I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  “Stains?” I said.

  She sat there a minute, playing with a new stick. “A bunch of really ugly birthmark-looking things.”

  Olivia wasn’t looking at me as she talked. She stared at her stick or the ocean or the top of my head, but never in my eyes. Which showed how hard it was for her to talk about.

  “When I was eight, my doctor showed me a magazine picture of some Russian guy named Mikhail Gorbachev. I remember my mom was sitting next to me with tears in her eyes. And the doctor was so awkward. He just showed me the picture and explained what the man had, and then he looked in my ears and down my throat and declared me completely healthy otherwise. But that night my mom held my hair to the side in front of the bathroom mirror, and we both stared at the pale pink mark going down my cheek, the mark I’d been staring at for as long as I could remember. She said it was a port-wine stain, same as the Russian man had. That’s what the doctor had been trying to tell me.

  “But mine was so much lighter. And smaller. You could barely see it when Mom covered it with her makeup every morning before I went to school. I figured the doctor had made a mistake.”

  Olivia turned and tossed another stick at me.

  I watched it hit my shirt and bounce onto the ground.

  She picked up a rock this time and stared at it. “As I got older, though, the stain got bigger. And darker. I started measuring it every Sunday night with a ruler. I took pictures. I kept a journal of how it was changing. By the time I got to high school it was the shape of California and it was almost eight inches long, if I counted the part on my scalp. And you could see it no matter how much makeup I caked on. That’s why I always wear this stupid hat now. So people don’t have to be disgusted by me.”

  A tear went down Olivia’s face, but she quickly wiped it away. “My dad gets frustrated with me. He says there are millions of people worse off. And I know he’s right. But is that supposed to make it easier when I look in the mirror? All I see is this huge, gross stain.”

  “You’re not gross,” I said.

  She wiped another tear and gave me a tiny sad smile. “There’s a doctor in New York who’s come up with this experimental laser treatment. Supposedly the results are really promising so far. My dad said he’s gonna take me. But he wants to wait until more people have had the procedure. Just to make sure. Next summer, he tells me, before I go off to college.”

  “They can remove it?”

  “According to all the articles I’ve read. In the meantime, though, I feel like I’m just going through the motions until my real life starts.”

  I remembered my therapist telling me that same thing when I first got to Horizons. She said I wasn’t taking an active part in my own life. And in order to make progress I had to stop going through the motions. I didn’t mention it to Olivia, though. I just let her talk.

  “Anyway,” she said. “That’s why I brought you here. For some reason I feel like I need to show you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, pulled off her ski cap and set it in her lap. I could see a small patch of pale purple on her cheek, coming out from under her long blond hair.

  She opened her eyes and looked at me, more tears going down her cheeks. She moved her hair to the side and turned her cheek toward me.

  I saw the entire purple shape now.

  It was less than the size of my palm and it went up into her hair and disappeared. I looked at it for a few seconds, then I looked at Olivia. Her bottom lip trembling. Her face wet with tears, and her eyes looking out over the cliff at the ocean.

  My chest got a painful feeling, and I knew right away what it meant.

  I loved Olivia.

  More than my body could hold.

  More than anybody would ever know.

  She reached into her purse for a small Ziploc bag, pulled a wet pad out that smelled like rubbing alcohol. She wiped the pad across her mark, taking off all the makeup that was over it. The mark got darker, and you could see a couple smaller, paler marks around it, like somebody had splashed her face with juice.

  “I realize there are worse problems to have,” she said. “But I don’t have any of those problems. I have this one. And it makes me feel so incredibly ugly.”

  “You’re not ugly, Olivia. You’re beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” she said, patting my arm. “I actually hate this part of me even more than my face. That I sit around feeling sorry for myself. But I can’t seem to snap out of it.”

  I tried to think up other things I could say to make her feel better. ’Cause it really wasn’t that big. And the rest of her face was so perfect. And who cares anyway. If anything the mark made me like her more. But nothing I thought of seemed like it would make her feel better so instead of saying anything I reached up and touched the mark with my fingers.

  More tears came down her face, and as I traced her purple mark she closed her eyes and started making little hiccupping sounds like she couldn’t catch her breath. She let go of her hair and some of it fell over my hand. She put her fingers over my fingers, and together we traced around the smooth skin.

  Neither of us saying a word.

  And she cried.

  And I started crying, too.

  ’Cause I realized I was touching what hurt Olivia most, what made her feel sad and less real than other people. And that’s exactly how I felt, ever since my mom left and I found her letter, and in this small way me and Olivia were the same.

  After a while she pulled back and looked at me, her face like a rainy street. Then she leaned in and kissed me.

  It was just a peck on the lips, but it was the first time I’d ever been kissed by a girl and it made my whole body feel light, almost too light to stay on the ground. She looked at me and smiled through her tears. And I smiled through mine. And then she closed her eyes and leaned in to kiss me again, only this time she kissed me the real way.

  Everything became so spectacularly bright around us and then sucked into itself and disappeared.

