Aurora Magazine 2018

light seemed particularly bright and I stared at the particles of dust floating up and down. With a sigh, I got up. I heard the television giving its low electric hum, knowing my mom was still awake. Of course, she was still awake. Dale Earnhardt Sr. had just been pronounced dead. My family wasn’t hyped on Nascar, but she had followed him for much of his career and we had watched the crash live. It was hard to believe. So many crashes we had witnessed. Even crashes involving Sr. himself, yet they all walked away. Why was this time so dif- ferent? Experts were already being interviewed with explana- tions of this or that. They all seemed unbelievable. The Intim- idator was immortal, wasn’t he? As an eleven-year-old, I was confused about the whole thing. I walked out into the living room with a sense of dread. There was no way I would sleep tonight, but my mother al- ways sent me back to bed with some line about just trying to sleep. In that moment, I knew tonight would be no differ- ent, and I would be sent to bed with my stock of day dreams already drained. She turned to look at me and asked me what was wrong. I told her I was confused about Sr.’s death and sat next to her. Surprisingly she wrapped her arm around me and didn’t say a thing. We sat in silence watching some unimport- ant show. Suddenly we both startled at the sound of a door opening. Breaking the vague silence of the house, we turned guiltily to see my dad standing there rubbing sleep from his eyes. It was around one in the morning. Had we really been sitting there that long? He asked what we were doing. My B O Y E R

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