Meticulous

Chloe Ashwood always followed the rules. It was uncanny almost. I mean, I generally I tried to stick to the rules. But you know what they say about rules. They were meant to be broken. It wasn’t like I’d ever done anything that would wind me up in jail, but I’d committed a few minor offenses. Running stop signs, parking in handicap spots, underage drinking. The kind of thing everyone did.

 Not Chloe though. Like I said, it was strange how much she stuck to the rules.

 If the speed limit was sixty, she wouldn’t even go sixty one. Drivers behind her would honk their horns and yell at her to go faster, but Chloe didn’t even appear to notice. She’d continue going at her regular speed as people went zooming past her.

 When Jordan Sullivan stole the answers to a math test in grade ten, Chloe was the only one who wouldn’t look at them. That night everyone except Chloe spent the night memorizing the answers. I still remember the dirty look she gave me when I came into class quietly muttering “A, C, C, B, A…” Chloe was also the only one who passed that test, since she ratted us all out. I suppose we all deserved that.

 When she got her first iPod, she bought all her songs from iTunes. I tried to tell her that she could save a lot of money by streaming them. She muttered something about supporting her favourite singers, and how it was illegal anyways. I didn’t tell her that no one ever got in trouble from downloading music. If she wanted to let all her iTunes charges add up and have to pay for hundreds of dollars worth of music, well I guess that was her choice.

 Sometimes I couldn’t quite understand how she lived like that, or why she even was the way she was. Her parents were pretty laid back. It wasn’t like she had super strict and overprotective parents. Sometimes, I think even her parents weren’t sure where it came from. 

 Chloe had been that way all her life. Cautious, meticulous, and always sticking to the rules. So we were all very surprised when the police showed up at the Ashwood's door one morning. It had been snowing, the roads were slippery. Chloe was found in her badly beaten car, at the bottom of a steep cliff. Poor Chloe, didn’t even stand a chance.

 It was an accident. The roads weren’t in good condition, it had to be an accident. Chloe who had always been so careful about not breaking any rules wouldn’t have been so careless. She would have been driving slow enough to control her car. That’s what I wanted to believe at least, but I couldn’t ignore the facts. It wasn’t an accident, and I could pretend all I want that it wasn’t. But all my pretending wouldn’t change the fact that the sole witness to her death saw her turn on her signal light before driving off the cliff.

Author's Note

Just an idea I've been toying with a bit. I wouldn't really read into any deeper meanings or ulterior motives, it's just something I came up with. I wrote this at 1am, so grammar mistakes are pretty likely (I did proof read it, but I'm kinda tired so I might have overlooked a few things), feel free to point out any mistakes that should be changed.

Anyways, I'm posting most of my stuff to my tumblr now. I have a side blog that's mostly for writing stuff. If you want to check it out, it's starfast.tumblr.com If anyone has been keeping up with the novels I was working on, that' where most of the chapters are going. I'll try to start posting them here again though.