Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

  So? What just happened?

  Well, I texted Dougie O’Shea, for one, and I asked:

  Did your dad demolish the school yet?

  Him: Few more days.

  Me: I need sand. ASAP. What does he charge to haul a load in his truck?

  Him: ShamRockz drives a truck, ya know?

  Me: OK. What do you charge?

  Him: For you, baby girl? Nothin.

  That was this morning.

  Now it’s the evening, a breezy end to a June day and I’m sitting in a beach chair at the edge of my deck, dipping my toes in a pile of sand that used to sit next to the Covington High pool. Mom and Dad were a bit perplexed when Dougie backed the truck past the house and dumped a small beach in our backyard. To their credit, they didn’t say shit about it, simply stood at the window watching, no doubt thinking about how their only child would be graduating high school tomorrow. Even when Laura Riggs showed up to lend me her hookah, they hardly blinked. I was whole. I was home. For the time being. That’s all they cared about.

  I don’t own a kimono, so I had to settle for a paisley terrycloth robe Dad owns. Doesn’t fit me, but that’s a minor detail. It’s the symbolism of the thing that matters.

  I do have second robe, Mom’s pink silk one, but I’m saving that for someone else. It’s draped over the empty beach chair that’s sitting next to me. You might think that’s a little pathetic, that I’m in major denial, but hear me out for a second. Because I have one more thing with me.

  The burner.

  I noticed it this morning, collecting dust on a shelf in my closet above where I store the beach chairs. I had set it there after Carla’s line was disconnected. Figured it was useless. Seeing it again, I suddenly remembered what else I had programmed into the thing. I had the number of the matching burner, the untraceable connection to my bestie. My BFF. My Tess.

  You know, just in case.

  It’s no surprise that the battery was dead, so I snaked an extension cord to the deck. The burner is now sitting in my lap, straining to fill itself with enough charge to find a signal so it can skip across the earth from cell tower to cell tower and locate a text or, I hope, a voice.

  It’s not there yet, so I will puff on this hookah and wait a bit longer.

  My beach faces west, toward the farmlands at the edge of Covington. A perfect spot to watch a sunset. Remember when I said I was the same person I’ve always been? Well, that’s not entirely true. I used to think that sunsets were cheesy, that they were images of uninspired sentimentality. But let’s be honest, because we should always be honest. If a person invites you to watch a sunset, you go, don’t you? You don’t say jackshit about what’s cheesy or uninspired. So neither will I. I know now that sunsets are glorious things. And this one—this one!—is absolutely invigorating, a fucking gorgeous splash of red on the horizon that marks an end, one I always knew was coming.

  acknowledgments

  As much as I’d like to claim I came up with the concept of spontaneous human combustion, I am not that clever or, arguably, that strange. The idea has been a part of the cultural consciousness for centuries, if not longer. Dickens and Melville wrote about it. One of Spinal Tap’s drummers died from it (as did Kenny on South Park). I probably first encountered it on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, when an elderly woman played by Michael Palin spontaneously combusted and John Cleese told his grieving mother, “Don’t be so sentimental. People explode every day.”

  Forgive me, but I’m about to be sentimental. Because books like this don’t happen every day. At least not to me. And this book only exists because of the hard work and kind gestures of the following people:

  The ridiculously savvy Michael Bourret, who is patient with my many wild ideas and fiercely supports my wildest ones. He believed in this book from the first mad scribblings.

  The inimitably brilliant Julie Strauss-Gabel, who dug through a messy manuscript, discovered what my story was really about, and constantly encouraged me to make it better. It was an honor to work with her and learn from her.

  Cover designer Theresa Evangelista and copy editor Anne Heausler, who got this thing all spiffy, beautiful, and readable.

  The editorial, design, sales, and marketing teams at Dutton and Penguin Young Readers.

  Dana Spector, who saw promise in a handful of pages and took a shot on me.

  My cousin Alice Russell, who set me straight on a few things about high school seniors in 2016 (for instance: how the heck Snapchat works).

  Mom, Dad, Toril, Tim, Dave, Jake, Will, Gwenn, Jim, and Pete, who appreciate my twisted sense of humor. Most of the time.

  My extended family and my many friends who keep on buying and reading my books and showing up to events and tolerating my self-promotion.

  Fayetteville Manlius High School’s class of 1994. We made it. Now let’s make it through a lot more.

  Finally, Cate and Hannah, I love you. You are the ones from this book’s dedication. You are the ones who comfort me. You are the ones who keep me together.

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