I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  I didn’t know what Devon would do.

  I looked at him again, just sitting there, smiling, sifting his fingers through the ocean water.

  • • •

  Eventually, without even saying anything, the guys all turned around, one by one, including me, and started paddling back to shore.

  Devon stayed.

  Jeff looked at him and sort of nodded for him to follow us, but Devon just stayed floating in the kelp beds, on his beat-up board, staring into the black night.

  The rest of us got off our boards near the shore and walked out of the water, onto wet sand. The wind was freezing. We wrapped our leashes back around our boards, down by the fins, then we hurried up to the girls who were standing in a circle holding out towels for us.

  Jackson went to hug Jasmine to get her wet, but she backed away squealing.

  “So?” Blue said, pulling her hood off her head. “How was it?”

  “Cold,” Jeff said.

  I looked at the ocean.

  Devon was still sitting in the kelp beds.

  “You guys were out there long enough,” Jasmine said.

  We dried off and left our towels draped over our backs for warmth, picked up our boards and started toward the stairs.

  Olivia touched my arm, said: “What’d you think?”

  “I loved it,” I told her.

  “I’m so glad,” she said.

  We both smiled, but inside I was still worried about Devon. The look in his eyes when he paddled up to us was different. And he barely glanced at me. Like he was trying to prove we weren’t friends anymore. Which made me think of his revolution.

  “I can’t believe you guys won’t even wear wet suits,” Jasmine said.

  “It’s all good,” Jackson said.

  Blue laughed out loud, and Rob said: “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, what?”

  “I was just thinking of everybody’s shrinkage.”

  The girls laughed.

  “Shrinkage?” Frankie said.

  “You know,” Blue said. “When your little wee-wees get cold and try to suck back into their little homes.”

  The guys all frowned and said that never happened to them, and the girls kept laughing. Then Jackson said: “Why don’t you join me in my tent, Blue. See for yourself.”

  “In your dreams,” she said, and everybody laughed some more.

  When we got to the top of the stairs I looked out over the ocean and saw a shape that I knew was Devon, still way out there, in the kelp beds, sitting alone on his board.

  I stopped and stared.

  This weird feeling came over me, like right that second I knew something bad would happen between me and Devon. Something that would change both our lives forever.

  Then I felt a tug at my shoulder and when I turned around Olivia said: “You coming?”

  I pop open my eyes in the pitch black of solitary confinement and suck in a huge breath, like I’ve been holding it all this time, imagining the summer and Devon and everything that’s happened.

  I pull against my straps to sit up, but I still can’t budge. And for the first time I start wondering stuff about my cell.

  How long have I been in here? Two months? Or two days?

  And why can’t I remember any guards coming in with a tray of food? Or at least doing a bed check like they always did at Horizons?

  Then I start wondering something else.

  What if it wasn’t the police who picked me up, but people from Devon’s revolution? Maybe when they found out I pushed their leader off the cliff they rushed the scene and threw me in their van and brought me to a secret torture chamber. And this is it.

  Maybe Devon didn’t die when he hit the sand. And they’re waiting for him to get better so he can decide what to do with me.

  My heart starts racing and I yell:

  “Is anybody out there? Please! Help me!”

  I listen for footsteps.

  There’s only silence.

  I lay here breathing hard, trying to think, eyes shifting back and forth even though I can’t see. If it really was regular policemen who brought me here, what if they’re experimenting with some new psychological drug, and all my dreams of Olivia and the beach are really just a chemical hallucination?

  Or what if this is death row?

  I close my eyes and picture the summer again.

  Devon paddling up behind us in the ocean that midnight. And two nights later, when I saw him stalking around Olivia’s tent again. This time with a knife in his hand.

  The more I lay here, thinking, the more I believe I was right with what I did.

  I had to push Devon off the cliff.

  Even if the police are testing new medicine on me. Or they’re studying a criminal’s brain. Even if Olivia and Mr. Red and everybody else never understand why I did it. If I’m never allowed to leave my cell again. And all I have left of my friends are hallucinations from solitary confinement.

  Still.

  All that matters is Olivia’s okay.

  And I saved her.

  Like my mom saved me.

  What Else I Know About Devon

  How he stopped going to my tent after the kelp beds. And he stopped looking at me whenever we passed each other in the campsites or at the beach.

  The Tuesday morning I woke up and went out of my tent and went to wait for Mr. Red so we could work, and Devon was sitting on my usual railroad tie, holding his knife. I stopped and he kept looking at Mr. Red’s tent, even when he got up and walked away. And later that night when I came out of the bookstore with the first book Olivia ever mentioned, about the paralyzed guy, and Devon was standing on the sidewalk with his hood up, watching me.

  The weekend day when he was out in the ocean on his trash Dumpster surfboard with a bunch of other kids Mr. Red was teaching to surf. And how he kept paddling for them and trying to stand and falling down. And then Mr. Red paddled over and gave him a boost and Devon stood up and rode the wave all the way to the sand and pumped his fist and all the campsite girls were together on the beach, watching, including Olivia, and it was the first time I saw her notice him, and my chest felt worried and jealous.

