I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  She rubs her eyes with balled fists and clears her throat, begins explaining about the piano. She was a little girl when she started, five or six, and she was a natural. At first she was on her dad’s old Casio keyboard, but when he saw how quickly she took to it he went out and bought her a baby grand and hired a renowned private instructor named Hans, who’d once performed with the New York Philharmonic.

  He would come to our house twice a week, she says, staring down at her flip-flop feet. Wednesdays and Saturdays. I picked up everything incredibly fast that first year, and Hans would praise me and tell me I was one of the most gifted students he’d ever taught. Dad would stand there with his arms crossed, beaming with pride.

  Before bed my parents would sometimes ask me to play whichever piece I’d just learned, and they’d clap when I finished, and I’d bow. I felt so important as they led me to my room and tucked me in. The sound I’d made was so beautiful that the mark on my face disappeared. I wondered what my older sister thought as she sat all alone on the other side of the wall. An ordinary girl doing ordinary homework. No applause.

  I’d lie in bed dreaming of performing onstage in New York. My parents sitting center orchestra. The standing ovation I’d receive. People turning to my dad as everybody filed out of the packed amphitheater, saying: You must be so proud. So talented and beautiful. My parents smiling and nodding and thanking them all for coming.

  But after that first year a weird thing happened. I stopped improving so quickly. I was trying just as hard, practicing just as many hours, but Hans wasn’t praising me as much. My dad no longer beamed as intensely. I was only seven years old, Kidd, and I was washed-up.

  But here’s what I’ve figured out. Back then, that was all I played for. Praise. And as soon as I started getting a lower dose, I stopped dedicating myself to the practice.

  The following year it got worse. I started dreading the hours I was expected to sit on that rigid bench, fingers on those icy keys. I dreaded Hans standing over me with his arms crossed, shaking his head whenever I hit a wrong note. At night I’d lie in bed fantasizing about all the ways I could quit. I started intentionally making mistakes. When Hans asked me to perform a basic run, something I’d mastered long before, I’d strike a series of wrong keys and act oblivious to the hideous sounds I was making.

  Olivia picks at the corner of the towel.

  She looks at me.

  It went on like that for over a year. Until Hans moved back to Long Island to care for his sick mother. When my dad brought up finding a new instructor I cried and begged him to let me stop. I’ll never forget the look on his face that night. It was beyond disappointment. It was repulsion. Dad was humiliated to have a little quitter for a daughter.

  But then the strangest thing happened. When I didn’t have a lesson hanging over my head I found myself drawn to the piano again. My parents would go to a friend’s for dinner and I’d sneak over to the baby grand and run my fingers along the keys. And I’d play. Whatever I felt like playing. Mostly I’d just make stuff up, silly little songs like the one I played for you at the store. But I also started learning again. I’d pull out my old lesson books and work through them one page at a time.

  In my dream Olivia takes my hands and puts them in hers and rubs warmth into me.

  The difference is I no longer played for an instructor’s praise, or for my parents’ approval. I played for me. Do you understand what I’m getting at, Kidd?

  I nod but she’s looking at the sand.

  I’m gonna be honest with you, she says. I still can’t comprehend why you would do something like this. I honestly can’t. But I know as soon as you come out you’ll explain it all to me. And I promise, Kidd. I’ll be here.

  Waiting.

  In my dream I wanna tell her how confused and worried I am. About everything. I don’t know if I should have pushed Devon. And if Devon actually died. And I don’t know how long I have to be in prison. Or if I ever deserve to be free.

  Go home, I wanna tell Olivia.

  Please.

  Go to New York for your appointment.

  You’re too smart and talented and beautiful to wait for someone like me.

  I don’t deserve to be sitting next to you, Olivia. Not even in a dream.

  And right as I’m thinking all this, a strong wind comes and starts pulling me away.

  Olivia’s face gets worried.

  She reaches out her hand for my hand.

  But it’s too late. I’m already sucked back into the clouds; I’m flying back over the train tracks and the dark park and the scattered freeway cars.

  And now I’m squeezing back between my prison bars and laying on my cot, my head settling on the pillow and the straps instantly wrapping back around my arms and legs and forehead.

  When I open my eyes, having left my dream, I’m all tied down in the dark and totally alone and it feels like dying.

  The second time I saw Olivia was on the campsite steps. It was a few hours after Mr. Red tried to teach me to surf, and I couldn’t stand on my board. I went to his secret place where he checks out waves, thinking I could write in my philosophy of life book about how hard it is to learn surfing, and how I hated making Mr. Red frustrated.

  But I kept thinking about other things instead. Like fate and girls that could make your breathing change, and was it some group of people in the olden days that decided what pretty looks like, or were we all just born knowing?

  Mostly, though, I was thinking about the girl I’d seen on the swings.

  Again.

