FicWad

Maddie clenched her fists over the black leather of her mom's steering wheel and steadied the car. She was trying to be especially careful with it, since her mother lent her it a lot but would kill her if there was so much as one scratch marring the black paint. Maddie was lucky she was even touching the car. Ever since her dad had died in a freak car accident two years ago on vacation in Maine when his car skidded on some ice and fell off the highway, her mother had been super overprotective with her. She kind of wondered why she had even wanted to drive in the first place, or why her mom had even agreed to let her get her license two weeks ago, but Maddie had never been affected by her dad's accident that much- well not when it came to driving. Her mother meanwhile almost never went onto the freeway anymore, even though she had told her too many times to count that they did not live in Maine, they lived in San Francisco, and usually ice did not grace their freeways.
Today was different though, and Maddie drove with an unnecessary slowness, even with the pulsing beat of Green Day in the background blaring from the radio. It was her first time crossing the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. She was visiting a friend that lived just across the bridge and had managed to convince her mother that nothing horrible would happen to her and that she would be very careful. But now that she was actually near the bridge, her confidence was slowly evaporating.
"Take a deep breath," Maddie thought to herself, but the air sucked into her lungs didn't make her feel any better. Cars were passing her, but luckily no one had honked because usually people drove slower onto the Golden Gate anyway. Maddie drove slowly onto the orangey-red painted bridge, trying, but not succeeding to not look down, afraid if she even caught a glimpse of the black water she would instantly plummet over the edge. Unconsciously she pressed on the brakes and the black car slowed. There was an angry honk from behind her, but she tried to ignore it. Maddie glanced at her rearview mirror and saw a large truck driven by a scary looking man with a bushy black mustache glaring at her. She gulped and tried to go faster but the man was now tailing her, even angrier.
He rolled his window down and screamed, "What the f*? This is a main freeway, not a home for old ladies!" Shaking his head, he veered into the lane alongside Maddie, and she sighed. Finally she was rid of that awful guy. It was people like him that made her not want to drive.
Suddenly all she saw was red light as the truck cut her off with a screech of brakes. Maddie scrabbled for the brake, desperately trying to reach it with her foot, but she couldn't! She screamed as her mother's car crashed into the truck and the windshield shattered, with shards of glass flying into Maddie's forehead and arms and cutting them like thousands of tiny knives. Her head smashed into the steering wheel and she fought against the oncoming blackness. The car began to spin, out of control, towards the bridge's edge, toward the waiting black water. It smashed through the barrier and dropped like a stone towards the bay, black car blending into icy black ocean, the only light the car lights that still worked falling into the water.
Onlookers would later say that they saw a form of a girl in her late teens in the car screaming, stuck in a death trap plunging to her doom. But there was nothing they could do, as the car was quickly sinking and soon it was unable to be seen.
Pat Landers, Maddie's mother, was baking a pie and humming along with the radio when she got the phone call. She moseyed over to the telephone and picked it up.
"Hello?" She knew something was wrong when there was a muffled sob on the other end.
It was Mrs. Greene, Pat's good friend from down the street. Pat only heard three words, but she was able to decipher the rest.
"Maddie-Golden Gate-accident," Mrs. Greene whispered.
"Noooooo!" screamed Pat, falling to the floor. "Please, no, no!!!" She sobbed, cradling the receiver, just screaming and screaming until her world faded to black.

10 Years Later

Lilian Anderson sat in the back of her family's car, tuning out the 80s music that her parents were blasting through the car radio by turning her iPod up to the highest volume, bored and leafing through a San Francisco guidebook. She set it down with an irritated thump on top of the countless bags from tourist destinations all around the city, like the Boudin's Sourdough Factory bag that contained a sourdough recipe book her mom had bought, a bag from Ghiradelli Square with a mug that said, "I Heart Chocolate!" and a bag from Alcatraz that held two books about the island and a striped t-shirt for her dad that looked like it had come from an inmate's cell.
She usually hated family vacations, but San Franciso had been pretty fun- except for the seaside hike where she spent all her time slogging up and down cliffs. And the Shakespeare by the Shore- a retelling of "King Lear" in a theater by Fisherman's Wharf, which her parents adored but where Lilian had to sneak her iPod in under her sweatshirt. Now a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge that her parents absolutely had to take- so typically tourist. But Lilian was content to just sit in the back of the car and munch on a loaf of sourdough and wait until they got to the airport. Ok, it was the Golden Gate Bridge, but she didn't see why it was such a big deal. It was just an extremely long orange-painted hunk of metal, for all she cared.
"Lilian darling, we're near the bridge!" said her mother, turning around in the car and grinning in anticipation. Lilian gave a big cheesy grin and tried not to wince at the "San Francisco=Love" sweatshirt her mother was wearing. She sunk deeper into her seat and tried to sleep, but which was impossible because of the loud volume in her ears, all to drown her parents' favorite radio station.
As they neared the bridge Lilian saw the pileup of traffic in front of her and groaned. This was absolutely wonderful. It could take them an hour just to get across and turn around to go back to the airport! To waste time, she people-watched. There was a little girl of about four in the car slightly ahead of her waving to all the people around her. Lilian grinned in spite of her mood and waved back. There was a car alongside them. In it was a woman driving and a nervous looking woman in the passenger seat. The driver seemed to be soothing the passenger as she looked out the window. Lilian turned around. Behind them was a grumpy trucker that looked as impatient as Lilian felt. He rolled his eyes as the cars inched onto the bridge.
She had to admit, the view was spectacular, but the traffic was horrendous! When they were in the middle of the bridge, the cars all stopped moving. The nervous woman was even closer to them now, and Lilian watched as she wrung her hands. Her parents spouted Golden Gate trivia in the front seat, but they were drowned out as the trucker jabbed at his horn. Lilian saw the women near her jump and turn to look at him. At that moment, the cars began to move again and the trucker seized the opportunity to scream out his window, "Move, you idiot!" and surged toward the women in the car alongside Lilian.
"Watch out!" she screamed, and her father swerved, desperately trying to avoid the crazed man, but he couldn't help as their car flew, out of control, towards the bridge's railing. Lilian caught a glimpse of the nervous woman screaming, and just then time seemed to stop. Lilian knew the car was moving, yet her eyes were glued to a wispy orb materializing in the middle of the traffic. It shot towards them and Lilian felt a strange warmth inside her. In slow motion, it seemed, the car was redirected away from the Pacific Ocean beneath them, and the truck skidded towards the barrier instead. Time started again, and Lilian's heart was in her throat as she watched the truck go over the edge and plunge into the frigid water.
She saw a strange shape in front of their car, the wispy orb. Suddenly, she saw the form of a teenaged girl, about sixteen. It winked at her, waved, then turned and walked into the midst of the cars and disappeared.
"Did you see that?" she gasped to her parents.
Her mother huffed. "What, that that horrible man almost killed us all? Certainly!"
Lilian sighed. "No, that strange shape- like a wispy shadow of a girl!"
"Are you alright? You're not hurt from that scare, are you?"
Lilian stared out the window as they drove over the bridge. Was it her imagination, or had a ghost saved them from being dead in the ocean this moment?
In the car alongside Lilian, tears ran down Pat Landers' face as she looked out of the car window at the beautiful ocean. "You saved us, Maddie," she whispered. "You saved us all."