They were waving at me, both of them, in the backseat of a black, Honda Odyssey.
My precious children, Tommy and Lilia. I watched them giggling, covering their dimpled smiles. They moved their hands from their mouths to the tinted glass, smearing it with their fingers.
The natural urge to wave back manifested itself in my head. I sat up in the driver’s seat and almost waved back. Then it came to me, that sense of dread, of something wrong and uncanny beneath the oddly clear surface of everyday life, like children waving at you on the highway.
Except those children are yours, supposedly comfortable in the cafeteria at their elementary school. Not in the back of a random car speeding down the highway. Not waving at their father, gleefully at that, shrieking with laughter as their breaths painted the glass with fog. Not fading away from you as the car merges from lane to lane, bobbing and weaving through the Monday morning lunch hour. Not inside any car, except a school bus which they run off at the end of every weekday. Not in anyone’s arms except their mother’s and father’s, who holds them in his arms as they crash into him at the doorstep.
My stomach sank with dread, turning cold. The saliva in my mouth turned to dust, and my vision began to blur, my eyes watering. I sank back down in my car and pressed down on the pedal, keeping my eyes on the Honda. I grabbed my phone from the dashboard and scrolled through my contacts list. I found the name I was looking for and tapped it.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Answered my wife.
“I just saw Tommy and Lilia,” I replied, my voice shaking.
“You’re still at the school?”
“I’m on the highway Lisa. I saw them go by, in a stranger’s car. It was a black Honda.”
She didn’t speak for a moment, then I heard her scrambling on the line, a panicked breath echoing through the phone. Screams started and stopped in her voice.
“Have you called anyone? Did you see the license plate? John?”
She started to sob, violently, and I tried to calm her down. I told her to take some deep breaths.
“I need you to call the school. We’ll go from there,” I said, running my hands through my hair.
“It can’t be them, John. Not my babies.”
“It’s okay, Lisa. Just call the school. It’s okay. It might not have been them.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Call me back after.”
I hung up the phone and watched the Honda from a distance. I saw it take an exit ramp. A few seconds later I followed, ramping up my speed. Even from a close distance, I couldn’t spot the license plate. There must have been a film in front of it that blocked it out. I could still see Tommy and Lilia in the back, waving at me, laughing. They had drawn hearts on the glass, pointing at them, then toward me.
The car turned right and I followed right behind, turning on my blinkers. I revved the engine and hit the car in the back, jerking it forward. The tires screeched and swerved but it sped up and kept going, faster now, through red lights. I followed, trying to keep up, but the car was going faster and faster. It almost seemed like it was passing through other cars, and that other people didn’t even seem to notice. I could barely see it in view, I had to squint.
In the distance, I could see them through the rear window. They weren’t laughing anymore. They were crying, but smiling too, watching me. They waved again, wiping their tears as they did. My eyes began to water, and I urged myself to wave back and not to cry.
Then, the car sped up even more and disappeared from my view. I tried to follow but it was gone. I drove for a few more minutes, looking at every gas station and fast food restaurant but I saw no sign. It was like the car itself had vanished. I picked up my phone and saw 5 missed calls from my wife. I tried to call her back but it went straight to voicemail. For some reason, it was hard to care. It felt like my life was already over.
I parked at a McDonald’s somewhere down the road and walked inside, sitting down in a booth to keep from falling. My knees shook, and my jaw too. I kept wiping my eyes and swallowing. This was not the end. There was still something.
That’s when I heard crying throughout the restaurant. Many older and younger folks surrounded the TVs at the front. Even workers from the kitchen were watching, crying, waiting.
I walked over and stood with them. The TV was on a commercial.
“What’s going on?” I croaked, barely audible.
An older lady turned and looked at me, trying to answer, but fell back into sobs.
I heard whispers.
“Who could do that? To a school…”
“Some sick fuck…”
“They were just kids. Kids…”
“Probably killed himself by now, fucking coward…”
When the news came back on the TV, I didn’t need to watch. I sat back down in the booth. I took out my phone in time to catch my wife calling me back. I answered.
She was sobbing, screaming, and there were sirens in the background.
I could barely hear them.
I turned my eyes back to the TV, reading the headline, and watching the mass of elementary school students filing out of the school. I saw reds and blues surrounding the school.
I saw everything.
But I didn’t see a black Honda. I waited for it to show up on the scene, for my children to jump out and greet their mother who was standing, waiting on the sidewalk for them to run into her arms. I thought maybe if I watched for a while longer they would show up eventually. But they never did.
Turning to the window next to me, I smiled slightly. I huffed on the glass, fogging up a good portion of it. I traced my finger around the milky veil.
I drew hearts.