Savannah Burning

Chapter Seven

Mrs. Kingery sighed from across her desk.

“You’re telling me that you have no idea where she went?” I could tell she didn’t believe me despite how many times I already told her that no, I didn’t know where Savannah disappeared to.

“Look, I already told you everything. She asked me to walk her to the nurse. She thanked me. She bailed.”

“And I’m supposed to assume that this has nothing to do with your old habits?” She raised her eyebrows at me and I squirmed uncomfortably.

“That hasn’t happened in years,” I mumbled. “Besides, how would that have anything to do with it? I didn’t tell her to leave and even if I did, how would I be responsible for what she decides to do?”

“You didn’t think to stop her? Or tell someone?” Mrs. Kingery shoved back from her desk. She stood up, pacing back and forth.

“Mrs. Kingery,” I interrupted her thoughts, “not for nothing, but I’m a kid. I don’t really think ahead the way most adults do. It was a mistake. You said it yourself – she’s at home. She’s not missing.”

“That’s not the point, Tyson,” Mrs. Kingery said, sitting back down in her chair. She pushed her glasses up onto her head and frowned, resting her chin in her hands. The childlike gesture took years off my perspective of her. “It’s the fact that she didn’t seem to have any worry for her own safety.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but found myself tripping over Mrs. Kingery’s words. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“This girl just got home. She’s finally been reunited with her family. She was the one who insisted on returning to school so soon. Why would she disappear from school only to walk all the way home while the person who stole her is still out there?” Mrs. Kingery sighed, pressing her knuckles against her mouth. “Maybe she wasn’t ready to come back to school,” Mrs. Kingery said softly. “She’s so delicate right now.” I thought back to today in the cafeteria, how her technicolor eyes flashed with anger at everyone’s staring, gaping faces.

“I don’t think she’s ‘delicate,’” I murmured.

Mrs. Kingery’s eyes met mine, studying me for a minute. “You’re right,” she nodded. “She’s not fragile. She’s a loaded gun.” My stomach churned nervously at her words. Mrs. Kingery sighed, pulling her glasses back down on her nose. Before, when she hadn’t been paying attention, I saw her naivety. Now there was nothing but adulthood, her eyes tired once again.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked nervously.

“No, Tyson. You’re not in trouble. I’m sorry for what I said about the past. That wasn’t right.” I shrugged in response and stood up to leave. “Tyson,” Mrs. Kingery said, straightening out a pile of papers on her desk, “I expect you keep this conversation between us. I’m trusting you.” She caught my eye, warning me, and I nodded.

“It’s not my secret to tell,” I shrugged before leaving.

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Robbie’s car was a hand-me-down silver Astrovan that, most likely, hadn’t passed inspection in a few years. Robbie got in first and opened up the passenger door for me from the inside of the van. It was the only way to open the door. The handle on the outside had broken off long before Robbie got passed the keys from his older brother. I slid into the front seat, the cracked leather groaning in protest. I shifted half-heartedly attempting to get comfortable in the decaying seat. There was hardly any cushion left in this thing.

“Do we really have to take the van?” I grumbled, pulling the seatbelt down.

“What’s so bad about the Mothership?” Robbie asked. As if on cue, the van sputtered and coughed, letting out a loud bang that had half the student parking ducking for cover. I glanced behind me at Daisy who was sitting in the backseat, hiding behind the tinted-windows, grinning her Cheshire-cat grin.

“What?” She asked innocently. “I don’t see anything wrong with taking the Mothership.”

“Only because nobody will see you in it,” I grumbled. I sunk down in my seat, avoiding the glares of our fellow students as they watched the van stutter her way out of the parking lot.

We stalled to a stop outside of Savannah’s house. By now the media-hype about Savannah Skye had calmed down; there were no more reporters and, therefore, no more police officers. Still, I was nervous all the same. I stared out at their house, heart racing in my chest. What would Mr. Skye do to me once he finds out that I was the one who let his daughter walk straight into harm’s way? He would kill me, that’s what he would do.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Daisy asked, but I shook my head, swallowing hard.

“No. No, it’s okay.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans before opening the door and sliding out, my jeans pulling a piece of duct tape off of the leather.

Daisy crawled from the back into the front seat and rolled down the window. “We’re right outside if you need us,” she whispered, her hazel eyes flashing with worry. I nodded before turning to the house.

I walked up the front steps to the big wooden front door, raised a trembling hand and knocked as loud as I could.

“Tyson!” Mrs. Skye stared at me in surprise, pulling a kimono tighter around her. The AC in the house was blasting despite the fall chill in the air. A shiver crawled down my spine as I scrambled for something – anything – to say. I had envisioned Savannah, or worse Mr. Skye, opening the door. I hadn’t expected that Mrs. Skye would still be at the house. She hadn’t lived here in years.

