This Story Might Save Your Life
Tiffany Crum
To Matt, Mason, and August, with all the sparkling hearts
Part One
Joy Moore
Day Zero
A blast of hot wind shakes the house, rattling the windows. Outside my basement studio, the towering sweetgums thrash and sway, flinging their prickly seedpods down the hill.
“We’re rolling,” Benny says. “Whenever you’re ready.”
My focus slides back to my best friend. Back to his ruddy beard, to the untamed curls squashed by his oversized headphones, to the workstation where we sit in our ergonomic swivel chairs—anywhere, everywhere but his eyes. “Ready.”
Benny doesn’t comment on how distracted I am as we start recording. I force myself to pretend nothing is wrong, and as usual, my anxiety falls away as we find our rhythm. By the time we wrap our rambling podcast intro, I’m more at ease. Benny is leading the episode today, which means I’m in the hot seat ad-libbing survival tactics for the life-threatening topic of his choice.
He’s watching me now with an impish grin. “What do you know about humpback whales? Anything specific?”
“Beyond the giant mammal part?” I look to my sister-in-law at the opposite end of the table, hoping for a hint, but Mallory’s focused on the mix board; she adjusts a fader, turns a knob, and sweeps her platinum blond hair into a low ponytail. Into the mic, I say, “Embarrassingly little.”
“Excellent.” Benny leans back in his chair, hands clasped across a faded black T-shirt from our original merch line. Our catchphrase stretches across the front in white block letters: WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU … A SURVIVOR. “Let’s say you’re kayaking along the Pacific coast. It’s a warm fall day. Cloudless skies. Glistening water. You’re working up a sweat. Life is good. Then all at once, dozens of sardines start hurling themselves into your boat.”
“Delicious. Have you ever tried fried sardines? My mom used to make them with toast and this parsley caper sauce—”
“Focus, Joy. These aren’t lunch. You’ve just paddled yourself on top of a bait ball.”
I regretfully inform him I’ve never heard of such a thing, and he explains that it’s a tightly packed school of fish. A defensive measure they take when a predator is nearby. “Or, in this case, when a predator is directly beneath you.”
“You could’ve maybe led with that.”
“An enormous jaw opens, you’re knocked out of your boat, and you find yourself inside the gaping maw of a fifty-foot mammal. What do you do?”
According to Benny, this unbelievable-yet-true misadventure befell a woman in San Luis Obispo just last week. If I wasn’t currently avoiding the internet at all costs—for reasons I will not allow myself to dwell on right now—I would’ve called dibs on this story the instant the headline popped into my feed so that Benny could be the one puzzling his way out of this whale.
“I need more,” I say. “Is this a tandem kayak? Are you inside the mouth with me?”
“If I tag along, are you going to let me live this time?”
I may or may not have hypothetically sacrificed him to a few wild animals on various episodes over the past four years. “I make no promises.”
He snorts. “You’re alone.”
I make puppy-dog eyes and remind him that without his assistance I will both figuratively and literally end up sleeping with the fishes.
He’s unmoved. “Guess you’ll have to work fast, then.”
“Cruel.” I sigh. “So, thinking out loud here—I suppose the first course of action is to prop open his jaw somehow and scream for help.”
He holds up a hand. “Can we stop to imagine this for a second? You’re soaking wet, tangled in seaweed, and flailing around with thousands of fish on a tongue the size of a pickup truck. Even if you do manage to stand up—and that’s a big if—you’re still shouting for backup from inside a ten-foot mouth.”
“I look like a sea monster, don’t I?”
“You do.”
“No one is helping me, are they?”
“They are not.”
“Okay. In that case…” I rub my palms together. “I’ll swing on his uvula and jab him in the barnacles until he spits me out.”
Benny’s been shaking his head since uvula. “There’s so much wrong with what you just said. What are you jabbing him with? And don’t say—”
“My sword, obviously.”
“Joy.” He sounds exasperated, but he loves it when I do this. “Why do you always have a sword? Where is this sword coming from?”
“Listen, the only way I’d ever end up in this position is if there’s an alternate universe in which I’m an actual pirate. So it’s legit this time: I get a sword.” I pause. “Also a peg leg.”
Thirty minutes of riffing and tangents go by in a flash. By the time Benny is ready to reveal the woman’s true survival story, my limbs are loose, my cheeks hurt from smiling, and—
The power goes out with a startling whoosh.
The three of us blink at one another as we remove our headphones, dazed in the sudden half dark.
“It’s not just us, right?” I get up to check the breaker by the stairs. Everything is in order. “You think it’s the whole neighborhood?”