I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  What the train sounds like when you see it coming from far away. The whistle sounding. The vibration of the tracks under your feet. The power it had going past, like a million car engines combined, the wind pressing your face and the roar and me thinking who was in there and if they were going where their family was.

  Olivia telling me about the books she’s read. Me listening and nodding but really just watching her. Getting excited ’cause she was.

  Peanut waiting for me to wake up every morning, and waiting for me to get home from work, so I could put food in his bowl, and water, and pet him while I said whatever I was thinking. Peanut, who looked at me with his crooked face and messed-up teeth, and how once I’d known him long enough everything started seeming straight.

  Mr. Red teaching me everything he knows about plumbing and landscaping and life. Girls. How he cared if I had friends and if I was okay. Mr. Red, who was always laughing and smiling and talking, but then sometimes he’d stare at the ground for a full minute, not moving, and I could tell in his eyes how sad he was and only now do I know why.

  Olivia smiling at me when we’d pass at the campsites and she was with her friends. And how it felt like we had a secret.

  The sound of waves breaking when you fall asleep in your tent. And birds in the morning. And people talking when they walk by on their way to get a coffee and paper. All of it blending into the sound of being free.

  The hole at the top of my tent in the morning when I opened my eyes. How at a certain time of the day the sun went right inside it and the whole inside of my tent lit up and it felt like somebody was giving me special powers.

  Going in the ocean every Sunday morning by myself, down from the campsites so nobody knows me. Coming out and laying on my towel. Letting the sun dry the ocean water off my skin. How it was cold at first, then tingled into warm. My face going into a smile ’cause of how good it felt. Then drifting into sleep.

  Olivia touching her ski cap and sometimes turning to me, her eyes going on mine, and how my stomach feels like it’s floating, like I don’t weigh anything, and how I pretend like I’m not smiling and nothing’s really happening, but really everything is.

  “Here’s another thing about girls,” Devon said as we walked back from the beach. “I don’t like regular skinny ones, either. Yeah, they’re all right to look at, and people give you props when they see you with one at the movies. But soon as you start hooking up, Special, trust me, it feels wrong.”

  I nodded, trying to think how skinny Olivia was.

  “A dude’s not supposed to graze bones when he’s feeling on his girl. Or two little mosquito bites hiding inside a Victoria’s Secret training bra. I like a girl who you can tell is a girl.”

  I shrugged as we went around the end of the campsites and up the side of the 101. It was late and the lifeguard tower was closed. The sun had just dropped under the ocean. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast ’cause Devon made us stay on the beach the entire day so we could see every single girl that came and went to make it a complete study. If we left early he said we might miss the finest one of the day. So we sat there shirtless on our towels, the sun stuck on our skin, talking about every girl, arguing over ratings, pointing out features.

  Whenever it got too hot we’d run down into the water and splash through the whitewash and duck under swells. We’d stay out there bodysurfing and spraying water at each other until Devon said we had to get back to our towels and scan for new talent.

  We spent pretty much the entire day talking about girls, but somehow Devon had more to say.

  “What I seriously don’t get, though,” he told me, “is your obsession with blondes.” He was holding a long stick now, whacking rocks into the road. We watched each one skip into the traffic that raced past us on the 101.

  “I just think some of them are pretty,” I said.

  “Pretty? What’s pretty, though, Special? For real.”

  I shrugged.

  “Pretty’s stock, man. Pretty’s like having bread and water for dinner. Yeah, maybe it’s enough sustenance to make it to the next day, but it doesn’t taste like anything. I’m talking about flavor, Special. I’m talking about herbs and spices.”

  “I like girls who are pretty,” I said, but Devon wasn’t listening.

  “Dude, I know all those sayings they have like ‘blondes have more fun,’ but that was from, like, 1920. Our country didn’t know any better. Since then all kinds of immigrants have come and settled here and made kids with white people and new combinations of girls have been born and it’s woken people up to a whole new meaning of what’s hot.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Look at you, Special. You’re mixed.”

  I shrugged.

  “When people first meet you, what do they think you are?”

  I thought about it a sec, then told him: “Just regular, I guess.”

  “No, dude. I mean your race. What race do people think you are?”

  “Sometimes they think I’m part Mexican,” I said. “Or Puerto Rican or Spanish.”

  “See?” Devon said.

  “One kid at Horizons said if I was from Iraq and if I was a terrorist. But he was joking.”

  “Oh, damn,” Devon said, putting a fist to his mouth. “People are ignorant.” He looked at me for a sec and said: “Actually, maybe I would have somebody take a wand to your ass at airport security.”

  “I don’t look like a terrorist.”

  “I know, Special. I’m just messing with you. Dude, you take everything so personal.”

  I shrugged and kept walking.

  “If anything you look like a white skater kid with a tan. Especially with those new threads I got you.”

  I looked down at my new shirt and surf trunks. I forgot I even had them on.

  “Hey, Special.”

