I Will Save You (10 page)

“Why aren’t
we
going?” Claudia said, pulling her hands out of Mr. Red’s grip.

“Because I’m hooking you up with the surf ’n’ turf.”

“It’s not because you’re embarrassed of me?”

“Claud, look at you. Look at this dress. You’re the most beautiful woman in North County.”

“Ah, that’s sweet, Red.” She turned to me. “Your boss can actually be sweet sometimes.”

Mr. Red took Claudia’s hand and said: “Check out the bonfire, Kidd. Could be nice.”

I told him I would.

They waved and started walking toward Mr. Red’s old Bronco. Claudia leaned her head on his shoulder. He opened her door and let her in and closed it behind her and then turned to me and said: “Hey, Kidd.”

“Yeah?”

“Talk to her, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Just tell her hello. Introduce yourself.”

“Okay.”

He walked around to his side and opened his door, but before he got in he looked over the faded black hood and said: “And throw on some of those new duds.”

“I will.”

“I bet you’ll look super
GQ
.” He stood there a sec, looking at me, then he laughed a little and tapped his hood and said: “Check out the two of us, big guy. Getting dressed up to impress women.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“They’re really something, aren’t they?”

“Who?” I said.

“Women.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. And I felt bad about Maria again.

He nodded his head awhile and then got in his Bronco and closed the door and drove off.

After Mr. Red and Claudia left I went back into my tent and changed into new clothes like Mr. Red told me, and looked at my neck in my mirror. There was a dark, circular rash-looking thing, and I didn’t know where it came from or how long it had been there. It didn’t hurt when I pressed it. I stared at the rash for a while, confused, wondering what made me have one. Maybe a certain bush rubbed against me. Maybe it happened when I was sleepwalking.

Then I just sat on my sleeping bag for the next two hours, watching the sun disappear outside my tent door and trying to talk myself into going to the beach.

Finally I made myself a deal. If I got up and went down the stairs I could just look at it for a while, and see Olivia, and then come right back up to my tent and go to bed and hopefully not sleepwalk into another poisonous bush.

The Bonfire

A big crackling flame coming out of a homemade pit and two older guys sitting on stools playing acoustic guitars and singing and everybody else in little groups eating off paper plates and drinking from red cups and talking and laughing, their chairs all facing toward the bonfire or each other or the ocean.

I sat leaning against the cliff, by the stairs, watching them, sometimes looking down at my clothes, my brand-new jeans and new collared shirt. It didn’t even feel like me anymore. I
watched the bonfire again, thinking how it’d be if you could actually turn into the person your clothes made you seem like. Then you could go over to whatever party was happening like you totally belonged and have as much fun as everyone else.

I remembered how when I was little my mom would sometimes do a barbecue in the alley behind our apartment complex and some of the neighbors would come down with plates of their own marinated meat and coolers of beer and lawn chairs. My mom would cook all their food on the grill, wearing her favorite checkered apron, and everybody’d be talking and laughing with each other, just like this, and I’d be right with them.

I was staring at the bonfire, thinking of those alley barbecues, and my mom, and what it felt like to be inside a party, when I noticed two girls walking toward me.

I looked over my shoulder.

There was nobody.

I watched them and whispered in my head: “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” Over and over. ’Cause I knew it was the two girls that were on the stairs taking pictures with Olivia, but I didn’t know what they were gonna say. And when it came to girls I wasn’t like Devon. It always felt awkward.

One of them was wearing a flowing brown dress and as she walked she sipped from her plastic cup. The other one was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and she had a red cup in each hand and she was saying something to the dress girl.

Then they were in front of me.

“See, told you it was him,” the sweatshirt girl said.

“You were right.”

I stood up and leaned against the cliff and crossed my
arms, but it felt awkward like that so I uncrossed them and pushed off the cliff and stood regular.

“Hi, again,” the sweatshirt girl said.

“Where’s our money?” the dress one said.

“What?” I said, and then I smiled ’cause I figured out she was just saying a joke about Devon.

“We can still post those pictures, you know.”

