Savannah Burning

By the time I was ten, I had escaped death twice. The first time I was too young to remember details, back before I’d been adopted. The only memories I have are the ones people had told me about, after the fact. The second time was when I was just one-month shy of my tenth birthday. I was eager to catch up to my best friends, Daisy and Robbie, who had both celebrated their birthdays earlier in the summer. It was the summer we had learned to surf, by way of Buck, Daisy’s father. It had taken us three summers of us begging and pleading to get him to agree to teaching us. But it wasn’t just him we had to convince; my parents were less than pleased with my obsession with surfing. I couldn’t blame them; at least once a summer the great Atlantic Ocean claimed a life. While the ocean was haunted with lost souls for my parents, it held nothing but adventure and possibilities for me. My parents tried to distract me with soccer, karate, painting, flag football, cooking, anything and everything to keep me out of the ocean and out of harm’s way. While they drove me all over Long Island in an attempt to get me hooked on anything else, I spent my free time filling my walls up with magazine photos of Kelly Slater, Stacy Peralta and Andy Irons. When it became clear that I wouldn’t be giving up on surfing, my parents (as well as Robbie’s) sat down with Buck and they all agreed that the summer we turned ten would be the summer we’d learn to surf. And it was finally here. Buck and his brother, Dan, had spent all summer teaching the three of us about the art of surfing. They had finally agreed that we were ready to take the waves on our own, so long as we didn’t go out too far. I’d be lying if I said my ego didn’t get in my way; I wanted to impress my friends. A month may only be 30, maybe 31 days, but I was still the youngest by that many days. On top of that, I was “the new kid” . . . as of five years prior, but still. I was new. I was younger. I had an ego ten times the size of my scrawny ass. I wanted to prove myself to them. I wanted to take on the biggest wave. I remember this: paddling hard. I could feel the ocean swelling behind me, picking up the tail end of my board, a grin plastered to my face. This was it. I could see it now: Tyson Baucher, surfing prodigy, takes his first wave. I could hear the pounding of my heart over the rush of the ocean as my board began to tip down . . . and down . . . and down. To say I wiped out would be an understatement. The wave ate me alive. The board I had been borrowing from Buck snapped when I hit the water, sucking me back under only to spit me out into the crash zone. The safety leash tugged me under and I struggled to get my ankle free of it, the Velcro slipping through my frantic fingers. I surfaced just in time to gulp down a breath, only for the third wave to toss me out, upside-down and sideways. I couldn’t breathe. I was desperate for air, sucking in mouthfuls of the frigid North Atlantic water, struggling to keep my head above the surface so that I could just breathe. The next wave hit me from behind and as I spun and crashed and flailed, a hand grabbed me by the elbow and yanked me out shaking, sputtering and gasping, snot running down my face from the salt water burning the inside of my nostrils. “You’re a little s**t, you know that, right?” Dan growled, pulling me onto his longboard with him. “Told you not to go too far out, to know your limits, and what do you do?” He shook his head. He unstrapped what remained of my board and cast it back into the ocean. He paddled back to shore with me holding on to the front of his longboard. Dan sat me down next to his fire in front of the beat up R.V. that Dan called home. He boiled some water over the fire and made me some hot chocolate, throwing a warm towel around my shoulders. I sipped it slowly, letting the heat cool the burning at the back of my throat. “You okay, Tyson?” He asked. “I couldn’t breathe,” I whispered, embarrassed by the fact that I, the youngest, had to get rescued while my friends and Buck still splashed around in the crash zone, their squeals of laughter carried back to us by the wind, taunting me. “Well you’re damn lucky,” Dan said. “If I hadn’t followed you out there . . .” he shook his head. “When we tell you not to do something, don’t do it. Got it, kid?” Dan didn’t know how to tiptoe around things. His teaching tactic was to be as blunt as possible, straight to the point so that it wouldn’t be missed. I watched longingly as Robbie flawlessly caught the next wave, a chorus of cheers erupting from Daisy and her father. I felt even more left out than I had been when we first got to the beach. I blamed my late birthday. “Let me tell you a little secret, kid.” Dan crouched down in front of me to interrupt my thoughts, his eyes as serious as ever and he placed his