The day Jeremy ruined my life, all I wanted was to enjoy one last glorious day hanging out with my best friends. My dad always told me, “Do the right thing and stay out of trouble.” He neglected to tell me that doing the right thing could get me into trouble.
We’d taken the transfer gate to South Florida where his father kept his speed boat. Jeremy Torlen was loaded. Well his father was. My parents did okay, but Jeremy’s dad was not just wealthy, he was high up in the trade guilds which granted him the kind of power none of us kids could understand. Jay Sr, as he liked the kids to call him, was generous but that did not mean he was kind. He expected excellence from his sons friends and perfection from Jeremy. Jeremy’s athletic prowess owed as much to how hard his father drove him as it did to any innate talent on Jeremy’s part.
And his father’s speed boat demonstrated that same unyielding commitment to excellence. Jay Sr did not only owned a speed boat. He owned the marina where he kept it. And of course, his boat was not simply a nice speed boat. He had demanded a one of a kind luxury yacht that could haul ass faster than any ski boat I’d been on. It was the biggest thing you could legally pilot without a crew. Jeremy was such an even keel guy, I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around what it must have been like to grow up in that environment. Jay Senior never bought anything that was not custom or unique.
You could have brought two dozen people comfortably on that boat, but originally Jeremy and I planned for it to be the four of us, Jeremy, Liam, Tristan, and me. The four Amigos. But of course Jeremy’s kid sister Emily tagged along. She always tagged along. I didn’t mind, but she really wasn’t a little kid any more. It was hard to pretend she didn’t fill out our swimming suit in an appealing way. She was moving from cute to sexy in an uncomfortably awkward way. The casual familiarity we had enjoyed now came with a kind of heat. I pushed it down. She was my best friends sister, and still in middle school! We would graduate in the spring. It wasn’t right, but I couldn’t help but steal glances when she wasn’t looking.
“Thanks for setting this up!” Tristan said to Jeremy as he hopped onto the boat. “Yeah,” Liam slapped him on the back. “Same,” I chimed in. Together, we made up the starting core of the state champion Angel Fire High baseball team. They say you put the talent up the middle and that was us. Liam in center, Tristan at short, Jeremy on the mound, with me behind the plate. I had some sense of how fortunate we were, and where our futures would take us. We’d probably never get another chance to have a day like this again.
I think Jeremy sensed it too because he wasted no time getting the yacht going. He hit the switches and the automated docks released the boat as the twin motors started to thrum. We pulled away from the marina, Jeremy pushing the throttle, flaunting the no wake zone like the rich kid he was. “Beers are in the cooler!” He shouted over his shoulder.
I climbed up to the captains deck to join him, bringing a couple of cold ones with me. We needed a day like this. Perfect sun, flat open ocean, with hardly anyone around. We caught a lull between all the workouts, semester finals, and college applications. I knew Liam was heading to a west coast college, probably USC or Stanford. Tristan had offers to play ball back east at a couple of Ivy league schools - man he could glide, gobbling up ground balls like a human vacuum cleaner. Jeremy and I however had other plans. We had both applied to the Outrider Academy, the elite of the elite in the Frontier Guard. With his fathers connections, our grades and sports track record, we were sure to get in.
I knew that Jeremy applied because I did, but I was fine with that. We’d been friends since we were five. I applied because my grandfather served in the Front Guard. Ever since I was a little kid he had regaled me of stories of the Outrider heroism and bravery. The Outriders were the only thing that stood between the independent colonies and chaos! If humanity was going to survive in the stars, they needed the Outriders to protect them. Nothing would make my Pappy proud, it was if I became an Outrider. I just wished he had lived to see it. My own father was not as convinced, but like all things, as long as I got good grades and kept my nose clean, he trusted me to do what was best. As in all things, he admonished me, “Do the right thing. Stay out of trouble.” I didn’t tell him the Outriders went looking for trouble.
