This particular story took place recently in my little neighborhood. Before we begin, I would like to say that within the past few years, my neighborhood has been relatively quiet and a good place, day or night. But as of now, it has started to run down a tad. Me and my friends (All three of us being 16) decided to walk out to the church that was in the middle of our neighborhood. It has a large yard with a fenced off playground which was half way hidden behind the actual walls of the church. You couldn’t see half of it from the road, but you could see most of the road from inside of the playground. We were going to meet up with a few of our guy friends, (One being 16 and the other being 17). It was within walking distance from my friend’s house who also happened to live in my neighborhood and so we left and planned to wait in the parking lot. The boys were coming from a while away and we had gotten there way earlier than we meant to. It was around 12 now and we were all just talking and joking around. Off in the distance, we all hear what sounds like car engines revving. I didn’t think anything of this since we lived in an area where car meets happened often and a lot of teenagers liked to race and show off their supposed “rad” cars, which were really just dinghy vehicles with a loud exhaust. We decided we wanted to take pictures, for whatever reason, so I took out my phone and began to position my friends to take a picture. We were having a good time.
A while passed and the boys were nowhere to be seen. We knew that they decided to walk since they had snuck out, but it was taking way longer than usual since we had met up like this many times before. My friend, Hayley, decided to give Jake, the older of the two guys, a call. Her phone rang only once before he answered; he seemed out of breath.
“Where are you guys, we’ve been here forever,” Hayley said, pretending to be annoyed. There was a small period of silence over the line and glances were exchanged between the three of us.
“Yeah, sorry. There’s like a huge group of cars speeding around us so it’s just taking longer. We’ll hurry up,” Jake’s voice finally came through, definitely out of breath.
I spoke up and asked, “Have you been running? You sounds like your panting man,”
He laughed and said they had been earlier trying to get past the group of cars. We talked for a few minutes over the phone until finally we let them go and hung up. We sat in the grass of the church yard and just looked around. Harper, the other friend who was there, spoke up. “Does it sound like the cars are getting closer? I think they are…”
I rolled my eyes at this since I knew that Hayley was going to start to freak out over this. She had always been the one to overthink things and especially with it being nighttime, it did not help her brain from running on and on about the terrible things that could happen. I told her I didn’t think that they were and if they were getting closer, it didn’t matter, they were just people having a good time. We spent another 5 minutes sitting there, exchanging little to no small talk. We decided to move camp into the fenced playground which consisted of a gravel section with monkey bars and swings and a singular bench that was placed in the corner, hidden behind the walls of the church. The church had a hollow area cut out of the rectangular building, creating a “U” shape which had a small garden area. We sat on the bench, taking more pictures.
Harper was right, the cars had been getting closer. There was a freeway right next to where the church was and 10 cars sped down, turning into the neighborhood. We sat watching the cars vroom past us at increasing speeds. Hayley began to look more and more nervous, eyes glancing around anxiously, I could care less and Harper is scrolling on her phone, looking up every now and then. The last car that blew past us was down to the floor and sparked when it bounced on the bumps. They all pass the church and we soon forget about it and focus on the whereabouts of the boys. We go onto Snapchat to look at the location of Jake and see that he has hardly made progress but that he was on about 3 minutes ago.
“God, he’s slow this time,” I say impatiently, trying to get the girls to bring their focus off the stupid cars. “I wonder if it’s because he’s bringing someone else, do we even know the guy?” I ask them and Hayley shakes her head and says,
“Not a clue, his name’s Ethan though,” Harper shrugs and looks back at the road, tilting her head. I turn and look over and see a light blue car, low to the ground. It passes us at a normal neighborhood speed and I recognize it from the group of cars that had turned from the highway. Harper must have noticed that too, since we make eye contact. I shrug my shoulders, again, not thinking anything of it at all. That was until a few minutes passed and it came back from the way it had just gone, this time going much slower.
