I Will Save You (5 page)

You can’t see shapes no matter how many seconds you wait.

You can only hear dream voices.

What I Know About Devon

How he’s lived in group homes and foster homes ever since I’ve known him and since he can remember. Twice he even got sent to juvenile hall, though he didn’t have to stay long.

He swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills when he was fifteen. In his group-home bathroom. Passed out in the tub. His counselor found him and called 911 and the ambulance rushed him to the hospital where they charcoaled his stomach and saved his life. And when I visited he wouldn’t look up or say what happened or even why he did it.

This one time in an arcade in Fallbrook when a big Samoan guy said it was his game, not ours, and shoved me out of the way and put in his quarter. Devon smacking him on the top of his head and everybody stepping back and watching the big Samoan sock Devon in the side of the face and throw him into the wall. Devon getting back up and the Samoan socking him in the mouth, lines of blood going down Devon’s shirt and him out cold on the floor. But Devon got up and laughed and charged the Samoan again, and the Samoan smacked him in the ear. Everybody telling Devon to just stay down, the Samoan was gonna kill him. Even the Samoan said to stay down. But Devon kept getting up, over and over, smiling through bloody, broken teeth, charging this guy he knew he could never beat. He didn’t stop until the cops came running into the arcade with their clubs raised.

•  •  •

How Devon’s always looking at girls or talking about girls or saying what he just did with some tattooed girl he met behind the liquor store down the street from Horizons.

Days when he seemed so happy and had a hundred ideas for what we should do. Always saying how he was gonna be a fireman when he got older. Or a private detective. Or an NFL announcer. Or a movie director. How fast he’d talk those days, hardly taking a breath, and all he wanted to do was wrestle or shadowbox or play basketball at the park with whoever was there.

Other days when he wouldn’t lift his head to look at me or answer my questions or even say what was wrong.

How much he hates rich people. ’Cause according to him they hoard their money and possessions and use them to feel better than people like us. He thinks worse about people with money than even my dad.

How so many times I wished Devon wasn’t my friend ’cause of all the bad stuff I end up doing when he’s around. And how my therapy person made me promise to keep him out of my life. But then other times when I’d think how good it is to be with another person so you don’t have to feel so lonely.

I’ll never forget seeing
Olivia the first time. It was a Saturday, and even though I knew how weekends were different from weekdays, that day I didn’t even think about it and the morning started out like any other morning, with me on Mr. Red’s railroad tie an hour early, in front of his tent, waiting for him to come out so we could start working. Only this time the campsite dog, Peanut, was waiting there with me, sitting in front of my feet and breathing with his mouth open.

I touched his old head and told him: “Hey, boy.”

He licked my hand and went back to breathing with his mouth open and staring at me.

When Mr. Red unzipped his tent flap and stepped out to stretch he didn’t say “There he is!” like he usually did. He got a frown on his face and just stood there staring between me and Peanut.

“What’s going on, Kidd?”

I looked at him confused. “I’m here to work.”

“You realize today’s Saturday, right?”

“Yeah.”

He glanced toward the ocean and then looked back at me and said: “You’ve never had a job before, have you?”

I shrugged, told him not one I got paid for.

He looked at Peanut, who was now laying next to me. “And what’s
he
doing here?”

I shrugged.

He shook his head. “Not the best-looking dog, eh?”

I looked down at Peanut. He was brown with short shaggy hair and some patches missing and even with his mouth
closed you could still see some of his teeth ’cause they were so crooked and one ear sort of stood up and the other flopped down. His eyes were cloudy, too, like one of those snow globes after you shake it up.

Mr. Red held open his tent flap and a different woman came out, one I’d never seen before. She had short black hair and about twenty earrings in each ear and a big tattoo of the sun and moon together on the inside of her forearm.

“Michele,” Mr. Red said, pointing at me, “I want you to meet a colleague of mine. Mr. Kidd Ellison from Fallbrook, California. Pizza of choice: Hawaiian. Ice cream: Neapolitan. Color: magenta.”

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said back. “But my favorite color’s not—”

“Trust me,” Michele said, pointing her thumb in Mr. Red’s direction, “I never believe a word that comes out of this one.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Listen, Kidd,” Mr. Red said, “when your boss says you have weekends off, that means on Saturday and Sunday—the
weekend
—you don’t have to show up for work.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

He pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his trunks and checked a text, then he flipped it closed and looked up at me again and said: “Now go on, Kidd. Get out of here. Enjoy your Saturday.”

I nodded and smiled, turned and started walking away. But I only got like three steps before I spun around and asked Mr. Red where I should go.

He looked at Michele and then looked back at me. “Come on, Kidd, use a little imagination. You got one of the best
beaches in the state about twenty-five feet away. Or there’s a park across the highway.”

“What about a museum, Red?” Michele said. “There’s that quaint little gallery on Birmingham.”

Mr. Red rolled his eyes. “And by quaint she means miniature and creepy.”

Michele stared at Mr. Red for a while, and then she punched him in the shoulder. “That is
so
rude.”

He laughed and said: “Come on, Michele. The big guy doesn’t wanna go to a museum.”

She put her hands on her hips, said: “How do
you
know?”

“He’d be bored to tears.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“You don’t understand the male mind, Michele. Guys wanna be outside. We wanna surf or throw the football around. Scope out chicks in bikinis. Men seek fresh air, Michele. Adventure.”

“First of all, Red, museums aren’t boring. They’re just beyond your primitive intellect—”

“
That
weak little museum?”

“And maybe Kidd appreciates art. Not all guys spend every waking minute either surfing or thinking about surfing or ogling every set of boobs that passes through their line of vision.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Mr. Red shrugged and turned back to me. “Look, Kidd, go get some ice cream across the street or rent a kayak or buy yourself some jeans at one of the surf shops along 101. That pair you wear every day could probably use a breather, don’t you think?”