It never occurred to me that those two things could contradict each other. I grew up believing doing what was best would keep you out of trouble.
Jeremy blared the tunes and slalomed the enormous boat out into the shallow ocean off the shore of South Beach. Liam and Tristan scouted the cabin for snacks, while Emily snuck a beer of her own. I felt her looking at me and I felt myself blush. Damn it. I turned so she couldn’t see the effect she was having on me. Her doe like brown eyes, and full lips made her look a lot older than fourteen. Jeremy seemed to be rocking out to his own tune, lost in his head. He stared off into the waves.
“What do you think it will be like?” He asked. “The academy?”
I shrugged. We’d both visited the campus in Colorado Springs. The ancient US Space Force campus has expanded to engulf the entire metropolitan area, but the Outrider Academy dominated the center of the massive complex. “It’s going to be awesome.”
“It’s going to be dangerous,” Jeremy said taking another sip of beer.
“We’ll be trained for it,” I shot back. I was completely confident we would stand out, like we always had. Just like we had in football, just like we had in baseball. We would work hard and excel. That’s what we do. “There’s nothing they can’t put in front of us we can’t handle,” I said and I believed it too. In that moment of sun, and wind I felt incredibly alive. I took a sip of beer and snuck a glance back at Emily, and caught Tristan moving in to sit next to her. Apparently it didn’t bother him at all that she was so young, or Jeremy’s sister. Liam stood behind them on the aft deck.
The sight of Tristan putting his arm around Emily irritated me way more than it should have. Instantly I was hot. They didn’t seem to notice that I was staring at them. Liam noticed. He shrugged. Now I was mad at Liam. Why didn’t he do something the prick? I turned to Jeremy and tapped him on the shoulder and nodded back toward the lower deck and the curved seating area where Tristan was now getting a little too friendly with Emily and to my complete annoyance she did not seem to mind the attention one bit.
Jeremy glanced, gave me a cock-eyed half grin then said, “I got this” and without a warning, he cranked the wheel hard to the right as he smashed the throttle forward with the beer in his hand… the boat roared forward like an angry dragon bucking hard and then all hell broke loose.
I heard Liam give a shout first, then Emily scream. And it wasn’t a good scream, like the roller coaster ride kind of scream. I felt my stomach drop. She screamed like she was really scared. Jeremy had cranked the wheel too far and the boat was pitching up and forward as if it was about to topple. With no warning and nothing to hold onto, I saw Liam grab for the flagpole at the back of the boat and miss it. He went airborne right as Jeremy tried to steer back to the left and overcorrected. The deck fell away from me as something struck me in the back. It was the railing behind me, the boat started to roll like a whale breaching the water. Jeremy dropped the beer but it was too late to grab the throttle and pull back. The last thing I saw was him holding onto the steering wheel with one hand like a sail about to tear free from its mast. Then the deck slammed into my face as the boat rolled over and submerged into the waves, taking me along with it.
Water spilled into my open mouth as I tried to grab a quick breath as the ship drove me into the water, like a linebacker sacking a quarterback. I couldn’t see a thing but ears started to scream - I went from surface to ear splitting deep in a heart beat, then the deck pulled back as fast as it had pushed me down. The suction pulled me up, bringing some relief but I was suddenly under water with no sense of up or down. I couldn’t remember if there were propellers or if it was a jet boat? I tried to cover up but the turbulence threw me around like a rag doll. I didn’t feel anything else hit me or cut into me so I I opened my eyes to the sting of the salt water. Bubbles obscured my vision even more, but I looked around as best I could and then swam toward the lightest part of the froth. I burst through the ocean surface in time to see the boat tear itself to pieces rolling across the water - spraying decking, furniture, windows torn from their frames and parts of the hull in every direction.