  And here we were together in this sun-drenched sky, stick figures floating on top of blue ocean water, on her dad’s foam surfboard, rising silently over thick swells with nobody around, and now it was pouring rain on us, water raining down on water, all around us, the sound like somebody telling my brain to “shhh,” thick drops washing away my mom’s letter and washing away Olivia’s mark, making us both new and real and meaningful. And now we were spinning in wide circles on our rocks, like a Disneyland ride, our faces pressed together, eyes closed, her hands in my hair and mine around her back, both of us holding our breath. Her lips softer than a feather on your cheek and her suntan-lotion smell the only thing keeping me from slipping off this Torrey Pines cliff, from falling down its face toward the awaiting rocks like a suicide pact. And now the old man with the cane had climbed on top of the bench beside us, and he was dancing like a miracle, he was pointing at me and saying: “Don’t you understand what’s happening, young man? It’s a miracle. We’ve been saved. We’ve been saved!”

  When I opened my eyes, though, it was just me and Olivia on our two rocks on the cliff.

  And she was looking at me.

  And I was looking back.

  She leaned her head against my forehead and I swallowed and breathed and listened to the ocean moving below us, thinking for the first time since what happened with my mom and dad and Horizons that I belonged in my own life, and how that’s what I’d tell anybody who asked, including a therapist.

  Olivia hugged me tighter and I thought into her ear how a mark was just a scar and how everybody has them, except brand-new babies, like she explained in my tent.

  And my chest felt so full as I was thinking about us, touching foreheads, it felt like it was bursting with meaning and thankfulness, and for the first time in my life I thought maybe I’d be okay.

  If Olivia Really Liked Me or Not

  All you can do in prison is think. And since I woke up I keep thinking about the same thing, over and
over. Our kiss on the cliff, and whether or not Olivia liked me in a boyfriend-girlfriend way or just as friends.

  If I can know the answer to that question I’ll know if I was right or wrong about what happened on the campsite cliff with Devon and why they were alone together.…

  Maybe: Her holding my hand on the walk back to the train after we kissed, and sometimes looking at me and smiling, like it wasn’t a mistake. And how by showing me her stain it felt like she was saying something about us.

  Maybe not: How Devon said eventually Olivia would realize we were too different. Like, she did so great on the SAT, and I could probably never get into college. Her hair is long and blond and shiny and mine is dark and short and stiff. Her skin is sparkly white and mine is a muddy brown. Her parents are rich and mine were poor and now they’re gone. She grew up in Cardiff and learned piano, and I was born in a trailer in Fallbrook without instruments.

  Maybe: Her saying how alone she feels, like me. And how she always hangs out by herself and has never had a real boyfriend. And how we were both going though the motions.

  • • •

  Maybe: She made that song for me and played it in the music storeroom. How on the way out the owner winked at me and said that in all his time knowing Olivia it was the first time she’d ever allowed another person in the room while she played.

  Maybe not: How she always tells me goodbye three campsites away from her in case her parents are around. Or that time her dad drove up next to us and Olivia pretended she was telling me something that needed to be fixed in the girls’ bathroom.

  Maybe not: How smart Olivia is, and how she has all these theories about the books and stories she reads. And all I can think to say is that I like it.

  Maybe not: Her being so sad about her cheek stain and feeling bad about herself and feeling ugly, but that doctor will be able to fix her with his laser. And she’ll be normal. And she’ll start her real life. But my stain will never get fixed ’cause it’s on the inside. And lasers can’t reach there.

  Mr. Red came by my tent super early in the morning, and whispered through the wall: “Hey, Kidd, you awake? It’s me.”

  I got up and unzipped my tent door and pretended to yawn like I’d just opened my eyes. But really I’d been up for hours trying to write in my philosophy of life book about me and Olivia and what happened at Torrey Pines. Right before Mr. Red showed up, though, I’d had an epiphany of my own.

  It didn’t seem like I’d ever be able to write about Olivia. But maybe that was okay. Maybe she meant more than what I could put in my book.

  It was still dark outside and Mr. Red had a brown paper bag in his hand. “Sorry to bug you so early. But you remember at the start of summer when you asked me to explain how I felt about surfing?”

  I nodded.

  “And you remember how I said it was too hard to put into words?”

  “Yeah.”

  Peanut lifted his head and looked at Mr. Red and then put his head back down and closed his eyes.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  We went to Mr. Red’s favorite place to check out waves and he pulled out two stashed beach chairs and set them up right in front of the old part of the fence and we both looked over the cliff at the ocean.

  The waves were huge.

  Mr. Red reached in the bag and pulled out two bagels and two cups of coffee. He handed me one of each. I smelled the coffee and took a sip.

  He pointed at the water. “Nothing better than this, bud. Big waves in warm water.”

  I watched one rise up like a wall then curl over itself as it broke in an uneven line toward shore, sending a thick white spray into the air.

  “This is my favorite time, too,” he said. “Real early in the morning, before anybody’s awake. Before the wind picks up. It’s called morning glass.”

  I nodded and bit my bagel, let Mr. Red go on.

