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My
father

took

one
hundred

and

thirty-
two

minutes

to

D
I
E.


I
counted.

It happened on
the Jellicoe Road.
The prettiest road
I'd ever seen,
where trees made
breezy canopies
like a tunnel
to Shangri-la.

We were going
to the ocean,
hundreds of miles away,
because
I wanted to see the ocean
and my father said
that it was about time
the four of us
made that journey.

I remember asking,
"What's the difference
between a trip
and
a journey?"
and my father said,
"Narnie,
my love,
when we get there,
you'll understand,"
and that was
the
last
thing

he

ever

said.

We heard her
almost straightaway.
In the other car,
wedged into ours
so deep
that you couldn't tell
where one began
and
the other ended.
She told us
her name was Tate
and then she squeezed through
the glass
and
the steel
and climbed over her own dead—
just to be with Webb
and me;
to give us her hand
so we could clutch it
with all our might.

And then a kid
called Fitz
came riding by
on a stolen bike
and saved our lives.

Someone asked us later,
"Didn't you wonder
why no one
came across you sooner?"


Did
I
wonder?

When you see
your parents
zipped up
in black body bags
on the Jellicoe Road
like they're some kind of garbage,

don't

you

know?




WONDER DIES.