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June 6, 2001 2:45 PM As she walked the familiar route to her mom’s house, Kathy’s mind was reeling over the impact spending the summer in California would have on the show next year. She couldn’t wait to get there. It wasn’t that the Midwest was a bad place to be. It was just that the only place to really learn and master broadcasting was Los Angeles, no matter what her mother thought. Another last day of school, Kathy thought. She had turned down offers for a ride home from friends, electing instead to walk home as she had for the last eleven years on the final day of school. Today, the sky was a beautiful azure blue and practically cloudless. Her thoughts floated back to when she was in kindergarten and argued with her mom that since she had been in school an entire year, she felt she had earned the right to walk home all by herself on the last day. Naturally, her mom had prevailed and picked her up as usual when the bell rang. On the way home, however, her mother promised that from first grade on Kathy could walk home whenever she wanted to. Funny how things have a way of turning around. More often than not, as the years passed, she had wanted her mom to pick her up from school instead of walking, but her mom wasn’t always available anymore. With the divorce and her parents’ crazy schedule and lives, routine transportation became an annoying conflict between the three of them that typically resulted in shouting matches and unproductive tears. She remembered walking many times when she didn’t want to, yet on other occasions being picked up by one of her parents when she and a group of friends had decided to explore, on foot, an alternative route home. High school had brought many changes to her life, one of which was solving the going home problem. For several years she had gotten rides home from older classmates and now most of her friends were driving too. Matter of fact, the Ohio laws about driving had recently changed and you could get your temps at age fifteen-and-a-half now. For some reason, Kathy had never felt a sense of urgency to get her license and had no plans to get one anytime soon. She wasn’t sure why. Her friends sometimes casually joked that she was like someone from another time, especially when it came to relationships. It was one thing to chose not to drive, but totally another to have never been kissed at her age, or ever gone out with a guy in a serious way. She knew that everyone thought she was a little old-fashioned, but she had really good friends who accepted her for who she was, even if they did laugh about her from time to time. For some reason, despite peer pressure, she was able to maintain her very strong ideas about how life, and especially relationships, should be. Sometimes she wondered whether it was because of her parents’ painful divorce but she didn’t spend much time pathologizing herself. She preferred to focus on her plans for the future--all that other stuff could come later as far as she was concerned, and the later the better. And so she was walking home, a ritual that her friends respected. They had all said, “OK, Kath... we know, we understand... see ya at Jenny’s tonight.” Kathy strolled along, her old sand-blasted denim backpack slung casually over her shoulder. In her mind she was rehearsing a way to convince her mom that going to spend the summer with her dad in LA would be perfect. Though he still lived in the Village, he was in California as part of a team producing an international multi-media event. She was certain that the award certificate she had gotten today would support her case. Because of who Kathy was, her mom should know by now that she wouldn’t lose her morals or anything, even if daddy wouldn’t be around that much. There was so much she wanted to learn and do in the field of broadcasting. And of course she would never lose her love for her mom and three little sisters, but she knew deep in her soul that she had to go there, to be there. She wanted the experience only her dad and his business associates could provide. Caught up as she was in her thoughts, Kathy didn’t notice the huge hole in the sidewalk created by the water main construction work on her mom’s street. She fell before she knew what was happening. She felt herself whirling and twirling and somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of a young girl’s scream. Then came the darkness, a void. The rhythmic motions of the construction crew were abruptly interrupted by an alarming cry and a cracking sound that jarred them from their hypnotic routine. The foreman signaled them to stop working. The men, already jolted, responded immediately. In unison they rushed to the gap in the pavement Kathy had fallen into and looked to their boss for orders. The man in charge, however, could not respond. He was looking down, down into the chasm. One by one, his workers followed his gaze. What they saw momentarily paralyzed them all. |
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