Friday evening and Jake was on his way to pick me up like usual. I would spend my whole weekend at his house doing nothing but sitting on the couch watching TV. Sounds boring, right? But we were in love. We didn’t care what we were doing as long as we were together. It was a normal evening. Jake and I were finishing up our 5th episode of Monk. His mom, Rachelle, was trying to figure out what we wanted for dinner. His dad, Randy, was reading a hunting magazine on his worn out recliner, and his brother Josh was down stairs talking on the phone with his girlfriend, Kayleene. It was winter. The roads were covered with a thin sheet of ice and the snow was coming down heavy. I remember this day most not only because I lost someone close to me but that my tear drops were freezing on to my thick Carhart jacket.


All of a sudden Josh ran up the stairs. There was so much panic in his voice that he could barely spit out the words without crying. He tried to explain to us that they were talking on the phone then he heard a scream followed with a loud crash. I was trying to put my coat on as we ran to the car. Randy yelled at Jake to get her mom on the phone. Kaylene’s mom was also scared. She had been trying to get a hold of Kaylene for almost a half a hour now and it wasn’t like her to not call Kaylene mom back. We rushed to her house going almost twice the speed limit. As we pulled into the drive way her mom was already running out to the car. She was on the phone with Kaylene’s older brother wondering if he had spoken to her. All anybody could think about was what happened and if she was ok.


Going 70mph on an ice covered road, we tried to find Kaylene’s car. She had told Josh where she was about five minutes before the scream, so we started from that spot. We got to a fork in the road and couldn’t figure out which way we should go. Someone said left and another said right, but I was just sitting there in silence wondering what was going on. It was like I could hear everything, but I couldn’t process it. Before we decided on which way to go, Josh pointed out the flashing lights coming from the left. Randy turned off the car, and we all got out and ran towards the lights. I remember Kayleene’s mom screaming at the top of her lungs “My baby! Where’s my baby!” I was trying to keep up but each step I took I slid down the hill. Immediately before talking to any of the cops, Jake and Josh busted out in to tears. They expected the worst, and for once they were right. The cops were pushing us back not telling us a word. They put her mom in the cop car with a blanket as they told her that her daughter had slid off the road into a tree. She was screaming and crying. She thought it was a lie, but it was reality.


The cops pulled Randy aside to explain what had happened. “She didn’t make it”, they said. Even though we couldn’t really hear what they were saying we already knew what happened. I tried to hold them, telling them that everything was going to be okay, but we all knew it wasn’t. She was dead, and no one could bring her back. After sitting on the icy road for about an hour, not saying anything, just crying, Jake’s cousin came and picked us up. No one said a thing the rest of the ride home. Once we got to Jake’s house Rachelle greeted each of us at the door with a hug that left a slightly wet spot on our cheeks from the tears running down her face. We all sat there in shock listening to the news talk about a young girl that slid off an icy road just outside of Nine Mile Falls. Josh couldn’t bear to listen any longer, so he quietly walked to his bedroom as the tears started coming back.



There must have been over twenty people that stopped by that night telling the family how sorry they were, telling them to call if they needed anything. The rest of the weekend consisted of more crying, more people stopping by, and more sitting on the couch in silence. That night changed my life. Some things you never get over. Still to this day I think about her all the time. I wonder if I could have done anything or if Josh could have done anything. Each day gets better and better, but I will never forget about that cold night.