  I ran with Olivia onto the Coaster train just as the doors were shutting, and together we fell into two empty seats in back, both of us laughing so loud people looked. As the train broke its stillness and started moving along the tracks she put her hand on my arm and said: “Now I know today’s the right day.”

  “For what?” I said, still catching my breath.

  “What I have to show you,” she said. “Today’s a showing day.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but before I could open my mouth she told me: “Don’t stress, Kidd. You’ll see.”

  I glanced at the scuffed train floor where somebody had carved OTNC POR VIDA in big block letters and under it somebody else had written GO BACK TO TJ, ESE!

  “When you barely make a train like that,” Olivia said, setting her bag on the empty seat next to her, “it’s a good omen.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff,” I said.

  “Good omens?”

  “Yeah. Or things being meant to be. Like in the story about one-hundred-percent perfect love.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know much about girls, do you?”

  I shrugged.

  “The ones who claim they don’t believe in fairy tales are the ones who believe the most.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  We both watched out the window as the train picked up speed, gliding us through the beach part of Encinitas and Cardiff. Outside our window passed the top of Moonlight Music, where Olivia played me her song, and the big white walls of the self-realization place and the part of the tracks where Devon once stood playing chicken with a train.

  Olivia pointed at the campsites as they moved past and we looked at each other and smiled ’cause it’s where we’d just come from and where
we met, and I thought how it’d be if I stayed there the rest of my life, even when I had a wife and kids. Like, what if I just bought a family-sized tent and kept working for Mr. Red, and what if Olivia was the wife?

  And then I thought something else. What if I’d been from Cardiff from the beginning? Would I be different?

  I tried to decide about that as I looked out the window. The blue ocean going by, the sun’s shiny glare floating on top. The surfers waiting for waves, sitting on their boards like we did the night of the kelp beds. Whitewash crumbling toward shore, where tiny kids stood with buckets and shovels, digging or building castles or burying each other.

  What if instead of being born in a trailer in Fallbrook I’d been born as one of those little kids on the beach playing in the sand?

  Were people who they were ’cause of their genes, or was it more to do with where they were born, and who their parents were, and what they saw growing up?

  What if I never had to go to Horizons?

  And what if I’d never met Devon?

  The train moved along with my thinking.

  • • •

  Olivia had been away at SAT camp for the three days since I caught Devon watching her tent. According to her, as soon as she got back this morning she dropped her bags off in her tent and came straight to get me. She said she had an epiphany while doing an eight-page worksheet of sentence-completion problems. When I asked her what her epiphany was, she wagged a finger at me, said it had to remain a secret until we got to her favorite cliff spot at Torrey Pines.

  The train dinged as we slowed to a stop at the Solana Beach Station. The doors slid open and a bunch of people got off and new ones got on and then the doors closed and we started going again.

  I got a weird feeling maybe Devon was on the train now, but I looked all around and didn’t see him. Eventually, I knew I had to warn Olivia about catching Devon outside her tent with a knife in his hand. But a train ride didn’t seem like the right place.

  “I’m so happy to be back,” Olivia said.

  “You didn’t like your camp?”

  “Try spending eight hours a day doing reading comprehension questions and essay-building strategies.”

  I tried to remember myself in school, sitting at a desk like everyone else, the teacher putting something on the board. It seemed like forever ago.

  “Or studying five hundred new words a night. Getting tested on them the next morning.” She shook her head and looked at me. “You know what ‘clairvoyant’ means?”

  “I think so.”

  “ ‘Able to see the future.’ ”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “That’s the first part of my epiphany. I had a moment of clairvoyance. I was doing this one problem and all of a sudden I was picturing us at Torrey Pines, looking over the ocean and talking. Then I saw myself showing you what I’m supposed to show you.”

  “Me and you were there?” I said.

  “Yep. And it was sunny like this. And you were even wearing those same cargo shorts.”

  I looked down at my shorts, one of the pairs Devon had stolen.

  “PS, that’s a joke,” Olivia said, smiling. “You wear those shorts every day. Get it?”

  “I don’t wear these ones—”

  “I’m kidding,” she interrupted, and then she punched me in the arm, laughing. “You don’t have to take everything so seriously, you know.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I thought about what Olivia had just said. About her picturing us together, even when she was away at camp. “You know that book you told me about?” I said.

  “The One-Hundred-Percent Perfect Girl?”

  “No, the one about the guy who had to blink his one good eye to write it.” I still hadn’t told Olivia I lost the book she’d just loaned me.

  “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

  “Yeah. I think it really was a triumph.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She made a face and said: “That’s a pretty random thing to bring up, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged, told her: “I read it while you were at your SAT camp.”

  “Seriously? You went out and bought it?”

  “I liked it a lot,” I said.

  Olivia stayed looking at me for a while, then she put her hand over my hand and smiled.

  Torrey Pines State Beach

  The train dinged again as we slowed to a stop, and when the doors opened this time, Olivia grabbed her bag and my arm and said: “Come on, this is us.”