“I . . .” s**t. “I wanted to see if Savannah was okay,” I answered honestly. “Today seemed a little tough for her.”

Mrs. Skye frowned, looking up towards the ceiling. “Well, I just got home but I’m not so sure if she’s really up for seeing anybody, Tyson,” she said. “She said she was very tired from today.” Behind her, the landline began to ring. Mrs. Skye sighed, her fingers fluttering to her forehead. “Come on in. Let me answer that.” Then, more to herself then me, “they just won’t stop calling.”

“She’s home, though?” I asked, following her into the foyer.

“Who? Oh, yes, she’s just upstairs. Make yourself comfortable, Tyson, I won’t be long,” she said as she headed into the kitchen. As soon as she disappeared I sprinted up the staircase. I reached the second landing and headed for the last door in the hallway, the door slightly ajar. A purple glow emitted from behind the door and I remembered Heather’s words: her whole room was purple. The smell of incense lingered around the doorframe, coaxing me to come inside. I knocked gently, pushing the door open.

Savannah Skye was lying across her bed, eyes closed, with headphones on so loud I could hear the heavy rock music from the doorway. Her feet were pressed against her backboard, one set of toenails painted blue, the other green. Her room, it would seem, hadn’t changed much from the time of her kidnapping. Her bed sheets were purple and frilly, something I couldn’t imagine this leather-wearing Savannah liking at all. Her furniture was child-sized, including a miniature vanity shoved up against one wall with a Lisa Frank poster of a unicorn displayed above it. A decrepit rocking horse stood eerily still in a corner, Savannah’s leather jacket thrown over its back. The drawers to her dresser were cracked open, bursting with dark-colored clothing. On the other side of her room, next to her window, was a dollhouse replica of the Skye’s house with incense burning in one of the windows, the smoke curling around the dollhouse’s roof.

“Savannah?” I said quietly, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. I cleared my throat. “Savannah?” I reached out, brushing my hand against her shoulder.

Savannah shot up with a yelp, yanking her headphones off. “What the f**k?” She yelled, her eyes just as wide and wild as they were the first night I saw her.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said putting my hands up in front of me. “I needed to make sure you got home okay.”

“Well, here I am. You can leave now,” she shooed me away with black painted nails, glaring at me, dismissing me as though I were nothing more than a fly in her way, as though she didn’t seek me out this afternoon, as if she didn’t disappear on my watch.

“You don’t have to be so damn abrasive about it,” I replied. “I get it, ok? Sometimes you need your own space, but – “

“Listen,” she interrupted, holding a hand up to cut me off, instantly infuriating me. The back of my neck prickled with anger. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t need you checking up on me. I have enough people already doing that.”

I clenched my jaw, struggling to suppress the wave of anger that threatened to lash out. “Savannah, you disappeared from school,” I hissed. “How was I supposed to know that you were safe? Your kidnapper –”the whole world froze. There it was: the unspeakable word. The K-Word. Savannah’s face crumbled into fury and I touched my lips, surprised that I had lost myself in my frustration.

Savannah slid off her bed, drawing herself to her full height. “Don’t call her that,” she growled. “Don’t you dare bring her up.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean . . .” From down below Mrs. Skye was calling my name.

“He’s up here!” Savannah yelled to her mother, her eyes still furiously locked on mine. “Listen,” she hissed, taking another step closer to me, “I know I owe you for today, I get that. But I don’t need checking on. Don’t piss me off. Got it?”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I said quietly as Mrs. Skye pounded up the stairs. “Friends do s**t for each other. If you don’t want me checking in then why don’t you not ditch school on my watch again. Got it?”

“Tyson,” Mrs. Skye panted as Savannah took a step away from me. “I thought I told you she wasn’t up for seeing anybody.”

“It’s okay,” Savannah jumped in. “I told him he could come up.”

“Well, next time keep it out of the bedroom, okay? Boys are not allowed in your room . . .Savannah.” Savannah and I both cringed when Mrs. Skye stumbled over her daughter’s name.

“I’ll see you later,” I nodded to Savannah.

“Yeah,” she replied, pulling the blinds to her window down. “Maybe.”

Mrs. Skye showed me the way back to the front door but before letting me leave she seized my wrist, her perfectly manicured nails digging into my skin. “Tyson,” she said quietly. The panicked look in her eyes churned my stomach. I had thought Savannah looked just like her father, but seeing Mrs. Skye match the desperate look on Savannah’s face that first night I realized how much the two Skye women looked alike.

“Katie,” she stressed, “is very fragile right now.” There was a long pause.

I wasn’t sure how she wanted me to respond. “I can imagine,” I offered.

