I Will Save You (11 page)

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.

What the train sounds like when you see it coming from far away. The whistle sounding. The vibration of the tracks under your feet. The power it had going past, like a million car engines combined, the wind pressing your face and the roar and me thinking who was in there and if they were going where their family was.

Olivia telling me about the books she’s read. Me listening and nodding but really just watching her. Getting excited ’cause she was.

Peanut waiting for me to wake up every morning, and waiting for me to get home from work, so I could put food in his bowl, and water, and pet him while I said whatever I was thinking. Peanut, who looked at me with his crooked face and messed-up teeth, and how once I’d known him long enough everything started seeming straight.

Mr. Red teaching me everything he knows about plumbing and landscaping and life. Girls. How he cared if I had friends and if I was okay. Mr. Red, who was always laughing and smiling and talking, but then sometimes he’d stare at the ground for a full minute, not moving, and I could tell in his eyes how sad he was and only now do I know why.

Olivia smiling at me when we’d pass at the campsites and she was with her friends. And how it felt like we had a secret.

The sound of waves breaking when you fall asleep in your tent. And birds in the morning. And people talking when they walk by on their way to get a coffee and paper. All of it blending into the sound of being free.

The hole at the top of my tent in the morning when I opened my eyes. How at a certain time of the day the sun went right inside it and the whole inside of my tent lit up and it felt like somebody was giving me special powers.

Going in the ocean every Sunday morning by myself, down from the campsites so nobody knows me. Coming out and laying on my towel. Letting the sun dry the ocean water off my skin. How it was cold at first, then tingled into warm. My face going into a smile ’cause of how good it felt. Then drifting into sleep.

Olivia touching her ski cap and sometimes turning to me, her eyes going on mine, and how my stomach feels like it’s floating, like I don’t weigh anything, and how I pretend like I’m not smiling and nothing’s really happening, but really everything is.

“Here’s another thing about girls,”
Devon said as we walked back from the beach. “I don’t like regular skinny ones, either. Yeah, they’re all right to look at, and people give you props when they see you with one at the movies. But soon as you start hooking up, Special, trust me, it feels wrong.”

I nodded, trying to think how skinny Olivia was.

“A dude’s not supposed to graze bones when he’s feeling on his girl. Or two little mosquito bites hiding inside a Victoria’s Secret training bra. I like a girl who you can tell is a girl.”

I shrugged as we went around the end of the campsites and up the side of the 101. It was late and the lifeguard tower was closed. The sun had just dropped under the ocean. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast ’cause Devon made us stay on the beach the entire day so we could see every single girl that came and went to make it a complete study. If we left early he said we might miss the finest one of the day. So we sat there shirtless on our towels, the sun stuck on our skin, talking about every girl, arguing over ratings, pointing out features.

Whenever it got too hot we’d run down into the water and splash through the whitewash and duck under swells. We’d stay out there bodysurfing and spraying water at each other until Devon said we had to get back to our towels and scan for new talent.

We spent pretty much the entire day talking about girls, but somehow Devon had more to say.

“What I seriously don’t get, though,” he told me, “is your obsession with blondes.” He was holding a long stick now,
whacking rocks into the road. We watched each one skip into the traffic that raced past us on the 101.

“I just think some of them are pretty,” I said.

“Pretty? What’s pretty, though, Special? For real.”

I shrugged.

“Pretty’s stock, man. Pretty’s like having bread and water for dinner. Yeah, maybe it’s enough sustenance to make it to the next day, but it doesn’t taste like anything. I’m talking about flavor, Special. I’m talking about herbs and spices.”

“I
like
girls who are pretty,” I said, but Devon wasn’t listening.

“Dude, I know all those sayings they have like ‘blondes have more fun,’ but that was from, like, 1920. Our country didn’t know any better. Since then all kinds of immigrants have come and settled here and made kids with white people and new combinations of girls have been born and it’s woken people up to a whole new meaning of what’s hot.”

“I guess so.”

“Look at
you
, Special. You’re mixed.”

I shrugged.

“When people first meet you, what do they think you are?”

I thought about it a sec, then told him: “Just regular, I guess.”

“No, dude. I mean your race. What race do people think you are?”

“Sometimes they think I’m part Mexican,” I said. “Or Puerto Rican or Spanish.”