  I looked at Devon.

  “But even if you can sort of blend in with these rich kids … really you’re not.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I don’t think you do.”

  I looked at him, confused.

  “You’re not like them, man. You’re different. Me too. And we have to understand that people are always gonna view us that way. As outsiders. Even if they seem nice to our faces. Behind closed doors it’s something else.”

  “Maybe it’s not like that here,” I said.

  “You honestly believe that?” Devon shot back. “If anything it’s worse. Why do you think I can’t hang out with these campsite kids? I can see it in their eyes, man. Deep down they think they’re better than us. And you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause they’re white. And ’cause they have money. And ’cause me and you, Special, we don’t got nothing.”

  I kept walking.

  It was quiet between us for a couple minutes, then Devon started smiling. “That’s why I got one rule with the ladies,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s gotta be dark hair if it’s gonna be Devon. And olive skin. And a little bit of booty. I mostly dig black girls and Mexican girls, but I’m flexible, you know? Some Asians are pretty sweet. Remember when I hooked up with that one Filipino girl, Tammy or whatever? At the community pool in Fallbrook?”

  I nodded and looked up at him and then looked at the walkway again. That’s about all you could do with Devon when he started going on like this about girls.

  “I remember ’cause when they walked in I turned to you and said I’d probably end up marrying the Asian one. Of course, you were too busy staring at blond chicks to even notice.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said.

  I didn’t actually remember, but Devon and me were always at that pool together, and he was always saying he was gonna marry somebody. The group home where he ended up was near Horizons, and both houses went to the same pool pretty much every day during the summer. I always hung out with Devon since I knew him from before.

  “Anyways,” Devon said, “we met up at the end of the day, after you guys left, an
d she told me she was Filipino and she asked what I was and I told her that was privileged information and she sat down with me and guessed like a hundred guesses. We hooked up a couple days later, when we were both back at the pool. And lemme tell you something, Special. The skin on that girl’s legs was the softest I’ve ever felt in my life. If you ever get a chance to hook up with a Filipino girl, dude, make sure you feel her legs. You won’t believe it.”

  We walked into the campsite through the front entrance, where the cars go, where Olivia jumped out from behind a tree to scare me. I looked up at the top of the tree and noticed all the dark clouds in the sky.

  “Look how stormy it is,” I told Devon.

  Devon peeked, too, and told me: “Bet you it’s gonna rain tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “I hate rain, dude. It’s such a pain in the ass.”

  “But plants need it.”

  “Plants?” he said, looking at me. “Dude, Special. Sometimes you sound like some old lady tending her garden.”

  We turned onto the little street that led to my tent and then he smacked me on the shoulder again and stopped walking. “Hang on!” he said.

  “What?”

  “You see what you just did right there? I was talking about some girl’s sweet legs and you totally changed the subject. Like you always do, Special. You started talking about plants.”

  “I didn’t change the subject.”

  “Dude, trust me.”

  I looked at the ground for a sec, and then looked up at Devon.

  He took a deep breath and let it out all slow. “Look, man, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “Me?”

  He pulled his towel off one shoulder and draped it over his other one. “It’s just, you never wanna talk about the ladies, man. And you don’t have any experience. I know that for a fact.”

  “I have experience.”

  “Look, I’m just gonna come out and ask you, okay? Are you, like, gay?”

  “What?” I threw my hands up and turned around and then turned back and punched him in the shoulder and said: “I’m not gay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” I punched him again in the same spot.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, rubbing his arm. “Jesus. I was just asking a simple question.”

  My towel fell on the road.

  He started laughing and holding down my fists. “Jesus, it’s not even that big of a deal these days. People turn gay all the time. You can even get married, I think.”

  I stood there shaking my head, trying to figure out why somebody would ask if I was gay. I tried to think if I even understood what being gay meant. I knew it was when a guy liked other guys, but were there other things, too? Did it change how the person acted?

  “I’m just messing with you, Special. I know you’re hetero.”

  I reached down and picked up my towel and brushed off the dirt.

  “I know everything about you, dude.”

  “You don’t know everything.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  “Okay, what am I thinking right this second?” I stared at him, trying to see if he’d change the subject.

  “You’re waiting to see if I’ll change the subject and start talking about the weather.”

  “Not even close,” I said.

  But I couldn’t believe it. Devon may have been depressed and he may have had a death drive, but he was one of the smartest people I knew when it came to reading people’s minds.

  “You sure?” he said.

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all.”

  He gave me a funny look and said: “Okay, Special, if you say so. Anyways, you’re right, there is one thing I don’t know about you.”

  “What?”

  “Why you never wanna talk about girls.”

  “We talked about girls all day.”

  He shook his head and said: “There’s nothing to be scared of, man. They don’t bite.”

  “I know!”

  He stood there for a sec like he was thinking and then he nodded and said: “Even when you were writing in your diary about that one, man. Who would pick the chick with the deformed face?”

