719

It couldn’t have happened any differently, I guess. I was sick, and loaded up on cough medicine, and drowsy already, plus then you add the heat, and I was like a passenger-seat zombie. 719 degrees! I see in my mind like a newspaper headline. But that’s not possible. Maybe I have heatstroke.

Everyone says it wasn’t my fault. I mean, you just don’t leave a 12-year old, a 2-year old, and a 6-month old in the car like that and say you’re gonna be back in five minutes when you’re not. When you’re just not. I don’t know what took her so long, she could have been talking with her friend and lost track of time. She didn’t mean to lock the doors. And I was so sleepy I zonked right out like right after she left. I don’t even remember the Triple-A man pulling me out of the car. It’s not his fault either. He couldn’t know that the still little lumps in the back seat between the shopping bags and food wrappers were people too. Besides, the doctors said they probably died in the first hour. So there was nothing he could have done.

It couldn’t have happened any differently, I guess. I was unconscious, it’s not like I knew something bad was gonna happen and I ignored it. But I keep replaying and re-imagining it, wishing I could have been a hero. Smashing the windows with a tire iron, dragging them out to safety, to the crisp breathable air, to life.