“You’re a good kid, Tyson.” She patted my shoulder. “Tell your mother I say hello. We should get together soon. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Will do,” I said slowly. I took a step out onto the front porch before turning back around. “Mrs. Skye? Savannah is stronger than you think.” Mrs. Skye blinked in surprise at me. “I don’t think she’s fragile at all.”

Right before I turned away for good, a pair of freckled feet, one set of nails painted blue, the other green, caught my eye hurrying back up the stairs.

#

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“You went in her room?” Robbie gasped. “I knew I should have gone in with you.”

“Robbie,” Daisy scolded. She turned around in the front seat to look at me. “What was it like?”

“Well, well. The pot calling the kettle black,” Robbie scolded.

“Shut up, Roberto.”

“Purple,” I deadpanned. Robbie’s car squealed in protest as we cruised around the corner to my block at a break-neck speed. “Jesus, slow down, Robbie. You’re going to kill us all one day, I swear.”

“Tyson, focus,” Daisy snapped. “Is she okay? Savannah?”

“Yeah, she’s okay. Her and her mom, though . . .” I shuddered.

“What do you mean?” Robbie asked glancing at me in the cracked rearview mirror.

“It can’t be easy on her parents, either,” Daisy said softly as we pulled up to my house. The van bucked to a halt. “They don’t know Savannah – Katie – at all. They’ve had to come up with everything, imagining over and over again what their perfect baby girl would be like. She was taken when she was, what? Five? Old enough to have a personality, young enough that Mrs. Skye could still try and groom her the way she wanted to? And then all of a sudden . . .” Daisy made an exploding gesture with her hands. “Gone. Like smoke. Thought to be dead. They’ve had twelve years of what if’s and now that she’s home, she’s probably nothing like how they imagined it because, honestly, how could she be? She led a completely different life. She was raised by someone completely different. So, yeah. Poor Savannah. Poor Katie. Poor Mr. and poor Mrs. Skye. The whole thing is f****d. Everyone in this story gets screwed over.”

“Does anyone even know the real story?” I asked. “What happened to her? Who took her and why?” Daisy and Robbie both shook their heads.

“Man, all I’ve heard were rumors,” Robbie said.

I sighed, staring up at my house. The curtain to the living room shifted – my mother, waiting for me to come inside. I was late. “If you guys hear anything,” I said, sliding open the car door on its rusty hinges, “let me know, okay?”

“Same to you, man.” Robbie fistbumped me.

#

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My parents were in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on dinner when I walked in.

“Dad, are you cooking?” I asked, slinging my backpack off my shoulders and onto the ground.

“Only if watching water boil counts,” Mom jumped in before Dad could gloat. “How was school, honey?”

I shrugged. “Savannah – er, Katie – was in class today.”

Dad looked up from the stove, surprised.

“Katie?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “Although she wants to be called Savannah now. I think that’s the name she, uh, grew up with.”

Mom’s face twisted and she turned away to glance out the window that faced the Skye’s backyard. “Poor Karen.” She said, referring to Mrs. Skye.

My mother lost herself in her thoughts, her thumb running over her bottom lip nervously. I remember sitting here, at the kitchen island, back when I was seven or so, watching her perform that same gesture when we had begun to learn about ancestry in school. We had just started our school project of filling out our family tree. Staring at the empty branches of my family tree, my first name printed sloppily at the top, I began to full understand what the word adoption meant.

I went home early from school that day, sick to my stomach, inconsolable. After some soup and a few episodes of Pokémon, Mom finally got the truth out of me as to why I had been so upset.

After I showed her the project and told her what had unsettled me, she pulled me into her arms, resting her chin on top of my unruly hair. “We love you so much,” Mom started off, “and we’re going to parent you until you’re a parent yourself and even then, we’ll still be your Mom and Dad. But you have a whole other family. You have bloodlines and ancestry that your Dad and I will never be able to relate to and that’s okay. It’s okay to love us both and to call us both family. We’ll love you either way. Family doesn’t always have to mean flesh and blood.”

For some reason I had a feeling that Savannah and her mother hadn’t quite gotten around to that kind of chat just yet. “Mrs. Skye isn’t taking it too well,” I said, desperate to get my thoughts away from flesh, blood and family.

“How do you figure?” Dad asked.

“I stopped by after school,” I said cautiously. “Savannah was having a rough day so I –“

“Please tell me you didn’t just show up at their house,” Dad said quietly.

“Yeah, but –“

“Tyson,” Mom said, sitting down in the chair next to me, “sweetie you can’t do that. That family needs their space. They need to heal. You need to be mindful of that.”

“I was just –“

“It’s okay,” Mom said. “Let’s not worry over it. Why don’t you grab a plate for yourself. Don’t want your dinner getting cold.”

Later that night, after showering and finishing my homework, I lay in bed on my side, watching the light from Savannah’s room. Her curtains were drawn shut, but every now and again I would see a shadow pass by the window.