  I was just about to tell him how Olivia wasn’t deformed, she was the prettiest girl ever. And how I even talked to her at the beach last week. But right then we got to my tent and Devon said: “Anyways, man, I gotta head across the highway.”

  “Good.”

  “Ah, come on, Special,” he said. “Don’t be like that. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  I didn’t say anything back.

  “You take things way too personal, man. Friends are supposed to be able to talk and mess around with each other. Right?”

  He held out his hand for me to slap, but I just looked at it.

  “Come on, Kidd. At least acknowledge my existence.”

  I looked at him and shrugged. He reached his hand out closer to me and I slapped it away.

  “Good enough,” Devon said, laughing at me. Then he looked at Peanut, who was lying in front of my tent door again. “Jesus Christ!”

  “What?”

  He pointed at Peanut, whose middle section was going up and down with each breath. “Dude, that’s like the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.”

  “He’s not that ugly,” I said.

  “It doesn’t even look like a dog, man. It looks like an overgrown sewer rat. Look how far its teeth stick out.”

  Peanut must have known we were talking about him ’cause he lifted his head and looked at us. His eyes were yellow and his snout had a little mud stuck on the tip.

  He growled at Devon.

  “Anyways,” Devon said. “I’ll get up with you in a few days or something. Have fun cleaning toilets.”

  I watched him backpedal, looking at Peanut, then he said: “Hey, Special.”

  “What?”

  “Remember what I just told you about spices, man. And Filipino girls’ skin.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s okay to talk about that stuff every once in a while. Maybe one day you’ll even experience it for yourself.”

  “Maybe I already did,” I said.

  “Or maybe you didn’t.” He laughed and said: “Anyways, peace.”

  I watched Devon spin around and walk back down the road, out of sight. Then I stepped over Peanut and went in my tent and climbed in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes.

  How I Still Couldn’t Write About Olivia

  I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard knocking. Soon as my eyes focused, though, I realized it wasn’t somebody wanting to come in, it was rain hitting my tent roof.

  I looked at my clock: two in the morning.

  I sat up, happy I wasn’t sleepwalking for once, and listened to the sound the rain made. For some reason it made me feel happy. Maybe ’cause of how I used to be locked up inside Horizons all day and now I was outside in a tent with rain and my new life seemed like an adventure.

  I reached over and turned on my light and took out my philosophy of life book and tried to think what I could put. I thought about me and Devon bodysurfing in the shallow part. And looking at all the girls on the beach. And us talking about people’s races. I thought of Mr. Red. In five hours he’d be teaching me how to operate the entire campsite sprinkler system.

  But really I just wanted to write about me and Olivia walking together on the beach and how the week after she left a drawing on my tent door of an abandoned lifeguard tower and her signature.

  I spent the next hour trying to write out our exact conversation so I could look at it whenever I wanted, even a long time from now. But everything I put didn’t seem like what she said so I kept having to tear out pages.

  Finally I gave up and put down my pen and looked at the tent wall. I wondered why my mind would never let me write about Olivia.

  Outside the tent I could hear Peanut snoring in the rain. For two weeks he’d been sleeping right outside my tent, and every time I got up in th
e morning he’d get up, too, and as I zipped closed my door he’d lean against me and we’d look at each other and I’d tell him: “Nice to see you again, big guy.”

  I was starting to really like Peanut, even if he wasn’t the kind of dog some animal magazine would pick out for a photo shoot. He was loyal to people like me and Mr. Red. And he hardly ever barked. And he seemed like my friend.

  I put away my philosophy of life book and got out of my sleeping bag and unzipped my tent door. When I pushed it open Peanut raised his head and looked at me, the rain getting all on him. He sat up and opened his mouth and let his tongue fall all to the side and breathed that way.

  I told him: “Come on, big guy. Let’s get you outta the rain.”

  He didn’t move, just stayed looking at me.

  “Come on,” I said again, holding open the tent door wider.

  He got up and looked in my tent and then looked at me again.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  He didn’t say anything, obviously.

  “Dogs shouldn’t have to sleep in the rain, either, right? Think about it.”

  He looked at me and shook his fur and water went everywhere, then he stepped in my tent and sniffed around. He went around in two circles and laid down right by the door and put his head on his paws and looked up at me again.

  “From now on when it rains,” I told him, “you could just sleep in here, all right?”

  One of his ears went up like he was listening, and I climbed back in my sleeping bag, flipped off my light and told him good night.

  Dreams from Solitary Confinement

  I suck in my stomach, slip through bars and again rise over the empty prison yard. I float above thin midnight clouds, above the familiar tops of buildings and street signs and lonely car headlights shining white or red into the dark pavement.

  Like I’m Superman I hold my hands in front of me and watch the world move underneath. And what if I really was super in some way? If I could save all the people from their depression. Kids and parents stuck inside sad dreams, alone in their beds, wishing they were someone else, someone better.