Hot Wheels were my favorite toys in kindergarten.  I can still clearly picture the rug in the classroom, one of the rugs that had what appeared to five year olds a very complicated map of a town.  It was complete with a police station, school, fire station, bank, and a couple of average houses. We would always sit on the rug during Reading Time, and my spot was the school.  My five year old self found it satisfying to always sit in the same spot every day; something stable, something constant.

    Normally playing with Hot Wheels was a “guy thing”, and in kindergarten, I didn’t have many friends that were girls.  I had a couple girl friends, but the friends that I recall most from kindergarten are Joey (the self-proclaimed bad boy with hair in ringlets like a pig’s tail), Matthew (the weirdo who tried to impress me the first day by shoving a Fruit Roll Up in his mouth whole), Gustavo (the quiet Hispanic who would ask me to read books to him, specifically about ocean animals), and Gabe (the sensible one who tried to keep everybody else from doing something they would regret).

    We would lay on the floor on our stomachs during free time, propelling different colored Hot Wheels across the rug, creating our own little world.  My car was the bright green bug car, because the boys made me pick last. I loved that car though, and I sacrificed a lot of skin on my elbows to lay on that carpet day after day and fine tune its world.

    I don’t know how Ms. Collins put up with us every day.  Granted, we were split up into morning and afternoon classes, but as soon as one group of snotting children left, the next group would come, with even more snot.  I clearly remember her dark hair flying in front of her face as she led us in our ABCs, throwing flashcards in the air until the floor was littered with them. Her voice sounded like honey, so sweet that you couldn’t help but listen to it, couldn’t help but follow it.  We all would have followed her to the ends of the Earth.

    Whenever I got bored of the boys and my green bug car (which wasn’t often), I would go and play with the girls at the fake kitchen set.  You know the one, with all of the plastic chicken legs, peas, bread, and plates, where toddlers would always fight about whose turn it was to use the plastic oven.  But the girls over there never played with any of it; they gossiped. Here is where I heard the stories about the “other” class.

    There was Abby (the really tall, blonde girl who towered over the guys), Joseph (an olive-skinned trouble maker who was always stealing from Ms. Collins desk), Maria (the girl who would always put her backpack on the wrong hook just to annoy everybody), and Kia (the quiet brunette who was the only one in the class who had graduated from stick figures).  Although they talked a lot about the troublemakers, I always wanted to hear more about Kia. My stick figures were barely stick figures, and although I could read and write at a 3rd grade reading level before kindergarten, I could not for the life of me draw anything. I wondered if we could be friends if we were in the same class.

I never got to find out.

The weeks went by slowly.  Ms. Collins bought new ABC cards to enthrall us with, Matthew shoved more fruit roll ups down his throat, the girls continued to gossip in the play kitchen, and I continued to play on the car rug.  

One day though, that all changed.

I walked into class like I always did, and hung up my backpack and coat on my hook in the closet.  The happy posters glared at me like they did every morning, the mosaic of colors making sure I knew my shapes.  The room always smelled like a combination of the stuff they used to clean up vomit and Little Debbie’s snacks.  Sure enough, there were Swiss Rolls in a grocery bag on the counter. But something was off.

I looked over in the corner where the car rug was, and it wasn’t there.  The gray tile floor was visible, and the rug was rolled up and thrown against the bookshelf.  It seemed like someone had been angry and kicked it aside. My classmates were all sitting at their math tables, and their eyes were pools of uncertainty.  Ms. Collins was nowhere in sight, and Mrs. Marquart, the kindergarten aid, was who all of the kids were staring at. She was a good-looking lady with long blonde hair, but right now her hair was uncombed and her face looked about ready to break.  I hurried over to a table and sat down by Gustavo.

“Guys, I want you to be really nice to Ms. Collins today,” Mrs. Marquart was saying.  “Something very sad happened yesterday.”

We all wanted to ask what happened, but we were all too scared.  We had never seen Mrs. Marquart this upset, and we had never had a day of kindergarten without Ms. Collins.  I remember clearly the words Mrs. Marquart spoke next. “There was a car accident, and Kia was involved.” Sigh.  “She will not be coming back to school.” We were all too stunned to say anything. What does that mean, she was involved?  Was she hurt?  “I want you all to be there for Morgan, and give Ms. Collins a big hug when she comes in.”  Morgan was Kia’s older sister, who was in third grade at the time.

Mrs. Marquart left and brought Ms. Collins into the room, a protective hand on her shoulder.  I could tell my teacher had been crying a lot already, and I didn’t know if she could take anymore.  We all went to her in one big swarm, throwing our arms around her and telling her it was going to be okay, when most of us didn’t even understand what was wrong.

It wasn’t until a few months later that I understood that Kia had been hit by a car, and that she would never be back with us because she was dead.  I couldn’t wrap my head around it for the longest time. I remember being very sad for a couple of weeks after Mrs. Marquart’s announcement, but I didn’t know why.  My parents kept asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell them, I couldn’t tell them why I was sad, why I was crying, because I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know why I was sad until I learned what death was, and Kia’s death was the first I experienced in my memory.

Throughout the years, I didn’t learn much more about her than what I already knew.  I do remember one of my later teacher’s accounts of the accident, in which she said that Kia was not paying attention and ran across the road without looking for cars.  The accident, I learned, did not occur far from the school. The teacher said that she remembers hearing the screech of the tires as the driver tried to stop.

Now I can hear it too.

The day after Mrs. Marquart’s announcement, things went mostly back to normal in the classroom.  Ms. Collins threw ABC cards in the air, Matthew shoved more fruit roll ups down his throat, and the janitor was called upon to clean up.  But my friends and I could not play with our cars anymore. The car rug had been replaced by another rug, one with lots of squares on it, just about the size of a five year old’s rear end.  That day Ms. Collins instructed us during Reading Time, “Stay in your square when you read, and keep your hands to yourself.

“Don’t go running off anywhere.”