I will say, my sister and I are really close. It's not only how close we are in age, but when my parents chose to get their divorce, I was 5, and she was 2. In the divorce papers, my mother decided to hand full custody over to my father (which usually isn't the norm in the US), and since then, we've had problems with her abandoning, and using us for her own personal gain... that's a hell of another story for another day though.
Let's get into this story though.
My sister (Ashley) and I live 30 minutes away from each other. Yesterday, we both ended up going to the town that I more or less grew up in (we didn't physically live there, but that's where we went to school and spent most of our daily life). I was there for a family thing that she wasn't able to attend because she was going to her friend's baby shower. While my boyfriend and I were leaving town, I saw a truck that looked like Ashley's at an intersection and low and behold, I spotted my little ginger sister driving.
Quickly, I called her and asked if she wanted to meet me somewhere since I had a couple of Christmas presents that were her's (that were given to me at the family thing) as I was assuming that I wouldn't see her until the end of the month. She met us in town, we all went to Walmart together, and just spent a little time together since I almost never see her anymore.
While we were at Walmart, she told me that she was going to her boyfriend's church that evening for some Christmas play. Her boyfriend lives 15 minutes from my parents' house, which for me, would be a 45 minute drive from where I live. I told her to be careful since it snowed a few days ago, but I knew that she had four wheel drive on her truck, unlike my car.
Now, some information about where my parents live: They live in a little rural county that is more or less on the side of what begins to be the Appalachian Mountains. There's a lot of twists and turns that the two of us learned to drive around on. Where her boyfriend is, there's quite a few more, sharper turns. There's a little area that I know for a fact is called our version of Lover's Leap, which is a beautiful sight if you ever get to see it.
Now, the truck she was driving, I trust a lot. My reason behind that is, if some of you remember, a year ago, I wrecked my car, about a month after I got my license. While the main damage I did to my car was rip off the front bumper and smash my passenger headlight, I was okay, and the car was fine. As a replacement for while my car was in the shop, my dad let me cruise around in his 1996 Ford F-150 , which ended up becoming my sister's when she got her license three weeks ago; to note, I referred to this truck as the "Big Green Monster" because it was large, green, and I was used to driving a little 2007 Mazda 6.
For visual reference, right down to the right color, I'm going to add a picture of her vehicle I got online.
Ashley's truck:
Now, let me go back to what I was saying... Ashley's had her license 3 weeks. She just completed all of Virginia's legal requirements to get her license (driver's education class, be 16 and 6 months old, complete the road course version with a teacher, and the driving test). She currently has a temporary 180 day license because she has to go before a judge to get her actual license (I didn't have to do this because I was 18). She's came and visited me, but I live in the city so that was completely different from those back roads that I mentioned with all the sharp curves and beautiful sights.
So, I woke up a little after 8 this morning and almost as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a text from my dad. It was a message that had been forwarded to him from someone (who I don't know) that said that Ashley was in an accident, but she was okay. So, of course being worried about my little sister, I asked him a million questions until I learned the story of what happened.
Back roads, sharp curves, and black ice don't mix. My sister was driving down the road, hit was (I assume) was an ice patch in what my dad called a "dead man's curve", over-corrected to get back in line, and ended up driving off a ravine. Now, remember, after reading that, I said that she was okay; she was lucky to walk away from that with a few minor cuts and bruises. My father said himself that she was lucky to be alive.
I didn't have the full story before my dad told me she drove off a ravine, so from where my sister and I were so young when our mom left us, my motherly instincts kicked in a lot earlier than they probably should have. So, I about had a damn heart attack because that terrified me.
My dad told me that Ashley has pictures of the truck, but she hasn't contacted me since she sent me a text at 11 last night, telling me that she needed to call me in the morning. I was asleep by 11 so I didn't see that text whatsoever until after I had heard from my dad. I know she's in school right now, so I know I'll probably be hearing from her once she goes to lunch in a couple of hours.
So yeah, she totaled the "Big Green Monster," and it just kind of surprises me how quickly those events played out from where we were talking yesterday at Walmart about her going out to get job applications to her now not having a vehicle. I'm so glad that she's okay because if something happened to her, I think I would just fall apart and I'm just sobbing while writing this with how worried sick I ended up being. I'm probably going to cry more when she sends me pictures of the truck.
Thank you all for reading, and I'm sorry that this is all over the place; there's been a lot of emotions today.
Until next time,
Kayla V
Update:
So, my sister finally called me and the moment I got on the phone, I burst into tears. Her side of the story (since she was the one who experienced it first hand), was she was taking a curve too fast, ended up over correcting, ran over a mailbox, went down a hill through barbed wire, into a cow pasture, before running into a tree. Since she was in the accident, her phone flew off somewhere and she had to walk back up the hill and ended up knocking on the door of the house whose mailbox she ran over (she didn't remember hitting the mailbox at the time). They nicely allowed her to use their phone and took care of her before my dad, her boyfriend, and the proper people showed up.
She was charged with improper driving (after dropping it down from a reckless driving ticket) mainly because of how short of a time she's had her license. She get to recount the event in court in a few weeks though.
I'm glad my sister is okay, and you can tell by the damage, how lucky she is to be alive because it would have only took a second for that tree to end up on the opposite side of where it hit. She also told me that if that tree wasn't there, the truck would have flipped.
Here's a photo of the truck.