I look at Hayley and then back at Harper. I was the most realistic one in these situations and knew that the chances of this being anything more than a car driving was extremely low. But, this horrible, nonsensical gut feeling that sent chills down my spine and spread goosebumps all over my arms came over me. I was sent into a quick state of panic as I watched it roll at 10 mph down the road. It was dark in the playground, no light shined down on us and the only thing that lit us up were the screens of our phones. We could see the street clearly because of the street lights and the lights on the houses, but they couldn’t have been able to see us. It finally passed out of view and we all spoke up again and exclaimed our thoughts and worries about the car.
Mid sentence, it drove back the way it went previously and we all jumped up to hide behind the wall of the church. The church had a little side street that you could turn into the parking lot as well as a main entrance. We were able to see some of the side street but not completely all of it. A few minutes passed and we all thought it was gone. We were all high off of adrenaline, Hayley within a few seconds of a meltdown. I begin to slowly walk out from around the corner and I see something lighting up the road. I pause, frozen in place. The car had gone into the other entrance of the parking lot and came down onto the side road which was right next to the gate of the playground. As it cruised into view, going no faster than 5 mph, my phone screen lit up from a call from Jake. I quickly hung up and ducked, running to a bush that was nearby. I cursed under my breath and as it rolled down to the exit of the side road, its back end hit the ground, causing sparks to shoot up.
I feel like all the air has left my lungs, like I can no longer breathe. It finally drove out of view and that was all it took for all of us to jump up and run to the gate. We opened it and started to run. Hayley and I sprint full speed, shooting down through the yard and straight on the main road. I quickly glance over my shoulder to see the car coming back. I run into someone’s yard and duck behind the bush. Hayley is ahead of me somewhere in someone else’s yard and Harper is sitting behind one of the trees in the church’s yard. It begins to slowly drive towards my hiding spot and I can barely see the headlights through the bush. I can hear the screech of the back of the car dragging on the pavement as it slows to a spot. Fear is rushing through my body, heat overwhelming me as my thoughts race on and on. It’s stopped right in front of my bush and I close my eyes, praying for it to go away. It creeps forward finally and I let out a small sigh of relief.
I pop up once again as soon as it’s out of sight. Harper is running as fast as she can towards me and she rasps out, “I saw it coming down the road and I knew it would have seen me too, but it for sure saw you,” She is looking around fearfully, searching for Hayley who seems to be long gone. Harper and I ran as fast as our legs could take us, this being by far the most physical activity I’ve done in a long time. Finally, we reach Hayley’s house, where Hayley is crouched behind her car that is in the driveway. We all meet up and go to the front door. By this time it is well past 1:30 and we are exhausted. Hayley is on the phone with her parents and we are banging on the door furiously to try to wake up her sister who was the only one home. She’s not answering and we are increasingly getting more and more tired. Hayley is facing the road, breathlessly trying to explain the situation to her parents over the phone while pacing frantically, trying to get the jitters out. Harper and I are still desperately ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door when Hayley screams out, “Oh my God, it’s right there!” The car was passing by the house, headlights shining on us. We knew it was the car since it was low to the ground and light blue.
We collectively scream as we see the car sparking down the road and we run to hide. The adrenaline is so high at this point and we are all shaking and screaming. Finally, the car passes us and out of our completely dazed and frantic mindset, we have the bright idea to go through the garage. Hayley is blabbering into the phone about how the car now knows where she lives. My brain is starting to clear and I’m trying to once again see the situation for what it really is. I realize that we are probably scaring the absolute crap out of Hayley’s parents so I take the phone from Hayley and tell them in the most calm voice I can muster up that we are okay and safe and that we are inside now and that they shouldn’t worry. We end the call and sit in Hayley’s living room, sweaty and hot, still panting and thinking about the events that just took place. I then think of Jake and look at my Snap. He was on not too long ago and I have two missed calls and a few messages. I called him back and explained the whole thing. We are all talking over each other trying to explain it to the best of our ability. We told him to not come out and that we were going to stay in.
To this day, this is one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever been through. If we hadn’t acted on our gut feelings, or if they had gotten out of the car when I was in the bush, or even if they had come back to Hayley’s house, it could have gone horribly. I’ve never felt this amount of adrenaline in my life and now whenever we leave the house late at night, we are always so careful.