I Will Save You

by Matt De La Peña

  Listening to her voice saying my words gives me the strangest feeling, like everything’s off balance or upside down. My stomach nauseous with butterflies.

  For some reason it makes me picture Devon against the old part of the fence again. The sound of it snapping. And then I’m shoving him.

  But then it’s me who’s falling.

  It’s me waving around my arms, searching for anything to grab, crashing to the sand.

  I try to push away these confused feelings by concentrating on the beach around my towel: the seaweed laying in clumps, the stairs going up the cliff, the ship now listing over whitewash waves near shore.

  Olivia’s voice:

  … have a job with Mr. Red like I always thought, I worked at a zoo since I like animals so much. And instead of living in a tent we had construction people build us a house, right there on one of the campsites.…

  She trails off and looks at me.

  Like she’s noticing what’s suddenly happening with my body. The dull pain throbbing in my chest. Pulsing down into my thighs and calves and feet and toes.

  I try to stretch, but the pain’s so intense it feels like I’m breaking into tiny pieces.

  Olivia’s face changes as she watches.

  Her eyes go wide.

  Her jaw drops.

  Her mouth forms the words: Oh, my God.

  My mind is so jumbled that in a single motion the sun rises the rest of the way into the beach sky, a hundred times faster than possible. It stops directly over me and Olivia and our spot on the sand, brightening everything like it’s now the middle of the day.

  “Kidd?” Olivia says in a worried voice.

  I look at her shocked face.

  My body aching all over. Even just opening and closing my eyelids, flexing and unflexing my fingers and toes.

  And when I turn my head to the side, to look at the stranded ship, it’s no longer a ship, it’s a framed picture of me squatting on the campsite fence. And when I look down at the seaweed laying on the beach sand, it’s no longer seaweed but the black-and-white pattern of a tile floor. And the stairs going up the cliff are no longer stairs but a design on a wall.

  Olivia’s now running to that wall. She’s pushing a red button and shouting into the intercom: “Please, somebody come in here! Hurry!”

  I try to open my mouth, to ask her what’s happening, but inside it’s dry like cotton and my teeth feel tight and my tongue’s swollen. I make a moaning sound, but it’s weak and doesn’t sound right.

  Olivia is now grabbing my hand and lowering herself to a squatting position so her crying face is right in front of mine, and she’s saying my name, over and over:

  “Kidd, are you awake?”

  “Kidd?”

  “Can you hear me, Kidd?”

  I’m staring back at her, realizing there’s something in my mouth. A tube. It’s taped to my face. And there’s an IV taped to my arm. I feel a tube between my legs, going into me, which makes it feel like my pee is everywhere.

  I reach up and tug at the tube in my mouth and can feel it all the way down my throat. When I rip the whole thing out I gag and an alarm goes off.

  Olivia is holding the tube in her hand now, saying: “Kidd, can you hear me?”

  “What’s happening?” I say in a whispery hoarse voice that doesn’t sound like me.

  “Oh, my God. You’re awake.”

  Over Olivia’s shoulder the sun is no longer a sun, it’s a bright light on a white ceiling. And instead of sitting on a beach towel in the sand, I’m laying in a bed in a room, and what was once the constant hum of the ocean is now the buzzing of monitors and machines. Things hooked up to my body.

  I’m not on the beach.

  And I’m not in a prison cell.

  I’m in a hospital ’cause I’ve been hurt.

  Olivia jumps away from the bed when a man in a white coat rushes into the room.

  Two women hurry in after him.

  Olivia’s shouting that I’m awake.

  She’s pointing at me.

  I’m so confused as I watch other people rush into the room, too. Gather around my bed. Their worried voices blending together, one lady in scrubs holding Olivia back.

  I’ve never been so scared.

  Unsure.

  Unable to think.

  The man’s face behind the doctor becomes Mr. Red’s face. And one of the women by the door becomes Maria. She’s covering her mouth and staring at me with tears in her eyes.

  My last Horizons therapist is now holding my hand and talking in her calm therapy voice.

  A doctor is lowering an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. My breaths into it are too fast ’cause I don’t understand what’s happening.

  My ears, though, are now adjusted to all the voices overlapping around me:

  “Give him room.”

  “Devon, can you hear me? Are you feeling any pain?”