  Since the day she tried to scare me, she was all I’d thought about: during work and when I fell asleep at night in my tent and first thing in the morning and when I brushed my teeth in the drinking fountain outside the bathrooms and while I read magazines in Campsite Coffee and while I sat on the railroad tie next to Peanut, waiting for Mr. Red to come out of his tent so we could work.

  But for some reason I couldn’t write about her.

  Every single thing I put wasn’t what I meant, so I had to keep ripping out pages and starting over.

  I was just about to rip out my fifth straight page when out of the corner of my eye I spotted the real-life version of her coming up the beach stairs with two friends. She stopped and held a camera up to the sunset and took a picture.

  My eyes felt like they were popping out.

  I couldn’t move.

  She was wearing ripped jeans and the same sweatshirt and red ski cap with the earflaps covering part of her face. The two other girls had cameras, too, and after a few seconds I realized they were two of the girls who ate cereal in the campsite near Mr. Red’s.

  The girl in the ski cap walked a few steps lower with her camera and looked out at the ocean for a while, then she brought her camera up and took another picture and lowered it again and just stared.

  I looked at what she was looking at, thinking if that connected us. She was seeing this same sun falling into this same reflecting ocean. These same puffy clouds trapping these same colors and making them seem darker and less real. These same seagulls gliding through this same sky, barely flapping their wings and turning together in a V shape just over the water’s surface.

  I thought how if two people see the exact same thing, at the exact same time, their minds probably store the same memory, even way into the future, and that’s something in common.

  “Aha!” a voice said from behind my back. “I knew it!”

  I spun around. “Mr. Red.”

  “Oh, man,” he said with a big smile. “Looks like we got ourselves a little hand-in-the-cookie-jar moment, eh, Kidd?”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  My heart was beating fast.

  “I mean this.” He pointed at me and my philosophy of life book and then at the girls on the stairs. “You. Up here. Staring at the ladies.”

  I looked down at the girls and then looked back at Mr. Red. “I was watching them take pictures—”

  “Go ’head, big guy,” he said, waving me of
f. “Spin it like a politician.”

  “What?”

  “Look, your secret’s safe with me.”

  I stayed staring at him.

  “I got a pair of binoculars in the tent, big guy. If you wanna get your money’s worth.”

  He laughed.

  Me and Mr. Red Have a Talk

  I turned back to the staircase. The ski-cap girl was now watching her friends. One of them had climbed onto the handrail and the other was holding her steady by her waist and they were both giggling as the girl on the rail slowly brought up her camera and tilted it sideways and aimed it at the sinking red sun.

  She took a picture and jumped back down.

  “Which one is it?”

  I looked at Mr. Red. “Which one’s what?”

  “Don’t play coy,” he said. “Last I checked it was okay for a young guy like yourself to dig on a female. Which one do you like?”

  I looked back at the girls. “I saw the one with the red cap last weekend.”

  “Yeah?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “You talk to her?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really,” he said. “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I followed her into the campsites. But then I didn’t see her anymore until she jumped out from behind a tree and tried to scare me.”

  “That’s good, big guy!”

  “It is?” I said. I looked back at the girl, wondering how many people she’d tried to scare.

  Or if I was the only one.

  Mr. Red slapped me on the back, said: “I’d go get us a bottle of champagne to celebrate except I don’t drink anymore.”

  “Why’s it good?”

  “She was flirting with you, Kidd.”

  I made my face into a frown like he was crazy.

  Inside, though, my stomach had butterflies.

  Mr. Red took off his beat-up sombrero and held it by his side and looked at the girls. “Name’s Olivia, by the way. Her and her friends’ parents have been renting that same campsite every summer for the past five years.”

  “You know her?” I said.

  “I know everybody here. It’s part of the job. Fix things and be friendly.”

  “Olivia,” I said to myself.

  Mr. Red smiled. “Guess you guys didn’t get to that part.”

  Right then his phone started playing a Bob Marley song. He put his sombrero back on his head and pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at it with a confused face.

  He muted it and put it back in his pocket and said: “Look, Kidd, about surfing this morning. I apologize for getting so frustrated. That had nothing to do with you.”

  I felt bad for letting Mr. Red down. All he wanted was for me to stand up. Once.

  And I couldn’t do it.

  “Been a long time since I taught somebody how to surf,” he said.

  I looked at Mr. Red.

  “Didn’t teach it right that time, either.” He looked at the ground and shook his head.

  “I had fun, sir.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded. “Thanks for taking me.”

  He sort of smiled halfway and looked back at the ocean. “How about we try it again sometime. I promise I’ll be more patient.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And I promise I’ll do better.”

  He smiled and pulled off his sombrero, ran his fingers through his wavy blond hair, then put his sombrero back on.

  “Hey, Kidd,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

  I nodded.

  It was the first time I’d seen Mr. Red look serious.

  “You think they’ll come looking for you? The folks from Horizons?”

  I pictured the counselors and therapists and the board of directors. For a second I got a bad feeling, like I should be hiding. But then I thought about when a kid named Jonathan left. They didn’t find him for over a year. And that was only ’cause he got real sick and went to the emergency room and when his name came up there was something about him being gone from Horizons.