tattooed hand over my chest. “Fear lives right here. Right in our lungs,” he said. “You can either smother them, or breathe past them. Breath is life, son. When you control your breath, you can surf any wave, anywhere. Don’t forget that, kid.” These days, now that I was a bit older, a bit stronger and a bit smarter than the ten-year-old dumbass version of myself, I was a little better at keeping that ego of mine in check . . . most of the time, anyway. I ducked under the wave with Robbie on my left and Daisy on my right. We surfaced together, Robbie and myself clad in thick wetsuits to keep out the cold nip of the early-fall air, looking for all the world like the seals that sometimes beached themselves on the sandy dunes in the wintertime. Daisy cursed under her breath, her teeth damn-near chattering. She was the only one not in a wetsuit, her electric-green rash-guard flashed against her tanned skin. Crazy Daisy always waited until near-hypothermic temperatures before giving in to the inevitable wetsuit. I whipped my hair off my forehead, the salt water stinging my eyes as it dripped down my face. Biting my lip I pushed myself to keep up with my friends, savoring the taste of the salt on my tongue. “Are you actually going to catch a wave this time or are you just going to watch?” Robbie taunted, pulling himself along in clean, strong strokes, having kept up with his athletic regime at lacrosse camp all summer. “Oh, please,” I laughed, pulling myself along behind him. “You couldn’t keep yourself steady for one ride yesterday. Just because you were reckless enough to go for it doesn’t count unless you actually ride the wave.” “Do you boys need me to show you how it’s done?” Daisy chimed in from next to me. She shot Robbie a wolfish grin before turning her board around. “Shouldn’t I get the first one?” I asked, pulling up next to her. “It is my birthday, after all.” “Unless the birthday boy is too out of shape to catch up,” Daisy laughed, paddling as the water built up behind her. She disappeared behind the swell for a minute before skimming off the top of it, spraying Robbie and I with salt water. “Asshole,” Robbie laughed, kicking water back at her even though she was long gone. Behind us another wave was swelling up, preparing itself for the big crash. “Go ahead,” Robbie said, holding his fist out for a pound. “Happy seventeenth birthday, bro.” I pounded my knuckles against his and turned my board toward the land where Daisy was paddling back out towards us. My arms cut through the water and then, right as the tip of my board began to fall downwards, I grabbed onto my board and stood, closing my eyes as gravity took a hold and I reminded myself how to breathe. # # # We pulled up to school twenty minutes late. “We should probably wait until homeroom ends,” Robbie said. “It will be easier to sneak in between classes rather than in the middle of one.” “I cannot believe we’re late again,” Daisy huffed, her fingers flying through her multi-colored locks as she attempted to braid her salty, wet hair. “This has to be a new record for us. School hasn’t even been in session for a full month and we’ve been late three times already.” In the distance the school bell rang as I pulled my own hair into a tight knot at the back of my head. “s**t,” Robbie said, grabbing his backpack and throwing himself out of the car. “Every man for himself, fuckers! See you at lunch!” “Goddamnit, Robbie,” I hissed, grabbing Daisy’s bag and then mine. We threw ourselves out of Daisy’s Wagoneer and I tossed her bag to her over the hood. The door to the school was just about swinging shut from Robbie’s mad dash and Daisy and I slipped right in, letting the tide of our peers carry us down the hall. “I need to stop at my locker before I go to chemistry,” I said, heading in the direction of said locker. “Right now?” Daisy asked, her eyes wild with fear. “What’s the big deal? It will only take me –“ I trailed off, catching sight of my locker. “Daisy. What did you do?” “Um,” she said, glancing around. “This is awkward. This was supposed to happen way before homeroom but since you and Robbie made us late . . .” “Daisy,” I groaned. My beautifully plain and ordinary locker looked as though Party City had projectile vomited all over it. Balloons that read Happy 17th Birthday and It’s Your Big Day!!! were taped to the front. Streamers upon streamers covered the locker from top to bottom. Glitter and confetti littered the floor. “It wasn’t just me, okay? Robbie helped.” “Robbie used glitter?” I asked skeptically, spinning the code to my locker, trying to ignore the stares and laughter of my classmates. “He knew it would piss you off,” Daisy was saying, referring to Robbie. “He was right,” I sighed. The door swung open and, somehow, more balloons floated out from my locker and into the hallway. I glared at her before exchanging my