The Tragedy of Transit
by Requiem
by Requiem
Summary: Sophie Bristow, daughter of the late, great Sydney, is having a pretty crappy day. Gets even crappier when she's hit by the Trans Am of a semi-famous plane crash survivor she "saw on Dateline once". Aaron Littleton.
* * *
Sophie hated cars. No, she loathed them. They zoomed by at increasing speeds past her bike, kicking up a hot, tormenting breeze of aghast. But no, the putrid clouds that the older models still emitted weren’t what bothered her… she dealt with it all the time, being a Los Angelen. It was the fact that they had taken away people she cared about, even if she really didn’t know them at all.
The wheels slowed as she loosened her Kangaroo sneakers away from the pedals, and she took a moment to beam at herself in the slick, thin puddles the highway was covered in from last night’s sudden thunderstorm. Father’s eyes, mother’s face, she’d been told, and she couldn’t argue with the incriminating evidence of pictures from her family’s few, but close, friends. But that was pretty much all she knew about her parents. Their faces and their names… Michael and Sydney. Died in a car crash. The end.
As much as she’d like to know more about them, whenever she brought the subject up, her grandfather immediately chastised her, while everyone else offered up a few somber looks.
Sophie felt like Harry Potter.
Only she wasn’t magical. She was ordinary. She was no one. A face in an endless sea of people, and even though she had her father’s bright azure eyes and her mother’s pleasant, kind, yet chiseled, face… she also attained an awkwardness that most teenagers such as herself faced. The puppy-with-big-paws-syndrome, as she called it. And it didn’t help that she voluntarily wore those ‘librarian’ tortoiseshell glasses to hide her eyes and those Kurt Vonnecut novels concealed that pretty face.
The handlebars suddenly jerked on their own accord, and Sophie’s bike toppled over. “Oh, felgercarb,” she muttered angrily, trying to push the bike away as more vehicles sped by, spraying the puddles all over her. “This is just great.” She added sarcastically, and then aimed her eyes skyward. “Anything else you’d like to add?” Sophie asked of the boiling gray clouds. And, on cue, a glint of lightning streaked and more rain showered she and her bike. Grumbling, she mounted her mechanical steed and kicked against the asphalt. “I should’ve just taken the bus…” and Sophie realized she definitely should’ve, when the front wheel jolted again, only this time, into oncoming traffic.
* * *
“Holy--! What the hell was that?” Aaron Littleton’s heart was pounding as he looked in the rearview mirror in attempt to answer his own question. Curled in a sickening lump on the highway was an unconscious girl, her steed, a crumpled bike, lying next to her. “Oh s***, oh s***, oh s***…” he muttered, swerving his cherry red Trans Am to the side of the road and sprinting out of the car as soon as he could. He came to the girl’s side, dragging her out of the highway before a long stream of cars sped by. “Oh, Jesus, I’ve killed ’er.” He panicked, raking his fingers through his floppy blonde hair. Okay, he couldn’t leave her on the gravel like roadkill. Okay, Aaron. Just get her in the car. Calm down. Seriously.
His arms obeyed subconsciously, scooping the young woman’s frame up in his arms. As he ambled to the car, he became guiltily thankful that he didn’t run over anything heavier than she was. Aaron opened the back seat door, accidentally unlocking the broken one. With a thud, the door fell to pavement. “Dammit—” murmured he, slipping her into the back seat and trying to fit the door into its frame. Eventually giving up, Aaron dug the emergency cell phone that was rarely used in non-social emergencies from his coat pocket, and managed to dial the only number he could think of.
“Mom?” he asked into the phone.
“Aaron?” a voice asked back, though clearly not a female’s
“Oh, Charlie, sorry—” Aaron trailed off. “You sound like a woman.”
“Gee, you’re just an endless parade of complements, aren’t you?” his thick Australian voice was laced with sarcasm. “But somehow I imagine that you aren’t calling just to dish out some well planned insults. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if you did.” He added quickly at the end.
“I hit a girl.”
“What?”
“With me car.”
“What’re you calling me for, then? Shouldn’t you call, like, 911 or something? Or at least Jack.” Aaron could sense a smile behind Charlie’s deadpan, even though he couldn’t see it.
“Well, I didn’t know what to do!” Aaron cried, suddenly turning defensive.
“Get some OnStar, mate.” Click.
Okay. Call 911. Gotcha.
9-1-1.
“Hello, this is the Los Angeles local 911 service, what is your problem?” a woman’s voice came through.
“Yeah—” Aaron began, but was at a loss for words as to what to say. “I, like, just hit this girl with me car—she was on a bicycle…”
“Do you have any source of identification on her?” she asked instantly.
“Um… no… but lemme check…” Aaron tentatively crept over her still body in the back seat, seeing a bulge in her pants pocket. He slowly drew the wallet from her pocket…
“What are you doing?”
The girl was awake. He suddenly felt a knee thrust at his groin, and Aaron shrieked in pain. “Look, lady, I wasn’t trying to—” Smack. “—steal your—” Punch. “—wallet! I’m trying to help.” With one last hit, he fell back onto the wet road, the image of her face slowly turning to black…