I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

He must wanna hurt her.

  Which would hurt me.

  As I watched Devon watch Olivia I felt like I was gonna throw up. I thought about my mom’s letter, telling me how sometimes people have to do things to protect the people they love. How she hoped one day I’d forgive her.

  And then I realized something.

  All these years I’d had every word in her letter memorized. I could say them by heart. But I never truly understood what those words meant.

  Until now.

  An hour later all the girls, including Olivia, went in their tents for the night and shut off their lights. I watched Devon go out from behind his tree and walk toward the campsite exit.

  As he faded from my view I made myself a promise.

  Next time Devon came knocking on my tent I was gonna answer it.

  Dreams from Solitary Confinement

  I suck in my breath and slip through cell bars. Again. Float into the nighttime sky, up near comb-over clouds.

  I move past freeway cars and empty mini-mall parking lots, crisscrossing phone wires that frame deserted neighborhood streets. Cars are pulled into driveways where people are locked safely inside, in their beds, asleep, dreaming like I’m dreaming but more innocent and free.

  I drift over Devon’s train tracks, past Olivia’s quiet tent, past Campsite Coffee and the never-ending stairs going down to the sand. And this time when I lower onto my beach towel across from Olivia she’s with Mr. Red, who has Peanut on a leash.

  When I land Mr. Red and Olivia stay facing each other and talking. They don’t look at me.

  But Peanut lifts his head.

  Peanut stares, his tongue paused out the side of his mouth how dogs think.

  Hey, big guy, I say in my head.

  It’s me.

  Kidd.

  But I already know my dreams are wordless.

  Peanut barks.

  Mr. Red reaches down and rubs Peanut’s scraggly head, says: You wanna get us kicked out of here, man?

  Olivia looks down at Peanut. You think dogs can really miss people?

  Mr. Red pets Peanut until Peanut lays his head back down. I think this one misses Kidd.

  Olivia looks at Peanut. Me too.

  She smoothes her ski-cap flap over her cheek and sighs. Anyway, go on with what you were saying.

  Mr. Red shrugs. It’s nothing. I just … You know, I made up all these rules. When he stayed with me he couldn’t eat sugar cereals. Or drink soda.

  All parents make up rules like that. It’s in the handbook or something.

  Those handbooks should be burned. Mr. Red switches Peanut’s leash to his other hand and coughs into the back of his wrist, says: Think about it. What’s so wrong about an occasional bowl of Frosted Flakes?

  Olivia looks at the sand in front of her flip-flop feet, her red toenail polish chipped and worn.

  In my dream I look into the beach sky. It’s lighter than in my last dreams. I wonder why in every one it gets closer and closer to morning.

  I can now see the tiny swells moving toward shore, breaking gently on the sand. The muted beach sound like the inside of an unbroken shell.

  Mr. Red looks at me and shakes his head. He always reminded me of Ben, you know. From the first day I saw him.

  Olivia looks at Mr. Red.

  Not physically. Kidd’s taller and darker. But his way. How quiet he is.

  Olivia reaches down and pats Peanut’s head. Was your son handsome like Kidd?

  A smile goes on Mr. Red’s face, but he doesn’t say anything.

  It’s quiet for a long time, and I wonder why I keep dreaming this every time I sleep. About me being on the beach with Olivia. Not being able to talk. Her barely noticing me.

  The worst part of being in prison, I decide, is the first few seconds after you wake up from your dream. When you still think you’re on the beach. With Olivia.

  ’Cause then you realize.

  Sometimes I’d ride us along the beach, Mr. Red says. Just me and Ben. On my old beach cruiser. And I’d just look at him. Sitting there on the handlebars, right in front of me. Taking everything in. And I’d get this crazy feeling in my stomach. It was just so unbelievable, you know? This skinny, floppy-haired ten-year-old. This beautiful boy. These innocent blue eyes. And I was his dad.

  Olivia smiles.

  Peanut stares at me.

