Everett checked his phone. 10:23 pm. In three minutes and seventeen seconds, Everett will be struck by a drunk driver in a purple sedan while crossing the intersection at Edison Rd. and Bellatrix Ave., receiving severe body-wide blunt force trauma, then lifted up and over the hood of the car to rest face-down on the road. Everett will die five feet and ten inches tall, despite having lived at six feet, on account of having several vertebrae of his lower spine shattered. In his wake will be a trail of pinkish-red sludge measuring seventeen yards from the site of initial contact. The declared cause of death will be “internal hemorrhaging following rupture of the right pulmonary artery due to major chest trauma,” though a critic may point to the crumpled plastic bin next to his body. The driver in question, former security guard Philip Walker, will lead a successful life of recovery and penance following his stint in prison, becoming a best-selling author.

But that is neither here nor there. The time was 10:23 and Everett was walking back from a local grocery store. He smiled to himself, some earnestness to his step and a quart of ice cream in hand. The cargo had set him back nine dollars, but he didn’t mind—the evening was going well. He had surprised his girlfriend, Amber, with homemade dinner. And sure, he had forgotten to pick up some ice cream beforehand, but things like that are hard to remember when cooking. Amber had tried to come with him, but he insisted that she rest. This was his pilgrimage to take alone.

He breathed with a small opening to his mouth, letting air flow in. He felt the cool air mixing with his mint gum, freezing the caps of his molars. He turned it over and over with his tongue, imagining that he was lowering his body temperature to keep the ice cream from melting. Amber had named the sensation once. Cold spice? Something like that.

The air was rich with pine. Trees not too dissimilar from those by his childhood home. Large, green, welcoming. Those very picturesque sorts of things that you’d take family photos in front of. His father had helped him build a treehouse out of pine. It had turned out as more of a shed, really. “You could fall out of it if it was in a tree.” Everett brushed aside the incomplete thought with his hand, so that one observing may think he was receiving perfume.

Catching his wrist at just the right angle, moonlight glinted at his eye. He raised his arm, checking his watch. 10:29. The black arms gazed back through the cracked face. A family heirloom passed down by his paternal grandfather. The story went that it was crushed when he was shot down somewhere over Germany back in 1943. The face was stuck. No one had seen it fit for repair. Amber and him spoke about it often. She thought that it was a very handsome piece that would look good restored. Everett disagreed. It was a good luck charm.

Also glinting was a diamond-embedded silver band in his pocket, having caught a shallow ray of light from the opening. He hadn’t planned on proposing any time soon, or so he told himself. He enjoyed holding it. Feeling its weight. He would rub his hand over the center diamond the way he would with seashells when he was younger, letting it hook on the small crests of his palm. It was in need of a better carrying arrangement. Everett had lost the case only half an hour after the purchase, setting it down on a subway bench to take a closer look at the ring. It wasn’t overly extravagant, as he couldn’t afford too much, but it was nice.

He placed his hand inside the pocket to feel it now, cradling it gently, as if a father to a newborn. Letting it tumble between his fingers, he caressed it with the back of his nails. His walking slowed, trying not to make a sound.

Around twenty feet before the intersection at Edison and Bellatrix was a blind turn where several lampposts had gone out. The police department had assigned an officer to set up a reflective sign that day and watch out for speeding cars, but the task was left undone. Everett nodded at the sleeping cop as he passed.

He could use some sleep himself. The last two days he had worked a combined twenty-three hours. He figured that he should talk to his supervisor about it, but he needed the job. Name-brand ice cream was expensive. But he didn’t need to worry about that now, because it was 10:25 and twenty-three seconds on a Friday in February, and he was happy.

Happy, like the first time Everett met Amber at a stupid ice cream social back in college. Everett still wasn’t sure why he’d gone. The ice cream was terrible. It was all very much melted when he arrived. She was forward. Asked him for his name and out on a date, in that order. Amber wasn’t melted at all. She knew who she was, what she would do. Bachelors, med school, marriage, retirement. Everett had never been sure about things. He was no great achiever or leader of men; the greatest footnote to his name was a first place finish in an essay contest to name a city street, way back in the seventh grade. He won by writing about Daniel Bellatrix, a veteran who spent his free time volunteering in a local library. Mr. Bellatrix didn’t seem extraordinary to Everett at the time, but apparently he was enough to win the twenty-five dollar prize. Everett hoped to have something named after him one day. A street seemed a bit too grand, but maybe a bench. Yes, a bench seemed wholly pleasant.

He arrived at the stop sign. The intersection at Edison and Bellatrix was not a busy one. So it was purely out of his own decision that Everett decided to stop and wait for a moment, perched on the curb before crossing. His grandmother had told him once that intersections were a nice spot to wait and think. He didn’t know about all that but they were a convenient spot to look around. A buildup of trash by the storm drain nearest to him caused a frown. Maybe Amber would join him for a trash walk.

He checked the road three times before crossing (for his mother’s sake), even though there wasn’t a car to be seen, and stepped out into the crosswalk.

Everett’s second-to-last thought came at 10:26 and seven seconds: that the space on the street in-between the dim lampposts and pine trees could be outer space. It certainly seemed dark enough. He jumped from foot to foot. He was floating.

Touching down, he heard a soft clinking sound on the ground.

The ring…Fuck should’ve used a bag…Where—

He doubled over to search in the middle of the street, squinting through the darkness. As such, he was perfectly unaware when a purple sedan with its headlights off soared around the blind corner at ninety miles an hour.

The container of ice cream burst on impact, sending chunks spraying out into the surrounding pines and dusting the landscape with a deep pink spray. However, the small ring in his pocket was thrown down the street where it remained rather intact, skidding several yards to come to a stop next to a recently kicked penny.

It would be found a week later by a local high schooler and pawned off for two hundred and seventeen dollars.