They both laughed and the sweatshirt girl held out a red cup and said: “Here, we brought you a present.”

I took the cup and told them thanks and looked in it.

“You work with Red, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The girl in the sweatshirt flipped her long blond hair from one shoulder to the other and said: “We’ve seen you. I’m Jasmine, by the way, and this is Blue.”

“Hi,” I told them.

“And it sounds a little strange calling Jasmine ‘ma’am,’ don’t you think? Considering she’s not some old lady.”

I nodded and leaned against the cliff again and then pushed off.

“I bet I’m actually younger than he is,” Jasmine said. She looked at me. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Okay. Same age.” She turned to Blue. “He looks older than seventeen.”

“Right?”

“We thought you were, like, nineteen or twenty or whatever.”

Blue took a sip from her cup and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said: “Anyways.”

I looked in my cup again.

“It’s fresh lemonade,” Jasmine said. “Blue’s mom made it.”

They both looked at each other and giggled a little and Jasmine said: “Plus a little bit of vodka Blue just mixed in.”

“You do drink, don’t you?” Blue said.

“I guess so.” I smelled in my cup.

“You guess so? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, yes, ma’am,” I said. “I mean, I do drink. Yes.”

I’d never drank before.

Jasmine turned to Blue and said: “He’s, like, uberpolite.”

“Right?”

“Anyways,” Jasmine said. “Take a sip and tell us if it’s the perfect blend or not.”

I did and it tasted like regular lemonade except after I swallowed, it made my whole chest and stomach feel warm.

I took another sip.

“Well?”

“It tastes good.”

“That’s because we mix the perfect drink,” Blue said. “We’ve been making them for everybody.”

“So, are you gonna tell us your name or what?” Jasmine said.

“Should he?” Blue said. “I kind of like calling him OCM.” She looked at me again. “That’s what we call you, by the way. OCM. Operation Campsite Maintenance. You’re like the mystery boy of the summer.”

“Don’t you want to know his name, though?” Jasmine said.

Blue looked at her and rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, tell us your name.”

“Kidd,” I said.

“Kid?” Blue said. “Like, ‘Hey, check out that kid building a sand castle’?”

“Except my name has two
D
s at the end. And the
K
’s capitalized since it’s my name.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing and then Jasmine said: “Where’d you get a name like that?”

I shrugged. “My mom.”

Blue smiled at Jasmine and said: “Who am I to judge? My mom named me Blue.”

“That’s true.”

I didn’t tell the girls how my dad gave me a regular name when I was born, but I changed it forever, two days after Mom died. I didn’t say how “Kidd” was the first thing that came into my head when Devon (who was standing in my room at Horizons, holding my mom’s letter) asked what my name was.

Ever since then I told everyone to call me Kidd and they all did.

Except Devon.

Blue looked over her shoulder at the bonfire party, and then she looked back at me and said: “So, why are you sitting way over here? Don’t you think it’s, like, a little antisocial?”

I shrugged and said I was just sitting here. I didn’t tell them I was waiting to see if Olivia came.

“Come with us,” Jasmine said. “There’s still food.”

“And later some of us are going on a spooky midnight walk. It’s a ritual, after every time we have a bonfire.”

“No parents allowed.”

“And no flashlights.”

“We just follow the North Star, like in biblical times.”

“Right?”

They both giggled again and Jasmine said: “Come on.”

I followed them over to the bonfire, secretly looking all around for Olivia, but she wasn’t there.

The girls introduced me to everybody. To friends I was “Kidd.” To parents I was “the Guy Who Works for Red.” They were all super nice and one lady even handed me a plate of barbecue chicken and a corn on the cob and told me I was too skinny and needed to eat. When I took it and told her thank you, ma’am, the girls giggled and Blue said: “Congratulations, you actually picked an appropriate context for the word ‘ma’am.’ ” And they both giggled some more, and as they explained it all to the woman who’d just given me the food I looked everywhere around the bonfire but Olivia still wasn’t there.