  I look at the ocean again. The ship’s so much closer to shore. It’s just outside the breakers now. And I wonder why I always have a ship in my dream. And why it’s always coming closer. And who’s on it. My Horizons therapist always said dreams have symbols, objects that really mean something else.

  I wonder what my dream ship could mean.

  Mr. Red lifts his head and says to Olivia: Can I give you some advice?

  I’d love some advice.

  Don’t expect to feel like an adult when you become an adult. Even when you become my age. Even when you have a job and a marriage and two little kids running around the backyard.

  What do you mean?

  If you expect to feel different, you’ll be disappointed.

  I heard it’s like that when you first go to college, too. You expect to immediately feel more mature, but you’re still the same person.

  I used to lay awake some nights thinking of all the ways I might screw up Ben because I still wasn’t a real adult.

  Do you miss him as much as when it first happened?

  More, Mr. Red said.

  Really? It doesn’t get better?

  Mr. Red takes off his new sombrero and shakes his head. You never forget. Doesn’t matter how many days pass. Or months. Or years … And now this thing with Kidd.

  Mr. Red looks toward the ocean.

  Olivia looks at me.

  What about you? Mr. Red says, motioning toward Olivia with his chin. Aren’t you supposed to be in New York right now?

  Olivia nods. I decided to wait here.

  Long as it takes?

  Long as it takes.

  Even after everything you heard yesterday from the Horizons people?

  Olivia nods.

  Mr. Red smiles. What is it with you two, anyway? Sort of an odd match, don’t you think?

  Olivia shrugs. At first I was just curious, I guess. We all thought he was cute. And he seemed so much different than the kids at my school.

  You were curious about the other side of the tracks.

  Olivia looks at me. I guess that’s true.

  It’s not a bad thing.

  But there was something else, too. He was always so alone. I think I felt sorry for him. Does that sound bad?

  Sounds honest.

  I’ve always been drawn to people with fewer opportunities. I know it’s not the same, but I think there’s a part of me that identifies. She points to her face.

  Mr. Red nods.

  Olivia motions toward the ship on the ocean and says: I remember the day I took that picture. I could tell he was alone, too. And when I talked to him for the first time. And he told me about being in foster care. I don’t know. I just wanted to put him in my pocket. Make sure nobody else hurt him.

  I stare at the sand the whole time Olivia talks, ashamed.

  I’m not supposed to be hearing this.

  Then things changed, she says. I don’t even know when or how or why. But I started to see him differently.

  Olivia touches the back of both hands to her eyes like she might start crying. I can’t believe he did that.

  None of us can, Mr. Red says and he puts his hand on Olivia’s shoulder.

  I feel myself about to cry, too, since I can see how bad I hurt them when I pushed Devon. In my dream my eyes start burning. A lump goes in my throat.

  Mr. Red holds out his new sombrero and says: He got this for me.

  I know.

  He said it was time.

  Olivia smiles through her sad eyes.

  Ben got me the old one. For my birthday. He was six. Wrapped the box himself and put it on my spot on the couch. I came out from the bathroom a
nd said, Well, what do we got here, big guy? I tore off the paper and told him it was the sweetest-looking sombrero I’d ever seen.

  Mr. Red runs his fingers through his hair and puts his new one back on his head. I put it in a closet that night. I had another one that was still in decent shape. Ben asked me about it the next day and I told him: Relax, buddy. I’ll break it out when the time’s right.

  Did you?

  Mr. Red looks at her, shaking his head. About five years later. The day after Ben passed I found it buried in the back of a closet. Wore it for the first time at his funeral. And I wore it every single day after. Until Kidd got me this one.

  Olivia lowers her eyes to Peanut and rubs the top of his head.

  Mr. Red stares at me for a few minutes. Then he looks back at Olivia and tells her: All I’m saying is I should’ve brought home a box of Lucky Charms every once in a while. Wouldn’t have killed anybody.

  Olivia smiles through glassy eyes.