books for the ones I needed before slamming my locker shut, sending a shock of glitter into the air. “It’s not fair,” I complained as we headed to our first class of the day. “Both of your birthdays are in August. It’s not even like I can get revenge on you guys.” “I know,” Daisy said dreamily as she twirled through the doorway into our classroom. “Isn’t it great?” “I hate you,” I said, sitting down at our lab bench. “Au contraire,” Daisy argued. “I am the little-big sister you never had nor wanted, but somehow got stuck with anyway.” I hated that she was right. # # # At lunchtime the school principal, Mrs. Kingery pulled me aside and told me I had to take the decorations down from my locker. “It’s a safety hazard,” she explained, folding her hands in front of her on the desk. “This morning Heather Corocan slipped on the glitter and confetti that’s all over the floor in front of your locker.” Mrs. Kingery wasn’t the most unattractive woman in the school. ‘Freshman year’ Tyson had a little bit of a crush on her that seemed to linger throughout the rest of my high school career. I think it was the way she carried herself; knowing you had an entire school under your thumb and that you could destroy a child’s life with the snap of your fingers had to be an ego boost. Her grey eyes found mine and she raised an eyebrow. I realized with a start that she was waiting for me to reply. “Oh. I’m sorry,” I offered pathetically. Truth be told, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Heather Corocan. “The janitor will sweep up the floor and gather the rogue balloons you let out of your locker, but please take down the rest of the decorations by the end of the next period,” Mrs. Kingery said, straightening her shirt. She pulled down on the hem of her button-up, revealing a quick peek at the lacy beige bra she was wearing underneath. “I know, as seniors, it’s hard to stay focused,” she went on. I glanced away from her shirt, trying to distract myself from anything other than her underwear which was still peeking out from her shirt. I stared hard at the bulletin board behind her, staring at the flyers and brochures for scholarships and early-entry internship programs. None of them were for surfing or for culinary, which were the only things I wanted to study. The cooking class Mom put me in at nine years old was the only thing that stuck despite my undying desire to learn to surf. “Tyson?” Mrs. Kingery said, interrupting my thoughts. “You can go back to lunch, now.” I stood up quickly, banging my knees against her desk. A picture frame fell facedown, clattering against the wood. “Oh, God,” I scrambled, reaching for the frame, slamming my throbbing knee against the desk for a second time. I grabbed the photo at the same time she did, knocking it back over once more. I jumped back, wiping my hand against my jeans. “Okay. I’ll get on that. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Bye.” I stuttered and ran out of there. # # # “This is so unfair,” Daisy whined as she helped me de-decorate my locker. I shrugged. “I know. I’m sorry, Daisy.” “This is all Heather’s fault,” she sniffed. When I had told her what Mrs. Kingery said, Daisy was outraged. It took two pudding snacks and a fifty-cent chocolate chip cookie from the cafeteria to calm her down. “It was awesome while it lasted,” I assured her as we trashed the last of the streamers. “Thanks,” she said quietly. Then, in a typical Daisy fashion, she shot me a grin. “Damn the man,” she whispered, scooping up a handful of glitter and sprinkled it into the vents of Heather’s locker. “Damn the man,” she repeated quietly, nodding to herself. I wasn’t around when Heather opened her locker later that day, but I did notice partway through math class that she had traces of glitter in her eyebrows and an even bigger pout than usual. “You got something on your face,” I said as I passed by her on my way out of the classroom. I tapped my temple. “Right there.” I tried to withhold my laughter as her nostrils flared, her hands reaching up to rub at her forehead as her best friend, Emily, giggled from behind her hand. # # # Daisy drove us back to my place after to celebrate my birthday. My parents didn’t always live in the modest white house we now called home. They met in Syracuse when they were both still in college and moved down to Long Island after Dad got a job at one of the colleges down here. A few years after they settled, they adopted me from the state. I opened my front door to the aroma of tacos and limes. I have always, for as long as I can remember, had an unquenchable love for guacamole. I could eat guacamole every day for the rest of my life and still not feel satisfied. It was, apparently, the only food that I would eat after I moved in with my parents. “In the kitchen,” Mom called out as we walked in the doorway. “Hi Mrs. Baucher!” Robbie