This is the prologue of my second serial novel, The Year of the Winding Road < click here to see the main page for the novel, read the other chapters if you missed them or have no idea what this story is about.
Note to readers:
While this story does have events in it that were inspired by true life and the people who made them happen, all of it is fictional and made up. The people, aside from the popular culture figures that pepper this novel, are made up using qualities and quirks I have observed in the people I have met in real life. The places are also made up. The popular culture figures are used fictionally, though I tried to remain true to them in my writing.
The emotions though are very real. High school is a time for angst. High school is a time for finding one’s self and learning who and what one will become. I tried to keep that ribbon alive in this piece of fiction.
The journal entries for the most part are real. I still have the real journal that I wrote in during my junior year of high school, and while I changed the timeline of some of the entries, I tried to keep it true to the voice I used as a seventeen-year-old writer. The journal, along with the literary magazine in which I was published and a number of my other high school memories reside in a box in my basement, making the moves with me through life.
Prologue
November 2021
Brianna Washington Miller sat in the passenger seat of the family’s sport utility vehicle, watching the miles fly by in the autumnal darkness while her husband Dan drove west on Interstate 80 towards home on a Sunday evening in early November.
Cheap truck stop coffee and road trip snacks kept them going as they passed miles of bright lights from gas stations, motels and fast food restaurants that dotted interstate exits. They passed miles and miles of farmland, which Brianna only knew was out there because of the lights from solitary farm houses and small communities that dotted the landscape. Red lights simultaneously blinked along the horizon, indicating the large wind turbines that also crisscrossed this eastern part of Iowa’s countryside. The lights seemed to blink in time with the rock music that blasted through the vehicle’s stereo.
Their five-year-old daughter Margaret and their ten-year-old son Gabriel both slept in the back seat. Maggie was buckled into her car seat, her head resting against one of the sides while Gabe’s cheek was pressed into the window as he sat on his booster. Their soft snores added to the ambiance of the drive and made Brianna smile despite the somberness of her mood.
The family was coming home from the funeral for the child of one of her husband’s high school classmates. It had been a bittersweet event. Sixteen-year-old Hayden had been killed in a car accident coming home from work one night. He had been hit by another driver who was trying to outrun a red light and was killed instantly in a head-on collision.
Dan had been best friends with Hayden’s father Andy all throughout high school. They had both grown up in the suburbs of Chicago, but Andy had moved to rural Southern Illinois around the same time that Dan had moved to Des Moines, Iowa and met Brianna.
When Dan found out about Hayden’s death, he insisted they drive out for the funeral, for Andy was one of his oldest friends. It meant the kids had to miss a day of school and Brianna and Dan both missed a day of work, since they had to drive the three hundred plus miles on a Friday. It also meant two nights in a hotel, but it was worth it to allow Dan the time to mourn with Andy and his family. It was also worth it to allow Dan time with his old friends, many with whom he had kept in touch with through social media, phone calls and Christmas cards.
The classmates who had made the journey to console Andy on his son’s loss had reminisced about their own high school days as they talked about Hayden, who was a junior in high school. Hayden’s own classmates shared stories of how great a person he was at his visitation and funeral. There was a great deal of laughter despite the sadness as well.
Brianna held her children close in certain moments during these past few days, since she watched many of the young man’s friends weep openly at the visitation and funeral. She knew one day Gabe and Maggie would have to be subject to the same pain and turmoil as Hayden’s friends were currently. Though she was fiercely protective of her children, she knew she would not be able to one day protect them from this kind of pain.
Loss was inevitable. It always would be. It was part of life.
On the way home, after the children had settled down to sleep the last hour and a half of the journey, Brianna let her mind reminisce about her own junior year, as that was fresh on her mind given the circumstances. She thought back to her days of living in Southern California, which she grimaced at since it was twenty some years prior.
Because this was so long ago, she had to sweep the cobwebs that graced the corners of her mind to remember some of the details of her school year, but they started to emerge as she watched the lights zoom by. A Nirvana song came on the radio, which helped to open a floodgate of more memories, some she wished she didn’t have to think about. But there were others that she relished.
She remembered the sweetness of her first true kiss. It caused a soft smile on her face, for she remembered it was in the fall of her junior year, at a dance she attended at her school. Patrick was her first boyfriend, her first true love, and the one with whom she shared that passionate kiss.
But marred with that memory was the largest taste of sorrow she had ever had in her adolescence. For not only was Patrick her first love, but she experienced her worst heartbreak as a result of him. It was a sorrow that still haunted her these days, when she allowed it. But the pain and sorrow had lessened over the years as the grief ebbed and flowed.
Hayden’s death had reopened that wound, but it also reopened memories of a time in Brianna’s life when everything seemed to be getting just a little bit closer to feeling fine.
It was the year she and one of her best friends had jokingly dubbed the year of the winding road, for it was the year a certain song seemed to be prevalent in their lives. She had heard it first on the radio with that friend, amongst others, so certain memories had become associated with it. She remembered that when she heard it for the first time, something within her resonated with the lyric that reminded her she was a stranger in her own life. She felt just like the road that winded so that no one could see what was going on.
She smiled sadly at her reflection in the window as light from a passing car reflected on her and let herself fall into the world of her past memories.
Click here to read the first chapter – First Day of School (live on 21 June 2025)
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction written by K. S. Wood, and thus is copyrighted 2025. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author. All rights reserved.If you enjoyed this chapter, please share it with others. Every other Saturday, there will be a new chapter posted for your reading pleasure. The entire story can be found on this page – The Year of the Winding Road
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