  Mr. Red points at me and says: I love this guy, you know that?

  Olivia nods.

  First time I felt like that about anybody since Ben. If he doesn’t come back, Olivia … I don’t know what I’m gonna do.

  Tears go down Olivia’s face and my breath catches. ’Cause I realize they’re all I care about in this entire life. Just Olivia and Mr. Red.

  And Maria.

  A lot of these surf rats around here asked me if Kidd was slow, Mr. Red says. And maybe in some ways he is. But at the same time he’s smart, too. In other ways. You have to hang around him awhile to understand.

  That’s exactly what I was telling Jasmine last night.

  They both go quiet for a couple minutes. Then Mr. Red clears his throat and says: None of us knew what was really going on. His people explained it to me yesterday, and I still haven’t wrapped my head around it.

  Kidd tried to tell me, Olivia says.

  He did?

  I feel my face getting red and when I look down at Peanut he raises his head again and barks.

  Quiet, Mr. Red says, and he looks all around the beach like somebody might be listening.

  But there’s nobody.

  Olivia pets Peanut.

  She starts saying how I warned her about Devon, only at the time she didn’t understand what I meant, and how she never could’ve imagined it would end up like this.

  She starts saying more about Devon, things I really wanna hear, but in the middle of her talking a powerful wind comes and I’m instantly lifted back into my dream sky.

  Above Olivia.

  And above Mr. Red and Peanut, who’s now barking.

  I rise up into the clouds.

  High above the campsite tents and the train tracks and the freeway lanes.

  I drift above the ugly prison yard with its two-story chain-link fence and barbed wire and armed guards.

  I slip back through the bars of my cell and go under my sheets and when I open my eyes everything is blurry and lost and claustrophobic and I realize if I had the choice I’d never dream again.

  For the rest of my life.

  ’Cause it only makes you feel the worst possible sadness the second your dream ends.

  I heard something outside my tent in the middle of the night and thought for sure it was Devon. I sat up and listened.

  A bunch of people walking and voices.

  I peeked outside my tent door but instead of seeing Devon I found all the campsite surfers passing in just trunks with their boards tucked under their arms, the campsite girls behind them bundled in hoodie sweatshirts and Uggs.

  Olivia was the only girl carrying a surfboard. She came right up to my tent and set it down.

  Her friends smiled and kept walking.

  “Where’s everybody going?” I said, stepping the rest of the way out of my tent.

  “The guys are paddling to the kelp beds,” she said.

  “The kelp beds?”

  “You know those dark patches of seaweed way out there, past the waves?” She looked down at my hand and said: “Uh, why are you holding a wrench?”

  I looked at the wrench in my hand and shrugged, tossed it back in the tent. “I didn’t know who it was,” I said.

  She gave me a strange look.

  There was a rustling sound in my tent, and when me and Olivia turned around Peanut’s head was poking through the door and his tongue was going. She reached down to pet him. “Who needs a wrench,” she said, “when you have such a high-quality guard dog?”

  I smiled and asked her if she was going to the kelp beds, too.

  “Nope,” she said. “But I thought you might want to.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “How?”

  “On my dad’s board.” We both looked at the foam board by my feet. “He brings it every summer but he never goes out. I had to wipe down all the dust.”

  I thought about going back in the ocean. I hadn’t been out there since Devon pulled me into the riptide. “How can you see the waves in the dark?”

  “I guess that’s the point,” Olivia said. “You don’t have to go. You’re welcome to sit in the sand with us.”

  “I wanna go,” I said, even though I didn’t.

  “You sure?” she said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay, grab the board,” she said, “and follow me.”

  Waves You Can’t See

  Me and the surfer guys stood next to our boards in the wet sand, strapping leashes around our ankles, me doing it exactly like them. They made small talk about how the summer had flown by and what their senior year might be like and who was entering what surf contests in the winter. Behind us, the girls sat together in the sand, talking.

  Olivia saw me looking and gave me a tiny smile.

