(car revving) (crowd cheering) - Wait wait, we're gonna.

- Do not spill it.

- Make room (car engine purring) (paper rustling) - Hey, we're lighting a fire.

(yells) - [Group] Speech, speech.

- My town might have burned down, so it seems fitting that we burn all the shit that gave us down too.

(group cheers) (background noise drowns out group chatter) (soft instrumental music) - [Nate] What is up Bobcats, what is up?

Seniors, if you're applying to a North Valley Community Foundation scholarship, be sure to mail or drop off your application by the end of this week.

- (clapping) Breath, breath, breath, breath.

- Prom is coming.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, May 18th at Manzanita Place.

This year's theme is a walk through Paradise.

- [Meagan and Nate] Have a great day Bobcats and rise up!

- Coming through, old person, coming through.

(bell chiming) (students chatter in the background) Did I give you guys your calendars?

- [Students] No, no.

Alright, here we go.

- [Virginia] Today?

Yep.

- [Students] No, no.

- [Virginia] We didn't start till January.

- Okay, four months, four months.

- [Harmony] Really?

- There's a part of me that envies my friends that picked up and moved out of the area.

They picked up, they left, they don't think about it, they don't talk about it.

- Its like all those school shootings you never hear about, and they happen all the time.

And then it's like our town burnt down and then hardly anybody knows or cares.

(door latch clicking) - People come and they wanna ask us questions and film us or make sure we're okay.

But you can't really understand what we went through unless you were escaping that day.

- Everything that you thought your senior year was gonna be has totally just been flipped upside down.

Never once would I have thought that I would be in an airport building my senior year and have everything taken away from me.

- I was expecting for a rough senior year, but it's rough in a different way.

(somber music) - I never realized how much I loved being in a small town like Paradise until now.

You feel at home and it sucks 'cause I haven't felt at home for so long.

And when you do go there, it's like, I wish we could just stay here, and I wish it was back to normal.

It's weird because being in Paradise makes me feel like more relaxed, even though it looks like this.

Oh, there's Ayeesha.

I like your septum.

The only decision that I need to make is if I wanna leave or stay close.

- One, two, three.

- Oh my God.

(girls laughing) Why not go explore, if you don't even have somewhere to call your home?

(wind whooshing) - This is the last piece of my prior life to the fire.

Yep, this is my fabulous room, which I love.

These are all the pictures of over the years, all the students I've had.

I've had brothers and sisters and cousins and even children of previous students.

I really wanna get back into my classroom and teach there again.

That's the agenda, I haven't taken it off.

That's what we were gonna be doing that day.

It's like, my room is frozen in time.

Now, my life is confined as before the fire and after the fire.

So, this is all that's left of before the fire for me.

- Alright, let's see if I can squeeze in here.

Welcome to my home.

(leaves rustling) This was my truck.

I would have been able to drive this to high school but I didn't have my license before the fire, and I was never able to drive it.

Really sad.

I hope I can fix it up in 20 years, who knows?

It's weird, just the little things you find, man.

Here's my pocket knife my grandpa gave me when I was four.

Not much left of it.

I just wish I could have saved something else.

(melancholic music) I told my parents even after this fire that I didn't want them to sell the lot, I wanna keep it.

And eventually whether I build another house up here or I put a garage up here, do something, this place will stay in my name, somehow.

- Like, when camera crews walk up to me the first couple of weeks after fire, it was interviews and interviews and you know, that's what made me upset.

Is 'cause I know my stuff was gone and I didn't wanna talk about it.

- I actually lost everything.

Like I actually only have my phone from the fire and what I was wearing, that's it.

- My grandfather and his family fled from Germany, from the Holocaust and all the memorabilia, all of the material possessions that came with them, passports with red J stamped on them, prayer shawls, letters, all of that is just lost.

- I've come to the conclusion that nothing is permanent.

That's something that I have to accept and if I accept it now, it will be less devastating later.

And you know, my town I'd loved it but it's gone.

(melancholic music) - I actually saved all my makeup (laughs).

'Cause like it's so expensive.

I know that sounds really bad, but I made sure to grab my baby blanket since I've had since I was born.

I made sure to grab any pictures that we had at my house.

My mom grabbed my homecoming queen crown instead of her medication.

So, that shows you what she cares about.

- Well, it's just so messy and so unorganized.

- Oh my gosh, you look so skinny here.

- Look at this photo of you.

- The housing in San Francisco says it's getting full and I want to like, just get it over with.

- [Jennifer] How do you do that?

What's your next step?

- Well, I'd have to just do it.

- Just say, okay, I'm gonna go?

- [Harmony] Mm-hmm.

- I think you should go to Chico (laughs).

- My mom's really awesome person and I love her a lot, but I have to think that it's my life and I should make the decision of where I wanna go.

But it also is like two sides fighting within myself because I do care about her more than anything, and I don't wanna make her sad.

- Man, we should try to get up there, through that hole up there.

- That one?

- Why not?

- Because who knows where I'm gonna pop back out at?

- (chuckles) You'll probably end up in the shoot, - And then I'll have to get shot out of that.

I won't even fit through that dude, my head won't.

- I'll give you a boost, the best I can, right?

(melancholic music) - My grandma had her favorite little thing in the front yard.

It was a, I'm lost.

If I'm found before I return, please tell me to wait for myself.

And I always read that stood there like, what does that actually mean?

- So are you gonna tell me how the sunset is up there?

- Its beautiful.

- I had a job when I was 15 and a job ever since, and since the fire I've been unemployed.