I looked down at my jeans.

Mr. Red loved to mess with me, but I didn’t care. I actually thought it was funny. It’s so weird how when you like somebody they can make fun of you all day and you’ll just sit there and crack up.

“You got money in your pocket now, buddy. Live a little.”

“I know,” I said, and I started backing away again, but as soon as I turned around to leave Mr. Red called out my name.

“Tell you what, tomorrow morning—which, by the way, Kidd, is yet another day off. You don’t work weekends, okay?
No trabajas
.”

“Yes, sir.”

He made a face.

“I mean, Mr. Red.”

“Tomorrow we’ll rent you a foam board and I’ll take you surfing.”

Michele cleared her throat.

Mr. Red looked at her, then looked back at me. “Guess I already have plans for tomorrow. Maybe next Sunday? I’ll have you doing off-the-lips by lunchtime.”

“Okay,” I said, and after I looked at Peanut I went away from them for real.

Me Trying to Figure Out What to Do

After I left Mr. Red and Michele and Peanut I wandered all over Cardiff by the Sea looking at stuff and thinking how different it was from Fallbrook, where some people rode horses along the side of the road or drove huge trucks with stuff airbrushed on the side, like two girls sitting back-to-back in bikinis.

In Cardiff people wore flip-flops and shorts that weren’t cutoff jeans. And everywhere you looked they were riding beach cruisers with surf racks or jogging or walking their dogs or sitting barefoot in beach chairs on the sand, sipping coffee and looking at the paper.

And you could tell they had money.

I went down on the beach and picked through these big clumps of fly-infested seaweed collecting broken seashells and tiny polished rocks and pieces of ocean-worn glass and then I left them all in a pile by an abandoned sand castle wondering if some little kid like I used to be would find them and think it was a treasure.

I went past these two surfer girls putting on wet suits and they said hi to me and I said hi back, trying to be like I wasn’t shy. But really my entire back felt hot from their eyes and their most likely judging of me. I knew they could tell I was from Fallbrook and that I’d just come from Horizons, where counselors don’t let you do anything by yourself, which makes you seem weird to regular kids.

When I turned around, though, the girls weren’t even looking my way.

I walked back up to the campsites and past Campsite Coffee and the main restroom and out the gate and across the two-lane Highway 101. On the other side was this little valley that had train tracks in the middle. I slid down the cliff on my hands and shoes and walked along one of the metal ties for a while. Then I climbed up the other side and wandered into the park Mr. Red was talking about.

I went past the swings, picturing how my mom used to
push me when I was little. I walked the wrong way up the slide and sat there watching a mother squatting next to her little toddler, helping it try to take steps, its tiny hand wrapped around her middle finger and both of them smiling.

Two old guys with baseball caps were throwing horseshoes back and forth on my other side. They’d yell out the score after every shot and sometimes go to their cooler and pull out a water bottle and drink from it and then put it back.

Eventually I ended up sitting in this grassy area near some bushes, watching guys play basketball. I kept thinking of my best friend back in Fallbrook, Devon, and how different we were. Like, he wouldn’t just sit here watching, like me. He’d walk down to the court and ask if he could play, too. And after a few games they’d all be laughing with each other and slapping fives.

My therapist always told me it was unhealthy for me to have a friendship with Devon. She said he was a bad influence, which is true. One of the things she made me do for my program at Horizons was have a talk with Devon to tell him we couldn’t hang out anymore.

I was just sitting there, watching the guys play, picturing me and Devon’s talk and wondering if everybody felt lonely on their day off, when something happened.

Without really thinking anything, I turned and looked at the swing set.

And I saw a girl.

She was just sitting on a swing, reading a book, barely swaying, but my chest got this weird feeling, like when you stare into the eyes of a little baby and the baby looks back up
at you and you can feel how pure and innocent it is, so much it makes your stomach feel empty—probably ’cause you realize you used to be pure like that, too, and now you’re not.

But I’d never had that feeling from a girl.

Love at First Sight

She was barely rocking, and she was holding on to only one of the chains with a sweatshirt-covered hand and staring down at her book. I moved behind the bush some more so she wouldn’t catch me watching. She had on a ski cap even though it was hot, and the blond ponytail that came out the bottom was long and straight and beautiful. She had a short flowing green dress on over jeans with a faded surfer sweatshirt and tons of rubber bracelets on her one wrist that was showing and she was concentrating on what she was reading.

It was so weird what happened to me. I had that chest thing like I just talked about and my skin felt warm and even though I hadn’t eaten all day it felt like I’d never be hungry again.

She looked up at me.

And she waved.

My breath instantly stopped and I ducked farther behind the bush and stayed hidden for the longest time, perfectly still, feeling my heartbeat in my throat and staring at this one fallen leaf. It was brown at the very tip and a tiny ant was walking around it in circles, sometimes stopping and feeling with its antennae, then walking in circles again.

I looked slowly past the bush, and her eyes were back on her book, and I let myself breathe.

•  •  •

For the next half hour I watched her like that, until she got off the swing and put her book in her peace-sign backpack and walked out of the playground.

I followed her, far enough behind that she wouldn’t know I was there, but close enough so I could always see her long blond hair swinging with her steps.

I trailed her out of the park, ducking behind cars every few seconds, past storefronts like the ice cream shop Mr. Red talked about and all the clothes stores and then to this street that went across the 101 back toward the campsites. She went in the entrance, which surprised me, and after waiting a little I went in, too.

When I got through the gate there was no sign of her. I’d waited too long and messed it all up. ’Cause what if I never saw her again?