  She led us out of the station and onto a paved path toward a sign that said TORREY PINES STATE BEACH. But you definitely couldn’t see any beach. It felt more like we were hiking into the mountains.

  I watched Olivia walking slightly ahead of me, and I got this feeling. I knew I’d never forget this. Me and her walking together through trees and bushes. Going on a train together. Her putting her hand on mine.

  But then another feeling interrupted me. Devon and his knife. Him staring at her tent door. Hurting her. Without thinking I blurted out: “Someone’s stalking you.”

  She gave me a weird look and kept walking. “Someone’s stalking me?”

  “It’s this guy I know from Fallbrook. You saw him surfing.”

  She stopped and looked all around us, like she was making fun of me. “Oh, my God. Where’s this stalker now? Is he here? Is he watching us this very second?”

  “I’m serious, though,” I said. “He was by your tent before you left. In the middle of the night.”

  She shook her head and gave me a dirty look and started walking again. But I could tell she was worried.

  “I don’t know what he wants,” I said, following her.

  “How do you know he’s stalking me? I share a tent with Jasmine and Blue, you know. And they’re like ten times prettier than I am.”

  I thought about that as we turned onto a narrow dirt trail. It was true that Devon thought Jasmine and Blue were prettier. But this wasn’t about how people looked. It was about Devon’s revolution and him getting back at me.

  Or what if Devon had changed his mind about Olivia?

  What if he thought she was pretty now?

  We came upon two old people sitting on a bench. The wrinkled man had a wooden cane across his lap and he was wiping his face with a cloth. The woman had on a white bonnet and as we got up to them she waved.

  Me and Olivia waved back.

  “Kidd, no offense,” Olivia said, soon as we passed them, “but what were you doing wandering around in the middle of the night?”

  “Me?” I said, trying to think.

  “Yeah, the girls have seen you. Walking around the beach. What are you doing up so late?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

  I looked at her and thought: Making sure nobody hurts you.

  She patted me on the back. “I’m giving you a hard time. But seriously, Kidd, the campsites are a safe place. What happened with us and those college kids, that’s as bad as it gets here. And that was like a mile away. So is it cool if we drop the stalker talk?”

  I nodded.

  I didn’t wanna make her scared. I just knew I had to bring it up.

  As we got higher the trees and bushes we passed grew thinner, and so did the trail. I watched for spiderwebs since I’m so scared of spiders and tried to put Devon out of my head. Maybe Olivia was right and I was worried for nothing. Maybe he was just putting on an act to scare us. He’d done it before, back when he was still living with me at Horizons.

  Olivia’s Epiphany

  Olivia led me through a slight break in the bushes to a small grass clearing where below us the giant blue ocean sparkled in the sun and drifted in the sideways wind like grass blowing. We went to two flat rocks near the edge of the cliff and sat next to each other.

  It was the most amazing view.

  “This is where I go sometimes,” she said. “By myself.”

  “I can’t believe how far you can see.”

  “Yep.�
�� She patted the rock I was sitting on. “Usually this one’s empty.”

  I smiled.

  We both stared at the ocean.

  “Did you know the waves are supposed to be huge this weekend?” she said. “Like the biggest they’ve been in years.”

  “Mr. Red will be happy.”

  She nodded. “Do me a favor, by the way. Don’t go any closer to the cliff. It’s a straight drop.”

  “I won’t,” I said, looking at where the cliff ended. We were so high up it made my stomach feel weird.

  “Last year these two kids from La Jolla High jumped. They made a suicide pact. It was in all the papers.”

  “They died?” I said.

  “Instantly. That’s an insane drop.”

  I thought about why two people would jump off a cliff together. It seemed like the worst possible way to die, slamming into rocks, breaking their backs landing on the sand.

  I snuck a look at Olivia.

  She was staring at the water, her lips slightly apart, her perfect blond hair coming out from under her hat and blowing in the breeze. She reached in her bag and pulled out a Chap Stick and put some on her lips and then stuck it back in her bag.

  “Okay,” she said, and she looked at me. “Now, for what I came here to show you.”

  “It’s not the view?” I said.

  “Unfortunately, there’s more,” she said. Then she shook out her hands and said: “God, I wish I wasn’t so nervous.”

  She picked up a little stick off the ground and spun it around in her fingers and looked up at me. “So, there’s a reason I mostly hang by myself and why I almost passed on the campsites this summer.” She paused for a sec and said: “There’s a reason why I’ve never had a real boyfriend.”

  I stared in Olivia’s eyes, waiting for her to say more.

  “How’s that for an awkward transition?” she said, tossing the stick at me.

  Her eyes were sadder than I’d ever seen them.

  “So anyway,” she went on, looking at the ground. “I was born with this rare skin disorder called Sturge-Weber syndrome. Ever heard of it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, that’s because nobody’s ever heard of it. Except the people who have it. It’s congenital and neurological, which basically means it’s with you right from the start. My case isn’t nearly as bad as some people’s, so there’s that. But it’s manifested on my face and scalp as port-wine stains.”