FAIRBANKS – All Claire Ferree remembers is the screeching of the brakes.

But Maddie Button has a much more vivid memory of the bicycle crash she and Ferree were involved in two weeks ago on Chena Hot Springs Road.

“I have a clear picture in my head of my bike flying through the air in front of me and my legs flailed out in front of me,” Button said. “We didn’t even hear the car come up behind us until we heard the scream of the brakes.

“We heard that, and before we had time to react, we were flying through the air, basically,” she said.

Button and Ferree, both 16-year-old runners and cross-country skiers, were near the end of a 25-mile training ride on Chena Hot Springs Road about 5 p.m. June 18 when they were hit by a car from behind.

The girls, who are best friends and will both be juniors at Lathrop High School, were riding two abreast on the shoulder of the road when they were hit. Ferree was on the outside of the shoulder.

The driver of the car, Lee Schultz, told troopers he was reaching for a cigarette when he looked up and saw the cyclists.

“I went up on the hood and cracked my helmet on the windshield,” Button said. “(The car) stopped and the force of that kicked me off the car onto the pavement.”

That’s probably when Button fractured her tailbone.

Ferree ended up in the ditch along the road. She was more banged up than Button. The accident peeled a patch of skin 6 inches long and 3 inches wide off her right shoulder, and her whole right side was badly bruised and scraped, especially her hip and thigh. She has a hole in the skin of her left knee, but doctors couldn’t stitch it up “because there’s nothing there,” she said. Ferree still is limping two weeks after the accident.

Her right ear was swollen and scraped, and the strap on her helmet cut her hair. Doctors performed a CAT scan because of her head injuries but found no damage.

“The doctor said she avoided a serious head injury because of her helmet,” said her mother, Diane Ferree.

The back ends of both bikes are demolished. The carbon-fiber rim on Ferree’s bike — actually it’s her mom’s, and it’s 6 weeks old — is in several pieces, including a tiny one that is imbedded in her cycling shoe.

“Better her shoe than her leg,” Diane Ferree said.

The accident was a parent’s worst nightmare, especially for Jim and Jennifer Button. Their house sits on a hill on St. Elias Drive, just off Chena Hot Springs Road at 7 Mile, only about a mile away from the crash site at 8 Mile.

“We heard the sirens, but we didn’t think it was related to her,” Jim Button said.

Then the phone rang, and the answering machine picked up. Maddie was crying on the other end.

“All we heard was ‘Mom. Mom.’ And then it clicked off,” Button said.

The Buttons jumped in their car and drove down to the road, following the sound of the sirens.

They quickly came upon the accident scene. The first thing they saw was Maddie’s crushed neon green bike.

“That was pretty shocking to see that,” Jim Button said.

Then they saw Maddie sitting up and knew she was OK.

Claire Ferree used a cell phone to call Diane after the crash.

“She couldn’t even talk to me,” Diane Ferree said. “Finally a lady who had stopped to help got on the phone and told me there had been an accident but that she was going to be OK. We pretty much panicked.”

Schultz, the driver of the car, was cited for failure to exercise due care to avoid a collision. Contacted by phone Thursday, he declined to talk about the accident.

But both the Ferrees and Buttons applauded Schultz for taking responsibility for what happened.

“He stuck around. He apologized profusely. He was pretty shook up,” John Ferree said.

Schultz’s insurance will pay for new bikes for both girls, or in the case of Ferree, her mom.

Maddie Button said the girls were lucky to escape with the injuries they did.

“I definitely think our bikes saved our lives,” she said. “We would have been flattened if our bikes hadn’t been under us.”

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.