I'm kinda lost, trying to get back on my feet.

(ladies chattering) - Okay, so ladies, I need you all to weigh in on my retirement (laughs).

- [Friend] Your retirement?

- I went up Sunday to my classroom and driving up there, I got a moment where I felt like I was in the fire again.

I literally saw like flames by the side of the road, in my mind, and I had that terror again, and then I just felt sad, just sad.

'Cause I look around it and it's not what I remember.

I'm tired.

The fire kinda burned a lot out of me.

- Sometimes teaching, you start the fall semester, you feel like you're serving a term in prison.

It's so regulated.

- I haven't had a weekend off except in the summers, and then I'm taking classes every summer.

- I just thought I'd let it go and think, well, whatever happens will happen and I'll be okay, and I have been.

- I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.

I had more lives to live and I had spent enough time on that one.

- That's my quote.

That's it.

- [Friend] That's it?

I mean its wonderful.

- I have more lives to live.

(vehicle engine rumbling) (sirens wailing) - I turned into a really angry person after the fire and I didn't know that I would turn out that way, and I took it out on the people that were closest to me.

- It's kinda like ups and downs right now.

It's like, today's one of my ups but I don't know tomorrow if I'm going to be down or not, just like how I wake up.

It's weird.

- I cry a lot behind closed doors.

I don't like crying in front of my parents.

- I don't know, I feel like we haven't really had a chance to talk about it.

And like every time I do I cry, and I don't want to cry anymore 'cause I'm so over crying about it.

But it was like a traumatic thing that we weren't expecting or prepared for.

(soft instrumental music) - God, it seemed like you guys were just going to your junior prom.

I am getting sad.

- (laughs) Do I look skinny?

- Yeah you look skinny.

You don't look skinny, you look lean and beautiful.

- Hey, oh my God, you look very handsome.

- Thank you.

- So yeah, the girls were like halfway ready.

- Before the fire I had a stepdad and he had started being mean to me to get to her, and I feel like the cops never did anything to help.

We had to leave and we were homeless for a little bit.

- There.

- And she worked so hard to find a house that we were renting at the time, and that's when the fire happened, and she was just really devastated.

She's just so strong for everything she's been through.

I just want her to be happy.

(door latches click) - Have fun.

- Goodbye, I love you.

- I love you too.

My focus was my daughter for such a long time.

Being able to have a place for kids to be at and be themselves and it feels like it's my purpose.

And now I'll be lonely, I won't have them around.

We won't be able to share things with them.

I think that's the scariest thing.

- See you bud.

- My family ended up better off than I would've thought.

We lived in a double-wide trailer up in Magalia, and now we have an actual manufactured house.

And, I hate what happened to the town I lived in, but I love what happened to my family.

(Train horn blaring) - Hi bud.

- Come on.

Do you remember the fire?

Oh did he, where?

Wow.

Thank goodness.

- Successfully.

- You play football?

(Kody grunts) - Yeah, I was there 16 years.

- 16?

- How old are you?

You said you're 11, yeah?

A little more than your whole life.

Take care bud, thanks for playing.

Yes I would love the world to go on long enough for a kid of mine to be able to sustain a nice life and even pass on future generations.

But until we find another planet to live on, if they screw this one we're done for.

- All I know is that I'm gonna help others somehow.

Someway, I'm just gonna help people.

And either if it's from other natural disasters, or in the hospital as a doctor or a nurse, or just as simple as a coach of a softball team, I'm gonna help people.

- Yeah, it's going to be tough 'cause I've been trying to get a job and getting jobs are hard, especially when you're 18 'cause you don't have really anything to back it up.

You gotta just find a taco truck or something to work there.

But yeah, I'm ready for it.

I think I wanna experience life.

- Me and my friends, we all realized that this is our last year of high school and that we were finally gonna be gone, and we were finally gonna get away but it's almost like we didn't wanna leave.

Like we wanted to stay in this one spot forever.

(soft instrumental music) (students chattering) - I love you so much.

(students chattering) (audience clapping) - All right, we have Teacher of the Year as voted on by students, Miss Partain.

(audience cheering) - We have been through so much, so much.

And as you know, I lost it all too.

And I'm graduating with you too this year so, I'm the class of 2019.

(students cheering) - Okay, so there was some selfies but our time is up, we're gonna do it again.

- My others burned up, so I have one now.

(background noise drowns out speaker) - I miss the kids so much, you know.

There's something that happens in a classroom that's magic.

(tattoo gun buzzing) - [Tattoo artist] Not too awful?

- No.

- Run me through the particulars again man.

- Why I got it?

- Yeah, yeah.

- (groans) For like 20 years my dad had this truck and my dad had fixed the truck up.

He swapped me driver's seat as I was like nine years old and let me drive.

And, it burned in the fire.

- Well, now you've got a piece of it forever.

- Thank you.

- Joan.

- What?

- I'm officially going to San Francisco.

- Oh you are?

- Nice.

- You made your choice?

Congratulations.

- No way.

- Yeah, I've signed, I did all this stuff for it last night.

Like actually enrolled and stuff.

- [Joan] When do you go to orientation?

Do you have a calendar yet?

- We need to sign up.

(soft music) It's definitely shocking and it's like terrible when we hear about another fire or something because when you go through that, it's not just after the fire is gone it's over.

Something needs to change, and I feel like that is probably our generation.

The fire kind of made all of us have to grow up sooner than we'd like.

This summer is gonna be the last time I can be a kid.

Although I'm scared to be an adult and on my own, I feel like I'm ready for it.

(instrumental music)