Responsible drivers use their blinkers. Everyone knew it was the law, but not everyone followed it. I was a good little law-abiding citizen. The car whose fender I just hit, however, was not.

The street was fairly empty for this time of day, early evening, and the sky deepened into a shade of blue-gray. The radio DJs were discussing the American Idol final four contestants this season, with sound bites from Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, and Randy Jackson interspersed. Hard rocker Chris Daughtry was heavily favored to win the competition, a notion the DJs hotly debated. I had voted for him, so I tended to be biased. Oliver, maybe just to irritate me, was rooting for gray-haired soul-meister Taylor Hicks. I loftily informed him that buffoon didn’t have a chance in hell of winning the fifth season of Idol. Famous last words.

I wasn’t in the mood for radio chat, so I reached down to change the station. Settled on Rihanna’s “SOS” before returning my focus to the road. I only glanced down for a moment, but that single moment was all it took for a car to swing out from the berm, right in front of me.

I swerved onto the open shoulder to avoid a collision, but not quickly enough, as I heard the crunch of metal scraping our bumpers together. I winced as I pumped the brakes, careening to a stop.

The car I hit pulled over in front of me, both of our vehicles idling while my brain attempted to work out what to do. I was shaken. A little scared. The sky was growing darker and the road emptier by the minute. The only car accident I’d ever been in involved me bumping an orange traffic cone during driver’s ed class, but I knew enough to assess the extent of the damage and go from there. Was it always the fault of whoever rear-ended the other car? Or did it matter that he pulled out in front of me? Visibility wasn’t ideal, so maybe it could have been both our faults—mine for not turning my headlights on, him for pulling out without checking for oncoming traffic. Or maybe it didn’t matter. Was all this for the cops to sort out?

I grabbed my Motorola RAZR cell phone and flipped it open. Oliver had wanted to buy me the new sliding keyboard version, but why trade in a perfectly good cell phone when this one worked fine? Even if it did take forever to type a text by going first through each number, then each letter one at a time. God forbid you type past your intended letter and have to start over. It didn’t matter much, though. With limited texts and minutes, I avoided using my cell phone like the plague after my last $300 bill.