I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  But he didn’t.

  He just smiled and said I was making a huge mistake and how as soon as he walked away I’d be totally alone, and he turned out to be right.

  I turned and watched Devon watch the girls.

  Here’s the thing about him. Even though he constantly smiles and talks loud and everybody thinks he’s so much fun to be around, really he suffers from depression. Like the time he swallowed an entire bottle of pills and they had to charcoal his stomach. Or before that, when the Horizons people found him on top of the school building across the street and he threatened to jump. Or this time with him hitting his head in the shower, over and over, until the entire tub was bloody and the counselors had to hold him down on the tile.

  Devon turned back to me, said: “Actually, Special. I take it back.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not that bad. The girl you wrote about.”

  I instantly got a bad feeling in my stomach.

  “For a rich chick.” He was staring at Olivia. “But what’s up with that ski cap? It’s summer, man. What’s she hiding under those flaps?”

  I looked at her, too. “She probably just likes the hat.”

  “I bet her face is beat the hell up or something. Good from afar but far from good, know what I mean?”

  I stared at the side of Devon’s face for the longest time, then I told him: “How’d you find me anyway?”

  He shrugged. “I heard you ran away from Horizons.”

  “From who?”

  “You weren’t even done with your stupid therapy, were you?”

  “Almost.”

  “I wonder what they’ll do if they catch you,” he said. Then he grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “Where you staying?” I asked him.

  “I got my lodging covered,” he said. “Quit worrying about me, money. What you should be worrying about is the people from Horizons showing up at your tent. Or if that surfer burnout guy you hang with secretly wants to molest you.”

  “Mr. Red?”

  “Yeah, man. That’s one bitter dude. Who knows how that shit’s gonna play out.”

  “He’s not bitter.”

  “Are you kidding? The guy obviously couldn’t handle the pressures of being a pro surfer and quit. And then he felt like such a loser he turned to drugs and alcohol and became the burnout he is. I bet he took a job here to try and relive the glory days, which probably weren’t even that glorious.”

  “Mr. Red’s not like that,” I said.

  “And all those chicks I heard about, man. You gotta wonder. What’s he trying to prove to himself about his sexuality?”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “You’re right,” Devon said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But I watch people, Special. I observe.”

  I felt myself getting irritated and confused, exactly how I always get when I’m around Devon. He tries to spin things around so I can’t think.

  “You get what I’m saying, don’t you, Special?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He laughed and looked at the girls again.

  How I Got the Name Devon Calls Me in the First Place

  We were sitting at the kitchen table together, eating cereal, him reading the back of the box and me the front. I was brand-new to Horizons and he’d already been there for years. He lifted his head and set down his spoon with a look like he’d just thought of something smart.

  He told me how the cereal we were eating, Special K, was probably invented especially for me because ever since what happened with my mom I was mostly in remedial classes at school, which was only one step away from special ed, and if you took the first half of special ed and added my first initial it would say Special K, just like the cereal.

  He laughed and laughed and said how that should be my nickname, and then he went back to eating his cereal and reading the back of the box.

  I still remember that day I promised myself I’d never become friends with Devon, but for some reason I did anyways.

  He’s called me Special ever since.

  I was just about to tell Devon how wrong he was about Mr. Red, when he looked over my shoulder and said: “By the way, you’re going about this girl situation all wrong.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You don’t just sit up here like a weirdo, writing about the girl, you introduce yourself. You say hello. Like this.”

  He pushed past me and went to the edge of the fence and megaphoned a hand around his mouth and shouted: “Hey! Yo!”

  All three girls looked up at us.

  “Get any good shots or what?”

  “Maybe,” one of the girls said back. “What’s it to you?”

  Devon smiled, said: “I was just thinking how you should probably take one more.”

  The girls looked at each other and then the same girl said: “Dude, who are you?”

  “I’m saying. You should probably get a quick shot of a brown boy like me so you have some variety.” Devon ran his fingers through his hair all dramatically and then jumped up on the waist-high fence and balanced himself in a squatting position and slowly spread both his arms out wide and smiled.

  The other two girls looked at each other like Devon was a freak, but Olivia actually stepped forward, smiling, and snapped a few pictures.

  Soon as she lowered her camera Devon acted like he was losing his balance, and after waving his arms around for a couple seconds he fell backwards accidentally-on-purpose and hung onto the fence and slowly lowered himself onto the dirt, back first.

  The girls all laughed and Olivia called out: “I should’ve got a shot of that.”

  “It’s all good over here,” Devon shouted, giving them two thumbs-ups. “Everybody’s okay. Nothing to see.”

  The girls laughed a little more.

  He brushed the dirt off his butt and shouted: “All I ask is those pictures don’t show up on the Internet!”

  “How much you gonna pay us?” one of Olivia’s friends shouted.