  I smiled back.

  I felt overwhelming butterflies in my stomach about going in the ocean again, especially in the middle of the night. But I knew I had to. Olivia had brought me her dad’s board. And she was watching. And I knew secretly she wanted me to be more like everybody else.

  I wanted that, too.

  The guys picked up their boards and tucked them under their arms. I followed. All of us moving toward the dark ocean, shivering in our surf trunks. I stared at the line of moonlight going down the middle of the water. It was like a pathway into my fear of the ocean currents and drowning.

  I knew I had to walk it.

  As we stood at the water’s edge, looking out, I asked the guy with green tips in his hair, Jackson: “What do we do?”

  “Just paddle out,” he said.

  “All the way past the break,” Rob said. “To the kelp beds.”

  “Water’s cold, too,” Jeff said. “I’m warning you.”

  Jackson laughed, told me: “Wait till it hits your nut sack.”

  “Shit hurts, dude,” Rob said.

  A couple of the other guys laughed and Frankie said: “We’re like that group that goes swimming in the snow.”

  “The Polar Bear Club.”

  “Exactly. The Polar Bear Club.”

  “We’re the surfing version. I think we made it up.”

  Everybody howled and laughed as we stepped in. Some of the guys splashed water at each other. Jeff even tackled Frankie and they both came up laughing and cursing. The girls stood along the shore, pointing at us.

  The water was ice cold on my bare feet, then my ankles and calves. My knees.

  I howled like everybody else.

  When the water got up to their waists they all dove under and came up yelling and hopped on their boards and started paddling. I watched their horizontal shapes rise and fall over swells, their arms plunging into the water over and over, feet kicked up.

  I was behind them, still walking my board.

  When the cold water hit my stuff it felt like someone squeezing with their bare hand. I opened my mouth to yell but no sound came out. It hurt worse than a football pass hitting there, and I bent over picturing my warm sleeping bag.

  But at the same time I knew Ol
ivia was watching.

  I looked back at the girls who were all sitting in a line on the sand now, huddled together. Then I turned around and forced myself to dive under. I came up freezing in the cold air and hopped on my board and paddled after everybody.

  Soon I could see the shadow of waves before they hit me, and I’d duck-dive under like Mr. Red taught me—which is where you push the nose of your board down and purposely go under and let the wave break over you.

  I stayed on the same part of the moon path as the guys paddling ahead of me. All of us in the same splashing rhythm. One hand in the water and pulling, then the other hand in and pulling, over and over, my arms and shoulders burning, my neck sore from looking up. Foam board gliding along the water’s surface, taking me out farther and farther.

  After a while I got sort of used to the cold water, and when I got past where the waves broke everything got flatter and it was easier to paddle.

  The guys all stopped and sat up on their boards.

  Nobody said a word.

  When I caught up, I sat just like them.

  The beach was now just a line of land behind us, seaweed floating in giant knots under our boards: baseball-sized bulbs and long, ropey tentacles and slimy-looking leaves swaying in the current. Everything out there quiet and a million times bigger than humans. The moon peeking through the puffy gray clouds that sat in the sky.

  I thought how different my life was from Fallbrook. Sitting on a surfboard in the ocean with a bunch of surfers, our feet dangling in seaweed.

  But just when I was feeling part of everything, the guys and the campsites and Cardiff by the Sea, I heard a quiet splashing behind me.

  I turned around to look and my stomach dropped.

  Devon.

  He was paddling toward us on a beat-up surfboard, one that looked like he’d pulled it right out of a trash Dumpster. He gave me a devious smile and went on the other side of the guys.

  I saw Frankie look at him.

  Devon sat up like the rest of us, put a finger to his lips for me to keep quiet.

  I looked back at the ocean and felt more frustrated than I’d ever felt in my life. It was such an important night. Just me and the surfer guys and the dark ocean. And then Devon had to show up. Like he always showed up.

  But at the same time I felt worried, too.