Tommy's Place

The Day I Can’t Forget By Brittany Botell

                  In the morning, my dad tried to wake me up.  He could not get me up, so he pretended to eat all of the doughnuts.  That got me up!  We drove toward Mt. Lassen.  We stopped at a store and got a map.  My mom, dad, and Katrina got coffee while my brother and I got Dibs ice cream.  We drove the rest of the way.  During the drive, Dad asked for a dib, we already ate them all!  We were close to Mt Lassen when Mom spotted a heart on the mountain made of snow.  It was cool!  At the bottom of Mt. Lassen, my brother and I played in the snow and Mom took pictures of us.  Katrina was holding Bear in her purse.

             There was a dark cloud above us and we could hear thunder.  Mom was a bit worried but said that we would not go back unless it starts raining.  Higher up the mountain we could see beautiful lakes and mountains.  We had a snack. We had fiber one bars, and fruit snacks that taste like rubber to Mom, Dad, and Katrina.  Tommy kept calling them rubbers. Mom took more pictures of Bear, Dad, Tommy, Katrina, and me.  Two other families went up with us, one had a baby and the other family had a girl who really liked Bear.  We saw a person that was skiing down the hill on a strip of snow.  He wanted to get to know Bear because Bear has a Facebook.

            We went up a bit further. At about 0.8 miles from the top, there was a rock wall.  Katrina was sitting on the wall. Tommy was walking with me. He ran ahead to sit next to her.  I went up the path to sit on wall with them.  When I tried to sit on the wall, it started to tip.  I was flung backwards. Katrina got flung forward. Tommy got his foot caught by the rock and got smashed, at least that is what I think.  All I saw was the rock rolling down the hill until it was out of sight.  Then I looked down and Tommy and Kat were on the trail below. Kat was bleeding so much it was pouring out of her head. I could barely see the outline of her face, dad was yelling at the top of his lungs screaming like I never heard him before.  Tommy was lying there not moving.  I ran down there crying.  So many people were around Kat that I decided to sit by Tommy because he was hurt too though you could not see any blood.  When Tommy started going down the hill dad held him by his pants. That is when he saw the cut on Tommy’s leg. It went ¾ around and we saw right to the bone, but the weird thing is that it was not bleeding.

           Then a nice woman walked me down.  When I got down the park rangers started questioning me. They were trying to make it look like it was our fault. They were asking if we were pushing the wall, if we were jumping on the wall and if we were trying to make it fall.  It made me mad. We are not bad kids. We like nature. After that, someone made me a really good peanut butter sandwich.  I made a friend down at the bottom of the mountain, but all I could think of was mom coming down and saying, “Brittany, your brother and sister are dead.” It started raining and I got really worried about my family. Then I saw the helicopters come to get them.  When my mom finally came down the first thing she said was “Brittany, Tommy did not make it.”  We cried for a long time. Then they questioned us one by one.  By the time we left, it was getting late. It was a scary drive to the hospital, because one time dad slammed on the brakes saying that it should have been him.  We had to calm him down so that we could get to the hospital.  I was not allowed to see Katrina the first and second day.  The days in the hospital blurred together. The pain and the sadness mixed, making for the worst experience that ever happened to me.  This is my side of my family’s tragedy.     

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Family & Friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.