My mind was racing from the encounter in her room. She had seemed so angry. Her whole body had been bursting with it. Not to mention when I brought up her kidnapping . . .

Don’t call her that, Savannah had hissed. I glanced back over to the window, but the light was now off. Despite my racing thoughts about who she may be, I found myself asleep before I realized I was even tired, the smell of incense wafting in through my bedroom windows.

#

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The next day at school I pointed out the police officer hanging out in the student parking lot. Daisy cruised by him slowly and we were both surprised when he waved to us.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the same guy from outside your house that day,” Daisy said, referring to when we picked pumpkins.

“He must have recognized the Wagoneer,” I said, running my hand over the dashboard, admiring it for the umpteenth time. The Wagoneer was Daisy’s inheritance after her grandfather passed away last year. It was in mint condition and the only one of its kind in Oyster Point. It was no wonder the officer recognized it.

We stopped at our lockers before homeroom, traces of glitter still littering the area around my locker. I scanned the halls for Savannah but couldn’t find her curly blonde hair among the masses of high school students.

“Ready?” Daisy asked. I glanced back down the hallway. “Hey,” Daisy pulled on my sleeve, “don’t worry. She’s probably just late or something.” I let Daisy pull me away, glancing over my shoulder as we walked away.

At lunch Robbie, Daisy and I sat at our designated table and began our daily ritual of trading food.

“Whatcha got today, champ?” Robbie asked, biting into an apple. “Ugh. These taste way better with caramel on them.”

“I don’t know how you manage to stay in such good shape when you have such a sweet tooth,” I said, pushing one of my two cookies over to him.

“What’s this for?” He asked, eyeing the treat suspiciously.

“Just take it,” I said, nudging it a little closer to him. “Have either of you seen—“

“Hey,” Savannah said, answering my unfinished question. She nodded to us before dumping out her own paper bagged lunch. She pushed a pudding snack my way. “That’s to make up for the lost one yesterday.” Then, a second one to Robbie. “For you, you animal.”

Robbie stared at the feast of dessert in front of him in awe. “Am I dreaming? Is it Christmas? My birthday? What’s next? Twins?” Daisy smacked him on the shoulder.

“Ass,” she huffed under her breath as he winced and rubbed his shoulder. Savannah sat in the seat next to me, pulling her seat a little closer to me. Her hair was pulled up into a long ponytail and I wondered if that is how I had missed her while searching for her. She was sporting a green V-neck, one that brought out her blue Technicolor eyes and revealed a new map of freckles for me to stare at. She leaned forward, revealing a sneak peek of a blue bra and I glanced away, cheeks burning with embarrassment. Yes, her peep show was definitely better than Mrs. Kingery’s.

“How are you liking Oyster Point?” Daisy asked.

Savannah shrugged, biting into her sandwich. “Boring so far,” she said through her food. “But then again all I’ve really seen is the inside of my room. Karen is super paranoid about me leaving since, you know, the last time I was left alone apparently I got kidnapped.”

The blunt statement came to such a shock to the three of us that it took us a few minutes to recover. I had spent half the night beating myself up about dropping the K-Word around her, especially after how angry she got afterwards. If there was one thing I hadn’t been expecting it was that Savannah would joke about her own kidnapping.

“Yeah, apparently that happens around here,” Robbie chimed in awkwardly. Savannah snorted with laughter, but she was the only one. Robbie and I exchanged a hesitant smile. “We heard a rumor that you were found in New Mexico.”

“Found? You make me sound like a puppy,” Savannah laughed.

“How else should I word it? Were you caught?”

“Bingo,” Savannah winked.

“Wait, really?”

“Really, really. It wasn’t even a big deal,” Savannah shrugged. “A little breaking and entering, a little ‘defacing public property.’ I almost got away with it, but my best friend –”she choked on her next words. Her light-hearted demeanor just a few seconds ago had completely disappeared. She swallowed hard and turned her head away but not before I caught sight of the look in her eye before she did so. I knew that look well. There were some stories that were still too painful for me to tell, too.

“Hey, so what class do you have after this?” I jumped in.

Savannah took a deep breath, tucking back a curl that had escaped her ponytail. “Economics. I have almost every class with those girls,” she said, nodding over her shoulder to where Emily and Heather were sitting, staring at us. When they saw us all turn to look at them, Heather whispered something to Emily. The other girls at their table leaned in towards them, desperate to hear the secret. “Apparently we were friends or something before the mess.”

“Do you remember them at all?” Daisy asked as the bell rang.

Savannah frowned, standing up from the table. “Kind of. I remember riding bikes with them. That’s the weird thing; I remember them but I don’t remember you.”

I looked at Daisy, thinking maybe Savannah was talking about her, but Daisy was staring at me. As was Robbie and Savannah. And that’s when I realized she was talking about me.