  “Is he okay?”

  “We’re gonna need everybody out.”

  “Honey, do you know what day it is?”

  “Who does he think he is right now?”

  “Sir, you’re going to have to—”

  The doctor shining a beam of light in my eyes, one at a time, saying: “Push a baseline of morphine sulfate, one milligram per hour.”

  “Can you wiggle your toes? Move your hands?”

  “Honey, I need you to look at me.”

  “He can’t hear anything.”

  “Please. All of you.”

  “Do you know how long you’ve been out, Devon?”

  “His name’s not Devon. It’s Kidd.”

  A nurse pulling the cap off a needle, pushing it into a tube on my IV bag.

  “This should take away the pain.”

  “You’ve been out just over three days. It’s Wednesday.”

  My therapist is pointing from her eyes to mine so I’ll focus on her. She’s telling me to remember back to when we first started. When we worked so hard to limit Devon’s presence. When she had me go to him inside my mind, tell him I had to live my own separate life.

  “You hang in there,” she’s saying, “and I promise you, honey. We’ll get you back to that point. And beyond.”

  What is she saying?

  Who does she think I am?

  My mind is jumping all over the place as I watch the doctors and nurses now clearing everybody out of the hospital room. Including my Horizons therapist.

  Olivia breaks through the circle of people, puts her face up to mine and says: “Kidd!”

  One of the nurses is trying to pull her back by the arm, but Olivia’s pushing away and saying: “Kidd! Can you hear me?”

  I knock the oxygen mask from my face, tell her in my hoarse voice: “What’s happening to me?”

  Another doctor’s now pulling Olivia, too, but she’s holding onto my bed frame. “You jumped! You thought you were somebody named Devon. And you jumped off the cliff.”

  I watch her tears, the way she’s fighting against the doctor and nurse. “You tried to kill yourself.”

  And when I hear her say those words, I tried to kill myself, my mind suddenly races back through tiny pieces of my life:

  My mom sitting me down on my birthday, the day after my dad broke my nose. Saying how I don’t have to grow up to be like him. I can be somebody else.

  My Horizons therapist explaining how I have a death drive, just like my dad. Explaining the time I was on the roof threatening to jump and when I swallowed the bottle of pills and when I banged my head on the shower wall so many times the water in the tub turned pink.

  Waking up under the freeway bridge. In the middle of the night. Surrounded by litter and abandoned clothes and the sound of freeway cars above me. The black girl sleeping on my arm.

  In the clothing store dressing room, laughing at the stressed worker, sneaking out the back. Her yelling that I didn’t pay.

  Marching back down the beach, to the rich college guys, aiming my fake gun in the short one’s face, telling him it’s not so
funny anymore, is it?

  Swimming out into the riptide. So ashamed Mr. Red said I could be anything, I wanted to drown. Then he’d never learn how I really am. And he wouldn’t stop liking me.

  And now I’m turning back to the picture Olivia framed.

  Me on the cliff fence. Balancing. Laughing.

  Me where Devon’s supposed to be. No other person behind me. And I’m flooded with its meaning. That I am Devon. Like my Horizons therapist has always tried to say. And I always tried to forget.

  Like my face in the picture. How my mouth is smiling. But my eyes are serious. They’re secretly thinking how I can never let myself hurt Olivia the way my dad hurt me.

  My mind begins slipping away ’cause of the stuff they put in my IV. The hospital room is blurring back into beach around me. Waves crashing behind my back, the staircase reforming on the cliff. The seaweed back in clumps around my towel.

  Only Olivia stays the same.

  A strong ocean wind rises up and tries to lift me. But I fight it this time, hard as I can, like Olivia fought the nurses pulling her away. I reach down for her hand and she grabs on. The rest of my body slowly floating in the air, turning upside down.

  But my eyes never going off Olivia’s eyes.

  Wait for me, I tell her.

  I will, she says back, crying, our fingers starting to slip. I promise you, Kidd.

  We lose our grip and the wind sucks me back into the ocean sky, above the morning campsites, above the train tracks and the park and all of Cardiff.

  It’s me just hovering now, in the overcast, looking down. Olivia a shape on the sand now. And my tent and Mr. Red’s tent and Peanut waiting by the railroad tie.

  I think how I’ve ruined everything.