yelled before I could answer her. I gave him a hard shove, rolling my eyes – he’s had a crush on my Mom since before puberty. He tripped over Bear, our family dog whom was laying in the doorway to the kitchen, all four legs in the air. Robbie swore under his breath and Bear snorted before flipping over on his side. I paused, reaching down to scratch the spot under his jowl he loved so much. He winked his one good eye open at me, letting his tongue loll out before sneezing in my face and rolling back over. “Roberto,” Mom beamed as we entered the kitchen. “How are you? I feel like it’s been ages since you’ve come by.” “Wrestling season just started,” Robbie groaned, stealing a slice of pepper. “Hey Mrs. Baucher,” Daisy said, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the pot. “Weren’t you a redhead last week?” Mom asked. Daisy blushed, but grinned. She had sported the red hair all summer but, just the other day, dyed blue over it. The result was a rainbow of reds, purples and blues but with her love of the ocean it seemed to fit her. My mom loved Daisy’s crazy hairstyles. She was always saying that Daisy reminded her of how she was when she was younger. She and Dad met at a Joan Jett concert where Mom accidentally decked Dad in the face during one of the songs. The two ended up making out in the bathroom stall for the rest of the show. Mom knew right then she was going to marry him; no way would she miss her idol’s show for anything less than love. Mom handed me a bowl of chips and – of course – guacamole to put on the dining room table. I dunked a chip into it and popped it into my mouth. “Needs more lime,” I commented. Mom rolled her eyes, but then grabbed her own chip to taste. “Hmph,” she said, grabbing a lime and cutting it in half. I tried not to grin. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and go get me tomatoes from the backyard?” “Sure,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek on my way out. “It smells amazing, by the way.” I headed out the backdoor and crossed our yard to the vegetable garden pressed up against the wooden fence that separated us from our back neighbor’s, the Skye’s. The other side of the fence was a reality T.V. show that never quite got cancelled. The Skye’s were Oyster Point’s sad excuse for Kardashians. Mr. Skye was a championship tennis player and so that, along with the very public loss of his daughter, Katie, the Skye’s were the main focus of the public’s eyes for most of my childhood. I remember early mornings, eating breakfast at the kitchen island before school and listening to the news on the T.V. about my own neighbors as Mom watched on, shaking her head and clucking under her breath, white knuckles pressed against her lips. The media didn’t give up until the couple were living separately, preparing for a divorce. According to “sources close to the pair,” the separation was ugly and unforgivable. Mr. Skye was the one who lived in the big house behind ours now. Occasionally I’d see Mrs. Skye’s car in the driveway, but that was a rare occasion so I didn’t know her too well. Mr. Skye was always around, though. Despite all the media attention and his famous flat serve, Mr. Skye was strangely normal. Humble, even. He and Dad would talk sports and lawn maintenance over the fence with each other; Mom often gave him vegetables from the garden and he even let me, Daisy and Robbie swim in his pool during the summer. Despite what the gossip magazines and websites claim, Mr. Skye was just like any other neighbor I had. Late at night, when the rest of the world was sleeping, I’d hear the thwack-thunk of him hitting the ball against the wall when he couldn’t sleep which was more often than not. Mr. Skye lived in a huge brown house donned with ceiling to floor windows that dared the outside world to peek inside and take a look at how the better life was lived. Their backyard patio contained his in-ground hot tub and heated saltwater pool that was kept open until late October. His tennis court was nestled between the side of the house and the trees that masked his property from the side neighbor’s. I peeked over the fence. Mr. Skye skimming his pool, still in his button-down and black dress pants. I don’t think I have ever seen him get any more casual than that. “Hey, Tyson,” Mr. Skye said when he saw me. He made his way over, picking up leaves and twigs with the skimmer along the way. “How was school today?” Mr. Skye always seemed scarier in my head than how he was in the flesh. The man had more freckles on him than anyone else I’ve ever seen and he was well over six foot with a shock of carrot-orange hair on his head. It would have been comical save for the fact that, even though he was just another neighbor, I still couldn’t shake the star-struck feeling of being around someone so widely known. “School was okay. You know how it is,” I shrugged. “Applying to colleges soon?” “Actually I already did,” I said nervously. “I applied for early admission to Johnson and Whales.” “Tyson,” Mr. Skye grinned. “That’s fantastic. For cooking?” “Mmmhm,” I nodded, looking down at my shoes. “Good for you,” he said with feeling. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.” “Thank you,” I blushed. “Here,” I offered, handing him a handful of tomatoes, keeping two for Mom. “Oh, perfect.” “I have to get back inside. Mom’s cooking dinner and she needs . . .” I held up the tomatoes and started to back away from the fence. “Thanks, Ty.” “No problem!” I yelled over my shoulder and hurried back inside. In the kitchen, Dad and Daisy were sitting at the counter, stealing pieces of peppers as Mom and Robbie diced them up. “. . . but the characters are so unreliable,” Daisy was complaining. She stole a green pepper, dodging a swipe from Robbie. “That’s what made it such a mindfuck,” Dad was arguing back. He reached for another pepper and Mom held her knife up in warning. His hand immediately retreated. “Language,” Mom reminded him, “or I’ll cut your finger off.” “It’s what also made it so infuriating,” Daisy sighed. “Hey, Dad,” I said, putting the tomatoes down on the kitchen island. “Ah, finally. My favorite son decides to show his face around here. I noticed you weren’t tucked into your bed early this morning.” “I’m your only son,” I deadpanned, avoiding the topic of me sneaking out early this morning to go surfing. By now my parents had learned to expect that, but the minute it started interfering with school they would be forced to turn stern. “That we know of,” Dad winked. Mom threw a chunk of pepper at him, with a laugh. “Okay, everyone grab a seat at the table!” Mom sang. Daisy and I scrambled for the seats closest to where Mom would be sitting to save her from Robbie’s ridiculous yet persistent flirting, but Robbie hip checked me out of the way to sit next to my mother. We fell into what had become our usual seating pattern; Mom and Robbie on one side of the table, Daisy and myself on the other and Dad at the head. Over the course of the twelve years I had been living in Oyster Point, we had spent countless nights around this table. It was where I had discovered that, not only did I enjoy cooking, but that I was actually pretty damn good at it. We grew up playing board games around this table; Carving pumpkins, splitting our Halloween candy, frustrating nights of home work and take-home essays. It was strange to think about the fact that we would soon be separated by state borders in different schools. I had known these people longer than I hadn’t and yet I felt as though I had only just begun to fill my own shoes. More often than not I found myself clinging to minutes like these ones, seemingly boring and insignificant and yet so comfortably normal. Things were going to be changing soon. The night, it felt, had a ledge to it that I wasn’t quite ready to leap off of. And so when Mom placed the birthday cake in front of me, alight with candles for another birthday to be celebrated at this table that had seen so many birthdays before it, instead of wishing for something, I closed my eyes and reminded myself how to breathe. # # # The water was trying to suffocate me, dragging me under only to spit me back out. The shock of the cold paralyzed me, squeezing my lungs dry of everything they had. I knew I was dreaming. I struggled to break through to the surface, but right when I’d think I was getting close, something would tug me back down, dragging me deeper and deeper into the void. I tried to scream, but all that came out were bubbles. My lungs were burning. A flash of red streaked across the blue water, the cherry of a cigarette. The scorching in my lungs was setting the whole damn world on fire. I began to see spots. I clawed at the water, at my throat, desperate to hold onto something, anything to keep me alive. The pounding in my heart was so rapid it sounded like sirens screaming in the night, so loud and so close that I – - jolted awake. The echo of sirens in the distance taunted me. Panting, I tried to shake the remnants of my nightmare off of my shoulders, a headache pounded against my temples, a light layer of sweat coated my skin. I struggled to slow my heart rate and waited for the sirens to disappear with the lingering fear from the nightmare. In the reflection of my mirror, directly across from my bed, I could see flashes of red and blue, lighting up my face in fragments of primary colors. I got up and looked out my window that overlooked the front yard – nothing. No cars flying by, no wild police chase and yet the sirens were growing louder and louder. Frowning, I crossed to the only other window in my room, the one that looked over my backyard. The lights and sirens were coming from the Skye’s house.