Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Fourteen of my students just went joyriding in a utility vehicle (a "ute", to us aussies). Three in the cabin, eleven in the tray. Spotlight on and hurtling round the paddocks after wildlife.
The damn’ thing flipped. The 17 year old driver tested negative for blood alcohol (which is something, I suppose, I guess…). I don’t know which of my kids was driving yet. I only know the name of the one that’s gone.
A sixteen year old that I’ve known since she was twelve was trapped under the ute and died on scene. The other 13 kids were treated for “extensive injuries” – one boy’s still in hospital. Again, I don’t know which. I know who was likely to have been there, given the girl that died. It’s better than I feared – the first phone call referred to “multiple spinal and head injuries”.
Dammit.
Today’s a public holiday. Tomorrow I have to go in and comfort their classmates. Tomorrow that group of kids won’t be sitting in the spot where they always sit, leaving their rubbish in the drain, being told to move on because they’re out of bounds, but seldom moving on for me because I know they’re responsible and I don’t push the issue. Responsible. Gods damn you, kids…what the hell were you thinking?
They weren’t stupid kids (actually, frankly, a couple are not so sensible, if it’s the ones I’m assuming it was…but not stupid. Not dumb)…we’re not some back-woods school. We’re in the damn’ capital, for chrissake. And it was a long weekend and they went off to gods knows whose farm, and got stupid.
It’s not fair. And yet…it’s cruelly fair. They were stupid, they pay the price. One of my kids now has to pay the price of knowing she killed her friend. The others have to know that any of them could have tried to put a stop to it. And one of them is dead.
My personal mourning can be brief. I’m sorry she’s dead, I wish she wasn’t and I keep seeing her face before my eyes…but I’m ok, just unhappy. The kids’ mourning won’t be brief – and I have to work out how to support them.
Goodbye, kid. I wish it hadn’t worked out this way.