  Like I knew I would.

  But just before I’m swept back toward my prison cell, even though I know it’s not real, I hear Olivia’s voice.

  She’s standing by the tide now, facing the ocean, holding my philosophy of life book in front of her. She’s reading the rest of the words I put in her letter.

  As I listen, I try to think if the Devon part’s gone. And I wonder if people who ruin everything ever get to start over. And if they can learn how to lean on people, like Mr. Red said.

  And if they can get better.

  … After the train faded in the distance, though, Olivia, so did my smile. ’Cause I thought of something serious I wish I could tell you.

  Real life isn’t always your daydream. I believe that’s the point of what that author was saying in his “100% Perfect Girl” story. Even though the couple doesn’t end up together after they lose their memories, they still get to meet each other, and they still get to experience what love is. And even the ending, how they don’t fully recognize each other when they pass on the street. There’s still a glimmer of something between them, right? And they both turn around to look. What if that’s what it means to know you’ve experienced love? That look? Maybe that’s even more important than ending up together.

  I wonder if it’s the same with us, Olivia. I know you were a great girl before I met you. And I know you’ll be a great girl whenever I stop knowing you. You’ll go off to New York and that doctor will fix your port-wine stain and you’ll have more confidence and you’ll meet new friends in college and get a great job and have an amazing life. And I know I won’t be a part of it. But maybe one day we’ll pass each other in the street. And we’ll have that glimmer. And we’ll both know.

  This guy I used to be best friends with once told me a girl like you could never actually stay with a guy like me. He said eventually you’d have to go back to your regular life ’cause girls who grow up with money don’t end up with guys who grow up with nothing. And for the longest time I hated how he’d say that, and I hated trying to decide if it was true. But ever since I read that story I’ve been thinking about it in a different way.

  Even if I never see you again, Olivia. Starting tomorrow, after we watch the grunion. Even if that’s the last time I ever get to talk to you, and be next to you, and watch you laugh. Even if my ex-friend turns out to be right.

  Still.

  I believe I’m the luckiest person in the world. ’Cause I got to meet a pretty girl like you. And I got to hear you talk about all your books. And we rode the train together and took long walks and held hands and we even kissed on your secret rock at Torrey Pines. Where I am right this second. And just knowing you for these two and a half months. It’s made me think differently about myself. And it’s made me feel like I mean something in the world. And how maybe I could even have a future. Like regular people.

  Like a regular person.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m incredibly lucky to work with Steve Malk and Krista Marino. Steve, thanks for everything you’ve done for me as an agent and friend. It’s an absolute honor to be one of your people. Krista, thanks for believing in me. And my books. And making us both better. You’re the reason I’ve found my little place in this world.

  Thanks also to Beverly Horowitz and Dominique Cimina and all the great people at Random House. Thanks to Matt Van Buren and Quan Long and Brin Hill and Sandra Newman and all the amazing teachers and librarians I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Thanks especially to my folks, Al and Roni de la Peña, who have inspired me with the remarkable things they’ve accomplished in their own lives over the past few years. You guys make me proud.

  And last, thanks to Joshua Ytuarte, a kid I met at Connell Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. Before my presentation I was warned he’d be the most disruptive in the group. And he was. At first. But as soon as I started talking about how I wasn’t a great student in junior high and high school, he started paying attention. I watched him. After the session he asked to speak to me privately. He told me he was born in prison and that he’d been held back in school. Twice. But he wrote about San Antonio gangs.

  He asked if I’d like to read the first half of his book. I said sure. But we were in a hurry to get to the next school.

  He sprinted off.

  Ten minutes later he ran up to me with thirty printed pages. He was sweating, out of breath. I took the pages and shook his clammy hand. He called me sir.

  That night I read the pages. They were beautiful. And ugly. And sad. They were full of heart.

  This Mexican kid, who was a thug, who was not pretty, who was too big for his grade, too old—he made something with his hands, and his head. And it moved me. It reminded me of the incredible power of words.

  I Will Save You is MATT DE LA PEÑA’s fourth novel for young readers. He attended the University of the Pacific on a basketball scholarship and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at San Diego State University. De la Peña currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches creative writing. Look for his first three books, Ball Don’t Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, and We Were Here, all available from Delacorte Press.