  Devon pretended to get serious and said: “That’s blackmail!”

  “More like a business opportunity!”

  Everybody smiled, including Devon, and then he waved them off and walked back over to me and said: “See that, Special? Simple little interaction goes a long way with chicks. Especially rich, sheltered ones. Then you walk away. Next time they’ll know who we are, and they’ll be first to say hi. Trust me, rich girls love a challenge because they’ve been handed everything their entire lives.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You also don’t come off like some perverted freak mute.”

  “I’m not a mute.”

  “I know that,” Devon said. “But they don’t.”

  I looked at the ground.

  He brushed his butt off some more and then tweaked his body so he could see the back of his own legs. “Anyways, I gotta go,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Working.”

  “Ooh, fun. What are you doing after?”

  I shrugged.

  “Good, I’ll meet you out front of that stupid coffee shop they have here. I wanna swipe some new clothes from a few of the surf shops I saw on the way over. And I need my partner to watch the door for me.”

  I stared back at him, remembering what my therapist always said about the company people keep and how sometimes the only difference between a good citizen and a criminal is who a person chooses to surround himself with.

  Then I thought about what Mr. Red said about having a buddy to hang around with.

  I looked at the girls who were now walking up the steps together.

  “Come on, Special,” he said. “Be my road dog again. I miss you, man.”

  I knew it would end up bad.

  Still.

  I told him: “I guess so.”

  He play-punched me in the arm and smiled big. “It’s good to see you, dude. It’s bee
n, what, like a year and a half?”

  I shrugged.

  “You know, just because somebody’s little business card says Therapist doesn’t mean you have to take every single thing they say as the gospel. Those people are human beings, too, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And humans make mistakes, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well?” he said, holding his hands out and shrugging like he just made an incredible point.

  Then he spun around and ducked under the overhanging bush like Mr. Red and was gone.

  I waited three hours after work, but Devon never showed up. He didn’t show up the next day either. Or the day after that. I didn’t see him again for over two weeks, when he unzipped my tent door one night and stood in front of me out of breath, saying how sorry he was for ditching me and how he had a perfectly good excuse but wouldn’t bore me with the details.

  After he was done apologizing he asked if I talked to those rich girls since he last saw me. I told him not really.

  “What do you mean ‘not really’?”

  “I saw them a few times.”

  “And?”

  “We waved.”

  “That’s it?”

  I nodded.

  “Dude, this isn’t 1845. You don’t have to ask for parental permission just to talk to a damn girl. Jesus.”

  I decided not to tell Devon about the other stuff that had happened since I saw him. How I’d started sleepwalking again. How I’d wake up in the middle of the night on the beach. Or in the campus bathroom, on the cement floor. Or near the railroad tracks. Or in the park.

  That morning I’d actually woken up on the roof of Campsite Coffee, feet dangling off the side and a banana peel in my hand.

  I didn’t tell Devon about my sleepwalking ’cause I knew he’d remember how I used to do it at Horizons. And he’d say how those therapists obviously didn’t do such a great job fixing me after all.

  “Is it really that hard to say hi, Special?” He shook his head. “Maybe a comment about the weather?”

  I shrugged.

  “You didn’t even talk to the one with the head injury?”

  “She’s not injured.”

  He waved me off and told me to hurry and get ready ’cause we had a bunch of stores to hit before they closed at seven.

  I stood up and looked at him, and this weird feeling came over me: I didn’t really know Devon anymore.

  “Special,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  I shook my head.

  My stomach felt off balance.

  He took a deep breath and blew it out slow, said: “Trust me, Special. We know each other just as good as we ever did. It’s all psychological.”

  My eyes went wide ’cause he totally read my face.

  Mr. Red always talks about that, how people’s faces tell more about what they’re thinking than their words. I never really thought about it before, but maybe he was right.

  “Dude, come on,” Devon said. “We don’t exactly have time to break down our entire friendship right now.”

  He picked up my duffel bag, unzipped it and dumped everything out, then he went out of my tent door and I followed him.

  • • •

  How It Went with the Surf Shops

  Next thing I knew we were stealing clothes from a bunch of stores along the 101, right across the street from Cardiff Reef Beach.

  More like Devon was stealing.

  I was just watching the door to make sure nobody came in, like a cop or security guard, and if they did I was supposed to start whistling “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but I never had to whistle ’cause nobody like that ever showed up. Mostly I just looked between the highway and the parking lot and Devon in the store as he sifted through the different racks of clothes.

  Devon’s shoplifting theory was this: as long as you act like you know what you’re doing people will leave you alone. He says the worst thing a thief can do is think of himself as a thief. You’ll automatically feel nervous and people will pick up on it and they’ll start watching you to find out why.

  “You know what’s my secret weapon with shoplifting?” Devon said as we were walking toward our second store.

