Author Information
Eerie Carpool
Marcelo Somarriba
John is a normal school boy, 13 years of age. He was currently in 7th grade, and living at the time in one of the most dangerous cities in the country, Cd. Juarez. John had a sister, and John and his sister carpooled with another family that lived near by because John and his family cared very much about the environment. John’s father would take him and his sister, and the two other kids, one boy and one girl as well, in the morning, and their neighbor’s father would bring them back home. There was only one very important detail to this, every day, John had to cross the border from Mexico to the U.S.A. so that they could get to their school. It was not really any trouble, since the border had an express line which would get you through the bridge in 5 minutes, 15 minutes with traffic. John lived in a very nice part of town, one of the better ones where you could say there was not as much violence. But the fact that they had to cross the border every single day made their route a bit, interesting, to put it in a nice way, because this meant that at one point you could only take one road, and it was not a very “nice” one.
About halfway through the school year, about November, John Is going on with his everyday 14-year-old life with not many worries, went to school, came back, did homework and then did his homework. But one day, that will forever mark John as the scariest and frightening day of his life, is the day that it happened. They were on the way back from school, so it was about 3:45 pm, little more, little less, but honestly, not important. John was in the very back seat in a minivan, pretty squished between seats as it is not the most comfortable spot in the van, but he had to sit there because it was his turn to sit there. I guess you could call this destiny or luck, because he was about to be very grateful about this in the next few seconds. While on this “interesting” road, the car comes to a stop at a bright red traffic light. It’s a hot day, it was nearing almost 40 degrees Celsius, and even with the air conditioning of the car at full blast, John is in the back, almost sweating because of how hot it was. It was at this moment that it happened. While the car was stopped at the light, about 2 cars from the traffic light (and keep in mind, the van John was in is taller than the cars in front of him, so he has got a full view of what is about to unfold in front of him), a car comes rushing from the other side of the street, and crashes pretty bad. This is when John’s perspective of life changed, and how things can change in literally one second, giving you almost no leeway time to act in response of what you’re about to face.
About 7 seconds pass after the crash, and nobody has yet to move in their aid, as everyone is still pretty shocked. Suddenly this black van comes rushing behind the car, and stops about 15 yards away and pulls the windows down. In two seconds, they pull out these big machine guns. John could only guess that they were assault rifles, and start to shoot the van. John’s friends’ dad immediately, tells us all to duck, and as soon as the gun fire stops, every single car in that intersection went pedal to the metal and ran away from there. John was never the same after that afternoon, which made him always be on edge and scared of the interesting road.
