I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  “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 Ds 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 le
monade 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.

  I waved at the plane and the two guys next to me laughed a little and I felt the chills that come whenever you make a joke people think is funny.

  We walked for a long time and at some point Olivia drifted back from her friends and walked only a couple steps ahead.

  She turned around and smiled at me and kept walking.

  A few minutes later she looked at me a second time and said: “Hey.”

  I told her hey back without even thinking about it. Then my heart started going in my chest.

  She glanced at the wet sand under her feet as she walked and looked at me and said: “You ever read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly?”

  “The what?” I said.

  “Not the movie, either. The book.”

  Even though I’d never even heard of what she was saying, I told her: “I think so.”

  “Trust me, you’d know.”

  She touched her ski-cap flap where it covered her cheek and then reached both her hands in her pockets. “It was written by some guy who was paralyzed except his left eye. He had a stroke. But then they came up with some code where he blinked for whatever letter he wanted to say, and this woman wrote everything down, one word at a time, and eventually he’d written an entire book like that and it’s tragic and beautiful.”

  I looked at her.

  She’d said everything so fast I lost track so I just nodded and kept walking.

  Olivia took her hands out of her pockets again and said: “Do you believe the worst things that happen to people can end up being the best?”

  I looked at her and squinted like I was really contemplating about that and said: “I guess I never thought about it.”

  “Some people believe that.”

  “They do?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what world they’re living in.” She smiled and touched her flap again. Neither of us said anything else for a while, we just walked with everybody, but she was still next to me.

  We passed another bonfire with a bunch of college-aged guys sitting around the flame and talking and drinking. A couple of them raised their beer bottles and some people from our group waved. Then one of the college kids yelled something I couldn’t hear and his friends all laughed, and as soon as we were past them Blue said: “Assholes.”

  Jasmine shook her head and said: “Why are they always hanging around Moonlight?”

  “And why are they always so trashed?” Blue said.

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “Right?”

  As everybody said more stuff about the drunk college guys, Olivia tapped my arm and pointed at the lifeguard tower ahead of us and said: “That’s my favorite thing about beaches.”

  “Lifeguard towers?”

  “Abandoned ones. Ever since I was little.”

  The windows were all boarded up and covered with graffiti and part of the side wall was caved in. I was just about to tell her how much I liked them, too, when she said: “Anyway, the guy died right after his book came out. I think like five days or something. So it wasn’t exactly the happy ending everybody says it was.”

  “The blinking writer?” I said.

  She nodded. “Sad, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A lot of people consider that some big triumph of the human spirit. It’s more like a tragedy if you ask me.”

  Olivia kept walking and I thought she was done talking, but then she tapped me on the arm and said: “Hey.”

  I looked at her.

  “Why were you watching me that day in the park?”

  “I wasn’t,” I said, even though I was.

  “I’m not mad.” She smiled a little, with our eyes looking at each other. It made my stomach ache. “Seriously,” she said. “I was really depressed that day, and reading that book only made it worse. But you should’ve seen your face when I scared you. I don’t know why, but it totally cheered me up.”

  I looked at the sand thinking how I cheered up Olivia.

  “By the way,” she said, pointing at my neck. “Is that a hickey?”

  “No,” I shot back. “It’s a rash from a bush.”

  I covered it with my hand, wishing it would just disappear.

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys.”

  “What guys?”

  “The ones who think it’s hilarious to hook up with a new girl every weekend.”

  “I’m not like that,” I said.

  She patted my arm and then we both went quiet and kept walking. I wondered if my stupid neck mark made Olivia think less of me, even though it wasn’t from kissing.

  After a couple minutes she smiled at me and then sped up a little and walked with Blue and Jasmine again, and that was the last we talked all night.

  But her smile.

  It made everything feel okay.

  After walking for over an hour Blue made us turn around and we started going back to the campsites, and people broke off from the group. Blue went with the long-blond-haired guy with green tips, Jackson, and they walked way ahead.

  Mary went with Frankie.

  Dorna went with the spiky-haired guy, Jeff.

  Olivia went with Jasmine and Rob.

  After a while I realized I was no longer walking in the middle of everyone, I was by myself. But I didn’t care. For the first time in forever I felt like I was normal, like my mom always said I could be. Not a Horizons resident. Or a troubled teen. Or an at-risk case.

  I was just Kidd Ellison.

  A guy who went on a spooky midnight walk.

  Someone who could talk to the girl he likes.

  … After you told the doctor hi back he went to Mom’s bed and read all her charts and asked her some questions and wrote things down on his clipboard, and then he smiled at you again and put his hand on top of your head and left.

  Mom looked at you, said: “Come here.”

  You went to her and she
touched your hair just like the doctor and smiled and said: “I know what has just happened seems so horrible right now, but it’s not all bad. Believe it or not, I’m actually thankful. It lead to me having a moment of clarity. When I woke up in this room, in these bandages, with this ridiculous fear, I realized what I have to do.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded and rubbed your hair again with her good hand. “I did, honey.” She tried to seem really happy, even though there was a tear going down her right cheek, and she had to reach up with the back of her hand to wipe it away.

  “We’re going to be okay,” she said, nodding her head up and down and biting her bottom lip. “You and me. We’re a team.” You told her okay and she laughed and rubbed your head some more and then let her arm go back next to her on the bed, and she looked up at the ceiling.

  It went dead quiet and you looked all around the room. The glass jars of medicine and the health posters and the bars and levers of her bed and the muted TV up by the ceiling and magazines spread out on the table and the black-and-white tile. You looked back at Mom and her eyes were closing and you could tell by her breathing she was falling asleep.

  But you should’ve thought about that hospital night when Olivia asked her question about bad things turning good. “Yes,” you should’ve told her. “ ’Cause when bad things happen to people they can have a moment of clarity where they realize what they have to do, like my mom did.”

  And if you think about it, you had a moment of clarity, too. After Mom was gone. At first when they came to get you at school and told you what happened you thought you died right with her. But then Maria said you could think of it a different way, like how nobody could hurt your mom ever again and how there was still a piece of her inside you, everywhere you went, and about her going to a better place. And after thinking about it for a while you decided maybe Maria was right about that.

  If Olivia ever asks that question again, you have to tell her, yes, sometimes a good thing can come out of a bad thing and how you should know.

  What I Miss About Being Free

  How I’d wake up on the beach sometimes, in the middle of the night, after sleepwalking. It always took me a while to think of who I was. And where I was. Not in Horizons or Fallbrook or my mom’s apartment. But on the sand at the beach. I worked for Mr. Red. Then I’d smile, thinking how I could go anywhere or do anything and I was actually happy.