—”
    And then he said fuck so loudly it actually hurt my ears, and I jerked forward against my belt as he slammed on the brakes. But the feel of the road beneath us changed from a vibration to a smooth swish as the tires stopped gripping and started gliding. And then, quite suddenly, there was no road feel at all.
    We started to fall.
    My mom snapped her head around to look at me, her eyes wide and panicked. I saw her terrified realization that she was going to die, and that I might, too.
    There wasn’t time to scream. There wasn’t time to do anything. The car started to tilt forward as it fell, the heavy engine making the SUV fall nose-first. Everything was black, outside, so I couldn’t see the ground coming.
    The impact was so fast and so sudden that it felt like an explosion, like the front of the car had just been blown apart. One second, we were falling and the car was perfectly normal. The next, the whole front of the car had moved. The front cabin, where my parents were, was squashed down to half its usual size. My mom and dad were resting on fat white airbags that looked like oversized marshmallows and I was hanging in mid-air, supported by my seat belt.
    Then the car groaned and tipped and I threw my arms up instinctively to protect my head. There was a huge bang as we fell onto our side, the ground whacking into the door just inches from me.
    And then everything went still. And very, very dark.
    I only found out later that we’d driven onto an old, rarely used logging road and, disoriented by the snow, we’d been steadily climbing up into the hills. My mom and dad had seen the gap in the trees ahead of them and thought that the road simply dipped down slightly. They hadn’t realized they were driving right off the edge of a sheer drop.
    We’d fallen almost eighty feet and now the SUV was lying on its side. The headlights had gone out and there were no streetlamps, out here. Everything was utterly black.
    “Mom?” I asked.
    No reply.
    I hit the button on my seat belt, but the buckle didn’t release. “Dad?”
    No reply.
    I reached out into the darkness with both arms, trying to find the back of my dad’s seat. Straining forward, I found his headrest and then the softness of his hair. I rubbed it. Tears were forming in my eyes, now. “Dad?”
    His head was heavy and didn’t move. He was either unconscious or….
    “ Mom?!” My voice was cracking, now. I reached out towards her, but she was diagonally across the car from me and I couldn’t reach her.