Holy crap those engines had insane thrust! Bits of flotsam and jetsam started rise to the surface including the bright orange of life jackets. It was that sight of those that sparked me to look for the others. None of us had been wearing any. I spun around and found Jeremy bobbing in the water twenty feet from me, but I didn’t see any sign of the others. I started to swim back toward the way we came and stuck my face under the water trying to see. I came up for a quick breath and saw Liam break the surface gasping for air.
“Where’s Tristan and Emily!” I tried to scream, but voice was horse. Liam turned and looked at me dumb founded. Oh shit. They should be up by now. I dove back down. I saw a dark figure thrashing below me and I pulled as hard as I could. It was Tristan, he’d gotten turned around and was swimming down. I touched his ankle. He spasmed letting out a bunch of bubbles. I grabbed his arm and pointed up, tugging. He seemed to recognize what I was trying to indicate. How long could someone hold their breath? He started to swim up and I thought I saw Liam or someone on the surface reaching down to help. I looked around and to my horror saw a slight figure sinking. My lungs began to burn as I pulled myself down with my arms chasing long flowing hair. Oh shit, oh shit. Emily was the starting guard on the high school basketball team, meaning she was strong, and lean therefore she sank like a stone. I could not see her move. How long could someone hold their breath? One two minutes tops? Just as I reached Emily I saw her convulse - she was trying to breath. Fuck. I reached out and grabbed for her, trying to pull her up when she clamped on to me with vice like strength. I knew I had to out way her be a lot, but all that basketball conditioning made her muscles feel like steel cables. She started to pull me down. This was bad. I knew many drowning victims can kill the people trying to help them, and I hadn’t come up behind her, but beside her and she turned to latch onto me with panic driven strength. It took everything I had to pull one of my arms up between us while I kicked for the surface. She wrapped her legs around my torso and her arms around my neck choking me from behind. Shit. I was holding my breath but she was squeezing my neck so hard she was cutting off the blood flow to my brain. I pulled with one free arm trying to get us closer to the surface while I wedged my other between her arm and my neck. I dug deep, the kind of mind numbing drudgery that makes up sports practice only this time my life, and hers was on the line. Kick pull. Kick pull. Kick pull. Only kicking and pulling. Just… keep… kicking. Just keep pulling…
We broke the surface, an eight limbed monster gasping clawing for air. I didn’t feel the arms pull us up but I saw Liam and Tristan next to us as broke the surface. I heard the roar of power boats all around and blue and red star bursts colored my blurry vision. Emily coughed and gasped behind me, vomiting sea water over the back of my neck. All I could feel was relief. She was alive, we were both alive. She clung to me tightly, I wanted to break away but I couldn’t. I was spent.
The coast guard pulled us onto their boat. Wrapping us in blankets med techs checked on us. I could see Jeremy from across the deck, surrounded by blue uniformed men. I knew the look on his face. The officers were trying to understand what happened. They were looking for someone to blame, and that someone was Jeremy. The look of panic on Jeremy’s face told me he knew it too. His father would kill him. I couldn’t let that happen.
“It was me,” I blurted out. Everyone turned to look at me. “I was driving the boat.”
Liam looked confused. “Wait, I thought.”
I fixed my gaze on Liam. “No, it was me.”
Looked back at the lead officer questioning Jeremy, but behind him I could see Jeremy take a breath. “I asked to drive and I didn’t know the boat would… would respond like that.”
Within minutes they hauled me to my feet and cuffed my hands behind my back. They lead me to a small conference room with a table and chairs. I looked over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of my friends. Jeremy looking relieved, Liam and Tristan looked concerned, and Emily… looking ashamed. Ashamed of me. She was ashamed of me. And then they closed the door. I didn’t know it at the time, but they closed the door on more than my temporary freedom, they closed the door on the future I had worked so hard to craft. The future Jeremy and I had planned since we were little kids. They closed the door on my dream of becoming an member of the most elite member of the Frontier Guard, an Outrider, forever.
Why?
Because the Outrider Academy doesn’t accept felons.