  “When you’re out this early,” he said, “you can be picky. I sit way outside, wait for the biggest wave of the set.”

  He sipped his coffee and adjusted his sombrero, a concentrated look on his face. “First I watch awhile from up here. Figure out where the best break is. The sweet spot. When I get down to the water I use something onshore as a marker. The steps or the old part of the fence.”

  We both watched another huge wave barrel toward the shore and pound into the water like the sound of thunder.

  “It’s mornings like this, Kidd. When I have the ocean to myself. When I get a couple hours of big surf, the sun coming up over my shoulders. Riding that last one in to shore and seeing how much the beach has filled up.”

  Mr. Red tossed his empty coffee cup into the bag and wadded it up. “Almost makes it all worth it.”

  “You going now?” I said.

  He nodded.

  I drank more of my coffee and watched the surf.

  He stood up. “By the way, Kidd, I’d like to take you to dinner tonight.”

  “You would?”

  “See what Olivia’s up to. I’ll treat both you guys. And we’ll have one other person with us. A special guest.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “It’s a surprise.” He turned and looked at the ocean, said over his shoulder: “It’s kind of an important day today.”

  “ ’Cause the waves are big?”

  He turned back to me, shaking his head. “It’s my son’s birthday.” He lifted off his sombrero, ran a hand through his hair, then put it back on. “Would’ve turned eighteen.”

  I just sat there nodding and looking at him.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Anyway,” he said. “Ask Olivia. We’re going to my favorite spot, Las Olas.”

  He ducked through the brush and headed in the direction of his work shed, where he kept all his surfboards.

  Me, Olivia and Jasmine sat on the same towel on the beach, watching Mr. Red paddle for one of the biggest swells of the morning. He quickly popped to his feet, dropped to the bottom of the wave and then cut back, riding up the face, where he sprayed water in the air.

  “Whoa,” Jasmine said.

  “Look how small he seems,” Olivia said. “Compared to the wave.”

  Mr. Red carved up the wave’s face some more then dropped all the way down into the barrel for a few seconds, letting the wave break over his head. When he shot back to the top this time he launched into the air, grabbing the side of his board, and landed on his feet on the other side as the wave crashed toward shore.

  Everybody on the beach cheered as he lowered to his stomach and started paddling back out.

  “He’s still one of the best in Cardiff,” Jasmine said.

  “And he’s almost forty,” Olivia said.

  “Exactly.”

  I peeked at Jasmine and Olivia, watched them watch the few Cardiff surfers who were brave enough to take on the big waves. It was the first time I’d ever hung out with Olivia and one of her friends. They’d come by my tent just after Mr. Red left and asked if I wanted to go watch.

  Olivia winked at me after Jasmine said hi.

  Now here we were. The three of us.

  “My mom said Red was ranked in the top ten in high school,” Jasmine said.

  “Then he just quit, right?” Olivia said.

  “After he turned pro.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “My mom thinks it had something to do with his wife,” Jasmine said. “And how she put so much pressure on him. You know he got a divorce, right?”

  “Then he shows up here, doing maintenance,” Olivia said. “It’s kind of strange.”

  As they went on about Mr. Red’s past I suddenly got a bad feeling and looked down the beach.

  Devon was sitting on the sand, too.

  By himself.

  Staring at us.

  He smiled and flipped me off and then turned back to the ocean.

  I looked at the girls, to see if they noticed. But they were still talking about Mr. Red’s old life.

  Devon stood up and brushed off the back
of his jeans. He looked at me again and made a slashing motion across his throat and pointed at Olivia.

  My stomach dropped.

  “You’re with him every day,” I heard Jasmine say. “Did he ever say why he stopped doing contests?”

  I watched Devon walk down the beach the other way, disappearing behind a crowd of people.

  “Kidd?” Olivia said. “Jasmine asked you a question. What’s down there?”

  “Sorry,” I said turning to Jasmine and Olivia. “I thought I saw someone.”

  “Who?”

  I looked at Olivia for a second but didn’t say anything.

  “No big deal,” Jasmine said. “I just asked if Red ever talks about why he stopped surfing contests.”

  “He’s never mentioned it,” I told her. “But I know he still loves surfing. He was explaining it to me just this morning.”

  “Well, he’s still the best around here,” Jasmine said.

  Me and Olivia nodded.

  We all looked toward the water again, just as Mr. Red was paddling for another wave. He popped up quick and ripped down the face of it. I wanted to look down the beach again, for Devon, but I could feel Olivia’s eyes watching me.

  So I kept my focus on Mr. Red.

  Seeing Maria Again

  Soon as they sat us at one of the tables in back of Mr. Red’s favorite restaurant, Las Olas, the waitress came over and said the fish of the day and asked for our drink orders. Me, Olivia and Mr. Red got Cokes, but I didn’t even look up when I said it. I just kept staring at Mr. Red’s special guest.

  Maria.

  I couldn’t believe she was actually sitting across from me.

  Her hair was much longer. And she had on a dress, which I’d never seen her wear before. But whenever she turned to me and smiled, it made me remember how much I loved her.