Fratricide.

To this day, I can’t explain why I didn’t see his headlights until they were glaring at me through the passenger window. But once I did, that was all I saw, dual luminary versions of foghorns screaming and cutting the soft glow of twilight.
I’m sure I was jilted in my seat, but I don’t remember any physical sensation after the collision. My entire focus had shifted to the sound that had come from beside me. Though the squealing brakes I expected to hear were conspicuously absent, I did catch the whine of metal bending and crumpling, the glittering wind chimes of broken glass, and the cacophony of sounds that signaled my brother’s body suddenly recoiling, being thrown into his passenger door, which had just been smashed in. An unmistakable part of that smattering of sound was the dull thunk of his skull colliding with his passenger window.
Had a printer been attached to my brain in that one instant, it would have fired off enough pages drowning in solid blocks of glossy wet black I killed my baby brother I killed my baby brother I killed my baby brother to fill a graveyard of coffins (or, of course, a library, which would be the natural thing to fill with pages).

I completed my left turn, narrowly avoiding the car on my left that we had almost been knocked into, and lamely pulled onto the first side road. Though I don’t remember vocalizing anything yet, my brother insists I screamed word salad at him until I stopped the car, which was when I turned to him and garbled “Dear God, are you alive?”
Jason was sitting upright and staring at me with his eyes wide open. “What just happened?” was sufficient response. He maintains that I pawed at him until he said “I just hit my head, I feel fine,” but I remember stepping out of the car into the chill morning air and shuffling to the corner to check on the other driver. The cars were all flowing through the intersection as if nothing had happened. There wasn’t a stopped car in sight. I finally tasted the blood issuing from my tongue where I had bitten it.
I returned to my car and got my first view of the damage. It actually looked like the other vehicle, which I speculated was a truck from the elevation of the dent, had stamped its entire front bumper six inches into the side of my Accord. In a moment of insanity, I wondered how big the dent in my brother was. But Jason, quite un-dented, rolled down his miraculously intact window and handed me my purse. “You’d better call Dad.”
I only caught fragments of the report my father was giving my mom while I sobbed incoherently into the receiver. “T-boned her… nobody seriously hurt… obviously disoriented…” Most of my brain was still on my brother, and the rest was marveling at how hard it was to keep the phone to my ear. I had always thought the post-trauma uncontrollable shaking of limbs so oft depicted in movies was just bad acting.
I continued my convulsions until, in true baby brother fashion, he asked me if I thought this would get him out of school for the day, at which point I thrust my torso through his open window and threw my arms around him, where they remained until my parents arrived to separate us. They nearly had to use the Jaws of Life to extract him from my grasp.

Hi, I'm Terrified of You.

Hi, I'm terrified of people. Qualification: I fervently love people on an individual basis… individual relationships with established friends are an invaluable refuge from the insanity and inanity of the world. It’s really just groups of people that render me a teeth-chattering, clammy-palmed heart-attack-waiting-to-happen.

Want proof? My earliest evidence...

I am seven years old. I have just been invited to Vanessa Ray's eighth birthday party, which, incidentally, is a slumber party. My parents decide I will attend. I am given no choice in the matter. My mother drives the minute and forty-seven seconds to Vanessa's house without incident. She opens the car door to remove me from my seat, but I cling to the safety belt like it's a life preserver amid the sea of blankets that litter the backseat. My Teddy has been swallowed by said blanket/sea, and I attempt to avoid the same fate by screeching as though being devoured alive by fire ants. Not that I had any concept of how someone being devoured by fire ants would screech.

Needless to say, my mother shouted her apologies that I would not be in attendance to the horrified hostess over my shrieking. Her excuse was that I had suddenly fallen violently ill.

So, you see, it's all my mother's fault for giving me the idea that this is acceptable behavior.

I now routinely feign illnesses in order to avoid social gatherings. The severity of the illness normally corresponds to the gravity of the occasion; for a night of drinks with the ladies from work, a simple headache will suffice, while projectile vomiting is almost exclusively reserved for family reunions. Popular excuses for moderate situations include mild food poisoning (which I have never had), conjunctivitis (which I have never had), tonsillitis (which I have never had), and suspected appendicitis. In my defense, that last time, I was experiencing pain in the general vicinity of where I imagined my appendix to be, though my roommate now informs me that my appendix is actually on the opposite side of my body.

I do not attend parties of any kind.

Now I don't fake sick to ditch work or class. In my family, exclusions from work or school are warranted only in the case of expelling blood from two or more bodily orifices not designed for that purpose (which, thankfully, I have never had, and have never been remotely tempted to fake). For some inexplicable reason, this distinction between lying to avoid the office and lying to avoid everyone makes perfect sense.

I also do not, as one might think, take certain reasonable liberties with my stolen time. I don't sneak into movies or indulge in massages or tryst with the secret boyfriend whose company I prefer to all others; I take naps with my cat or sort my laundry or reread Frozen or Frankenstein or Fahrenheit 451. I do not plan for these occasions, and as a result I often end up thoroughly bored and relatively miserable. I can’t explain or excuse this behavior. I know these little white lies are morally reprehensible. I know that a visit to a psychiatrist would result in a prescription that might allow me to cope in group settings. But… where’s the fun in being fully functional?

So I’m paralytically shy. If you want to know anything else about me, your best bet is to corner me when I think I’m alone, because you still scare the shit out of me.