  “I hope not,” I told Mr. Red.

  “Me too,” he said. “I like having you here, big guy. I’ve never had a partner who works so hard.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Red.”

  We were quiet for a minute and then without looking at me he said: “You miss your friends back there?”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  “No?” Mr. Red went closer to the fence and looked at the girls, who were now sitting on one of the steps, talking. They couldn’t see us, ’cause of the overhanging bush.

  “I think it’s important for people to have friends,” Mr. Red told me. “At least one or two you can BS around with. I can introduce you to some of the surf knuckleheads that hang around the campsites. Or what about Olivia? Girls count, too.”

  My stomach felt nervous with him just mentioning Olivia. “Hey, Mr. Red,” I said.

  “Hey, Mr. Kidd.”

  “Did something happen to her?”

  “You mean the ski cap?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked toward the girls again and then looked at me and crossed his arms. “She didn’t used to wear it.” He paused. “Girls are complicated, big guy. They can get hung up on stuff.”

  His phone started playing that Bob Marley song in his pocket again and he pulled it out and looked at the number and this time he flipped it open and said hello.

  A surprised look went on his face and he said: “Jacky Newman? That you, girl? I haven’t heard that sexy accent since Cabo. Where you been hiding?”

  He stood there, listening and nodding his head.

  “Of course,” he said. “Yeah, yeah, let’s do it. Why don’t you swing by here around eight or so. I’m just off the 101—Listen, hang on a sec.”

  Mr. Red turned to me, cupping the phone, said: “Gotta grab this, big guy. Tall brunette I met at a bar in Mexico last summer. She’s in town all the way from Charleston, South Carolina.”

  I nodded, trying to think how far South Carolina was from Cardiff. I’d never even been past downtown San Diego.

  “I’ll let you get back to stalking, big guy. See you Monday morning?”

  He pulled his hand from the receiver and said: “Jacky! Damn, girl, how are you? I can still picture you up on that bar at Frederico’s, doing a Jäger shot off the plastic swordfish. Ha-ha. Of course I remember.…”

  His voice trailed off after he ducked under the bushes, out of sight.

  I turned back to the stairs and the girls.

  I watched them for a while, wondering why Mr. Red would say that thing about me having friends. I always tried to act happy around him. And excited to work. Which was true.

  But maybe he could tell how I also felt by myself sometimes.

  Actually, a lot of times.

  I opened up my philosophy of life book and read what I’d just written about the ski-cap girl, Olivia, and I couldn’t believe how wrong it was. I was about to rip out my page when I heard a second voice from behind my back:

  “Ha! I knew it!”

  I spun around thinking it was Mr. Red again, but when I saw who it was my heart stopped.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Devon.

  Seeing a Ghost

  He pointed at me and laughed, said: “Dude, Special, check you out, man. You’re totally spying on those chicks.”

  He looked the exact same.

  “What a perv,” he said.

  I closed my book and made myself start breathing again. “I’m not a perv,” I told him.

  “Oh, you’re not?”

  “I’m just watching what they’re doing.”

  He laughed again and shook his head, and I just stared at him for a couple seconds. It was so weird to have Devon standing right in front of me.

  I hadn’t seen him in almost two years, since the day I told him exactly what my therapist at Horizons told me to tell him. How we couldn’t be friends anymore. And it wasn’t personal. It was just part of
us getting older and growing in different directions and becoming our own people.

  “Dude,” Devon said. “What do you think a perv does?”

  He snatched my book and flipped it open, and when I tried to take it back he pushed my hand away. “Check this out, you’re describing every single thing about the one in the ski cap.”

  I took back my book and closed it, held it behind my back. “Where’d you even come from?”

  “Same place as you,” he shot back. “My mom’s uterus.”

  “I mean today,” I said. “How’d you find me?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Special. You know I got detective-type skills. The real question is, when did you turn into such a perv?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Last I remember, you didn’t even like girls. You thought they had cooties.”

  “I never said they had cooties.”

  Devon could make me more frustrated than any person I’d ever met.

  He walked past me and looked at the girls on the stairs. “The other two are way hotter,” he said. “If you like boring-ass blondes.”

  I looked, too.

  “Why you writing about the one in the ski cap?”

  “Maybe I wanted to.”

  Devon turned back to me shaking his head. “Dude, you’re like the exact same, aren’t you? Pretending to be all naïve and dopey so nobody expects anything from you.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “It’s such an act, Special. Please tell me you at least realize it’s an act.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’ve been playing this stupid game since I met you. Remember, Special? That day you couldn’t even read a letter from your own mom? Thank God your boy Devon was there to save the day.”

  I glared at him.

  He knew I hated anybody talking about my mom.

  I turned to look at the girls, thinking more about Devon’s reaction when I told him we couldn’t be friends anymore. I figured he’d yell and call me a traitor and maybe even try to hit me or something.