DADDY'S GHOST

On a cool and foggy morning, Sarah got dropped off at her piano lesson. Sarah always had piano lessons on Saturdays instead of sleeping in, since it was the weekend and all. Her mom always dropped her off at the instructor's house while her dad went to work for a couple of hours. Then, after her lesson was over, her dad would come straight from work to pick her up, but this day was going to be a day that she would never forget, maybe.

She had her lesson from eight in the morning to noon . That is exactly what happened. Then, after her lesson was over, she sat outside on the instructor's porch and waited for her dad. For some reason, today her dad was pretty late, but she couldn't go inside because there was another lesson going on that she didn't want to interrupt.

When Sarah's dad finally picked her up, he pulled up in his Jaguar, but today something was really wrong. Her father's Jaguar was demolished, and her dad looked exceptionally insipid.

"Dad, what happened?" Sarah asked with a tear in her eye worried that her dad might be hurt.

"Oh, I just got into a little accident, no big deal," her dad said with kind of a blank stare in his eyes.

"Was there anyone hurt, are YOU hurt?" Sarah asked her dad, because he looked a little shaken up.

"No, the other car just drove away," Sarah's dad stated with the same blank stare in his eyes.

As Sarah and her dad were driving down the road, one very similar to Five Mile, Sarah noticed a lot of police cars and fire trucks, along with life squads. Trying to avoid the sight of the accident, Sarah's dad got into the other lane, but Sarah could still see.

"Oh look, that looks just like your car, Dad," Sarah said with some kind of questioning to her voice.

"Well, it's not, so let's just keep it at that!" her dad exclaimed back at her with strong conviction.

Sarah was right; it did look like her dad's car, a lot like it. As a matter of fact, it WAS her dad's car. She didn't know it at first, but there was something weird about seeing the exact same car, and with the way her dad reacted, she knew something had to have gone wrong somewhere.

As the car pulled up to Sarah's house, her dad pulled up in front of the door and told Sarah that he would come inside in a few minutes. Along with that, her dad told her that he loved her, which Sarah thought was kind of strange. Then Sarah got out of the car and went inside. When she got inside her mom ran up to her crying.

"How did you get home?" her mom asked in a panic, "I called Mrs. Gonzalez, and she said that you had already been picked up!"

"Yeah, Mom, Dad brought me home, just like always," Sarah told her mom with reassurance, "why?"

"Honey, that's impossible, because your father died on the way to coming and picking you up. He got in a horrible auto accident!" Sarah's mom exclaimed with tears in her eyes.

"Mom, what happened, because I know Dad picked me up; I just know it was him!" Sarah now cried, with tears rolling down her face.

"Oh honey, it will be okay, I promise," Sarah's mom now really confused giving her daughter comfort.

Sarah, not knowing what was really going on, but knowing that her dad had both died and picked her up all at the same time, ran outside to prove to herself that her dad's car was still in the driveway. When she ran outside, all she saw was her mom's car sitting in the driveway, and her dad or his car was nowhere to be seen. That was when Sarah got really scared and started to scream.

As she was letting out the loudest scream in her life, Sarah woke up finding herself in her own bed. She was scared and in a cold sweat. She walked into her mom and dad's room and saw her dad lying next to her mother, sleeping soundly. Sarah walked over to him and gave him a kiss on his cheek and told him that she loved him, because tomorrow was Saturday.

-Matthew Steuer