Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
The Day Tommy Died
Sawyer
I CAN STILL see it as clearly as if it happened yesterday. It was the kind of summer day we’d had a hundred times before. But the heat had a weight to it that afternoon. Heavier than usual. Like the sky was holding its breath.
Sunlight flickered off the lake, bouncing against the dock like a thousand tiny mirrors. The air smelled like gasoline and sunscreen, like damp wood and hot asphalt. Boats eased in and out of their slips with a kind of lazy rhythm. Nothing urgent. Nothing unusual.
I was sitting on the edge of the dock with a Dr. Pepper in my hand, my feet dangling in the water, the plastic cup dripping condensation down my leg. Tommy had just come in from a run, soaked through his shirt and still grinning. He'd already shucked his running shoes and was barefoot.
He always grinned after he ran. Like it shook loose something unbelievably happy inside him.
Jake was already down by the water, helping a couple tie up their ski boat. Tommy jogged over, called out something teasing in Jake’s direction, and bent forward to grab the lift wire.
There was a sound—abrupt and strange. Like a crack or a pop.
And then Tommy froze.
His whole body seized, rigid and wrong, and then he fell onto the dock. His limbs jerked violently. A faint hiss rose from his hand, the air filling with the acrid scent of burned skin. The smell hit me, sharp and horrible.
For a second, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
Then the cup slipped from my fingers and hit the water, sinking.
Jake shouted his name. “Tommy!” And ran flat out to reach him.
The next moments came in fragments. Voices rising around us. Someone yelling to call 911.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
The sunlight refracted across the rippling water, turning it red and gold, and I remember thinking it looked like fire. Not blood. Fire. And still I sat there, unmoving.
Then I heard my own scream, sharp and primal. Like it came from somewhere outside of me.
Jake turned Tommy over on the boards and started compressions. Tommy's lips were blue. His chest was still.
Jake yelled his name again and again.
Whispered please until the word cracked in his throat and broke apart.
But Tommy didn’t wake up.
I fell to my knees beside them. Jake’s arm shot out, holding me back.
He didn’t say anything, just shook. And cried without tears.
Later, they said it was the wiring.
A short in the lift.
A fault no one knew was there until it was too late.
Tommy had touched it barefoot, soaked in sweat, laughing. Reaching for the cable with all the ease of having done so a hundred other times.
And then he was gone.
Just like that.
One moment, he was the sun at the center of everything, and the next moment, he was a silence none of us knew how to carry.
Jake never left his side. He sat there, shaking, until the ambulance came. He didn’t speak. His eyes were hollow.
He’d tried to save Tommy. He did everything he could.
But I saw what it did to him.
How it shattered something inside him.
The boy who tried to save my brother. And couldn’t.
I know part of him died that day. And a part of me died that day too.
Not just the part that loved Tommy.
But the piece of me that believed the world was safe.
The piece of me that believed anything, or anyone, could be saved if you tried hard enough. It was a lesson I would learn again.