  “What?” I said.

  “Smiling. Who would suspect me of stealing if I look like I just hugged my damn mom?”

  And that was exactly how Devon looked all through our first three stores. He’d hold up a pair of shorts, smiling and singing with whatever song the store was playing. Or he’d talk to the workers about how their summer was going. Or he’d laugh with them about all the tourists who must come in with cameras strapped around their necks, especially foreigners. After a while he’d say the shorts weren’t exactly what he was looking for, but instead of putting them back up on the rack he’d slip them into the half-open duffel bag on the sly and move to the next rack.

  Whenever he was done “shopping” he’d tell the worker how there was nothing worse than leaving a store empty-handed, and he’d laugh at whatever they said back, even if it wasn’t a joke, and tell them he’d probably be back in as soon as they got a new shipment. Then as he was going past the alarm he’d wave at the person with his duffel-bag hand, which would raise the bag just over the sensors, and he’d walk out all calm and motion with his head for me to follow and I would.

  We’d wander behind all the stores toward the lagoon, where there was nothing but bushes and birds and bad-smelling stagnant water that had collected from the ocean on the other side of the highway. We’d head for this one small bush that had purple flowers, where Devon was stashing all the stuff he stole. He’d open the duffel and pull out his new items and admire them for a minute and then add them to his stack, telling me to quit acting all offended when he and I both knew deep down I had as much thief in me as he did, maybe more.

  On our way to the next surf shop I’d explain to him all the reasons why that wasn’t true, and he’d just roll his eyes and tell me: “Why are you here, then?”

  “What do you mean?” I’d say back.

  “You didn’t have to come, right? But you did.”

  I wouldn’t know what to say back, since I was so tired from sleepwalking, so I’d just keep following.

  Everything went that same way, Devon smiling while he stole and me watching the door, until we got to the fifth store and then it changed.

  First of all, the worker wasn’t some young beach girl like at the rest of the stores. She was a tall parent-aged lady who had slumped shoulders and a permanent scowl on her face (I wonder what Mr. Red would say that kind of face was saying). From the second Devon stepped in the store she never took her eyes off him.

  I started getting nervous.

  At one point I even whistled the start of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but when Devon looked up at me and I motioned toward the worker lady he just rolled his eyes, then went back to sifting through a rack of jeans.

  I turned back to the parking lot, thinking about Devon’s psychological disorder, the one my Horizons therapist explained during one of my appointments with her. She said Devon had a strong death drive, which made him do risky, self-destructive things because, unconsciously, he thought ending his life was the only way to restore order in his idea of the world.

  The second she explained that, I knew it was right.

  How I Know Devon Has a Death Drive

  Devon says his first childhood memory is him in a group home with some counselor standing over him explaining how to mop the bathroom tile. He knows he was born to a mom and dad, like any other kid, but he doesn’t remember them. He said he knows it’s a defense mechanism, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need anybody.

  Also, Devon once told me he hardly even considers himself a real person ’cause if he disappeared one day nobody would call an AMBER Alert or even wonder where he was. Maybe a counselor would eventually have to do some paper
work but that’s it. According to Devon the definition of being a real person is if somebody would notice when you’re gone, like that saying about a tree falling in the forest.

  Devon claims one day he’ll be the falling tree.

  And since nobody will be there to hear it, his life won’t really have made a sound.

  Sometimes he tries to say it’s the same with me, and that’s why we understand each other, and why we’re friends, but he’s wrong about that.

  First off, I had a real mom and dad. For over half my life. And even though my dad sometimes hit me and my mom, I still remember good things like him teaching me how to throw and how to fix the leaking pipe in the kitchen. And my mom took me everywhere she went and always said she’d do anything for me.

  Actually, the only person I know who’s like Devon is my dad. According to my Horizons therapist he had a death drive, too, and that’s why he did drugs and committed domestic abuse and lived with all those different women.

  My therapist says I was most likely drawn to Devon because his behavior felt familiar.

  I even tried to explain that one time to Devon, but he covered his ears and acted like he was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  As I stood just outside the store, watching an old man open his car door, I thought how maybe Devon was right about me secretly wanting to steal. Maybe everybody did. Even A-plus students. Maybe we want to do even worse things, like smack somebody in the back of the head just to see what happens, or jab a tree branch through a store window to see the glass shatter, or throw a rock off a bridge to see which car gets hit on the freeway and if it causes an accident.

  Regular people may think these things, too.

  But Devon actually does them.

  He’s missing that part of your brain that worries about getting caught or hurting another human being.

  I looked in the store again and it was a perfect example. You could tell by Devon’s face he was actually happy the store woman was following him around the aisles. He held up a pair of dark jeans, and put them up to his body and looked in the mirror. Then he turned around and looked right at the saleswoman and said: “Excuse me, ma’am, may I try these on?”