Jasmine and Blue sat me next to a group of surfer-looking guys and they said hey and I said hey back, and then the girls went to help clean up. I ate my food and drank my special lemonade and listened to the guys talk about surfing and surfboards and which campsite girls were the hottest this summer. I looked at whoever was talking and laughed whenever they laughed, but inside I was thinking about myself and how I was just sitting here with all of them, in the middle of a party, and I didn’t even feel that nervous. It was amazing. I sipped more lemonade and felt the warmth and thought how coming to the campsites this summer was the best thing I could’ve ever done, even if Devon
did
find out where I was. At Horizons I never would’ve had the chance to meet people my own age.

A guy named Jackson, who had long blond hair with green at the bottom, asked me if I was the one who worked for Red
and I said I was. Everybody said how great Mr. Red was, and they said he used to be an amazing surfer, too, maybe the best to ever come out of North County. Two of them, Rob and Jeff, even had posters of him on their walls, from when he was pro, and they talked about which ones and what magazine they came from. Then this guy Frankie said it was too bad about what happened with his son, it’s probably what made him quit, and everybody told him to shut up about that and said how rude it was to bring up somebody else’s personal life.

“What’s that even about, Frank?” Jackson said. “You gossip worse than a skirt.”

“You’ve been vibing people all night,” Jeff said.

“Dude, I was just saying.”

“Mellow out,” Rob said.

Jackson tossed a broken shell at Frankie and said: “Yeah, guy, or beat it.”

It was quiet for a while after that and then they started talking about their own surfing again, and girls, and “paddling out to the kelp beds,” which they told me they did for the first time last summer.

I listened and drank my lemonade and felt the warmth and thought how Mr. Red never said anything about having a son.

I wondered why not.

I wondered what was so sad you shouldn’t talk about it. Then I thought of what happened with my mom.

Our Midnight Walk

After the parents packed up what was left of the food and folded all the chairs and tables and marched back up the stairs
to their campsites, Jasmine told everybody we would leave as soon as Blue got back. A few minutes later she did.

And Olivia was with her.

She had on her ski cap and her favorite sweatshirt and jeans, and when she walked past me she smiled.

My stomach instantly got butterflies and I took my last drink of lemonade and threw away the cup. I felt how warm it was going down and then concentrated on the feeling in my head, which was so light and airy, and I remembered how Mr. Red said it made him see colors and how Bill the Deacon said those colors were a mirage.

I looked for rainbow colors all over the beach but it was still just gray and dark-looking. Maybe the colors Mr. Red meant were inside the person, I thought, like your imagination.

“Ready?” Jasmine said to Blue.

“Ready.”

Jasmine turned to everybody else and said: “All right, people. We’re about to commence our fifth annual post-bonfire, spooky midnight walk. We’d like to salute the veterans, those of you who’ve walked the previous four, and we’d also like to welcome the virgins. We’re so happy you could join us. Blue, will you do the honors?”

Blue laughed and pulled out a kid-sized cap gun and pointed it in the air and pulled the trigger. The gun made a dull popping sound and then a tiny puff of smoke lifted in the air and disappeared and everybody cracked up and said stuff about the toy gun and what Jasmine just said about virgins, and then we were walking.

When I looked around a few minutes later I realized I was right in the middle of everyone. And maybe it was only a
lemonade funny mirror, but I felt like the middle was where I belonged. All of us moving north along the shore, the half moon glowing in the sky and glowing a second time blurry on top of the ocean. Sometimes the dark, foamy water would run up close to our feet and all of us would step away to avoid it, at the exact same time, like a pack of birds flying together. And the air was a mix of salt and seaweed and the sound of everyone talking around me.

I looked on both sides and thought about me, just some problem kid from Horizons, being with regular people. A smile went on my face that I couldn’t wipe away.

A plane passed overhead, way up in the sky, and I pictured how we’d seem to some passenger in first class if he was staring down at us with binoculars. The surfer guys I was just sitting with and Blue and Jasmine and two other girls named Mary and Dorna. And me right in the middle, two people behind the prettiest girl you could ever meet. Olivia.