I Will Save You (22 page)

For the rest of my life.

’Cause it only makes you feel the worst possible sadness the second your dream ends.

I heard something outside
my tent in the middle of the night and thought for sure it was Devon. I sat up and listened.

A bunch of people walking and voices.

I peeked outside my tent door but instead of seeing Devon I found all the campsite surfers passing in just trunks with their boards tucked under their arms, the campsite girls behind them bundled in hoodie sweatshirts and Uggs.

Olivia was the only girl carrying a surfboard. She came right up to my tent and set it down.

Her friends smiled and kept walking.

“Where’s everybody going?” I said, stepping the rest of the way out of my tent.

“The guys are paddling to the kelp beds,” she said.

“The kelp beds?”

“You know those dark patches of seaweed way out there, past the waves?” She looked down at my hand and said: “Uh, why are you holding a wrench?”

I looked at the wrench in my hand and shrugged, tossed it back in the tent. “I didn’t know who it was,” I said.

She gave me a strange look.

There was a rustling sound in my tent, and when me and Olivia turned around Peanut’s head was poking through the door and his tongue was going. She reached down to pet him. “Who needs a wrench,” she said, “when you have such a high-quality guard dog?”

I smiled and asked her if she was going to the kelp beds, too.

“Nope,” she said. “But I thought you might want to.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“How?”

“On my dad’s board.” We both looked at the foam board by my feet. “He brings it every summer but he never goes out. I had to wipe down all the dust.”

I thought about going back in the ocean. I hadn’t been out there since Devon pulled me into the riptide. “How can you see the waves in the dark?”

“I guess that’s the point,” Olivia said. “You don’t have to go. You’re welcome to sit in the sand with us.”

“I wanna go,” I said, even though I didn’t.

“You sure?” she said.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, grab the board,” she said, “and follow me.”

Waves You Can’t See

Me and the surfer guys stood next to our boards in the wet sand, strapping leashes around our ankles, me doing it exactly like them. They made small talk about how the summer had flown by and what their senior year might be like and who was entering what surf contests in the winter. Behind us, the girls sat together in the sand, talking.

Olivia saw me looking and gave me a tiny smile.

I smiled back.

I felt overwhelming butterflies in my stomach about going in the ocean again, especially in the middle of the night. But I knew I had to. Olivia had brought me her dad’s board. And
she was watching. And I knew secretly she wanted me to be more like everybody else.

I wanted that, too.

The guys picked up their boards and tucked them under their arms. I followed. All of us moving toward the dark ocean, shivering in our surf trunks. I stared at the line of moonlight going down the middle of the water. It was like a pathway into my fear of the ocean currents and drowning.

I knew I had to walk it.

As we stood at the water’s edge, looking out, I asked the guy with green tips in his hair, Jackson: “What do we do?”

“Just paddle out,” he said.

“All the way past the break,” Rob said. “To the kelp beds.”

“Water’s cold, too,” Jeff said. “I’m warning you.”

Jackson laughed, told me: “Wait till it hits your nut sack.”

“Shit hurts, dude,” Rob said.

A couple of the other guys laughed and Frankie said: “We’re like that group that goes swimming in the snow.”

“The Polar Bear Club.”

“Exactly. The Polar Bear Club.”

“We’re the surfing version. I think we made it up.”

Everybody howled and laughed as we stepped in. Some of the guys splashed water at each other. Jeff even tackled Frankie and they both came up laughing and cursing. The girls stood along the shore, pointing at us.

The water was ice cold on my bare feet, then my ankles and calves. My knees.

I howled like everybody else.

When the water got up to their waists they all dove under
and came up yelling and hopped on their boards and started paddling. I watched their horizontal shapes rise and fall over swells, their arms plunging into the water over and over, feet kicked up.

I was behind them, still walking my board.

When the cold water hit my stuff it felt like someone squeezing with their bare hand. I opened my mouth to yell but no sound came out. It hurt worse than a football pass hitting there, and I bent over picturing my warm sleeping bag.

But at the same time I knew Olivia was watching.

I looked back at the girls who were all sitting in a line on the sand now, huddled together. Then I turned around and forced myself to dive under. I came up freezing in the cold air and hopped on my board and paddled after everybody.

Soon I could see the shadow of waves before they hit me, and I’d duck-dive under like Mr. Red taught me—which is where you push the nose of your board down and purposely go under and let the wave break over you.

I stayed on the same part of the moon path as the guys paddling ahead of me. All of us in the same splashing rhythm. One hand in the water and pulling, then the other hand in and pulling, over and over, my arms and shoulders burning, my neck sore from looking up. Foam board gliding along the water’s surface, taking me out farther and farther.

After a while I got sort of used to the cold water, and when I got past where the waves broke everything got flatter and it was easier to paddle.

The guys all stopped and sat up on their boards.

Nobody said a word.

When I caught up, I sat just like them.

The beach was now just a line of land behind us, seaweed floating in giant knots under our boards: baseball-sized bulbs and long, ropey tentacles and slimy-looking leaves swaying in the current. Everything out there quiet and a million times bigger than humans. The moon peeking through the puffy gray clouds that sat in the sky.

I thought how different my life was from Fallbrook. Sitting on a surfboard in the ocean with a bunch of surfers, our feet dangling in seaweed.

But just when I was feeling part of everything, the guys and the campsites and Cardiff by the Sea, I heard a quiet splashing behind me.

I turned around to look and my stomach dropped.

Devon.

He was paddling toward us on a beat-up surfboard, one that looked like he’d pulled it right out of a trash Dumpster. He gave me a devious smile and went on the other side of the guys.

I saw Frankie look at him.

Devon sat up like the rest of us, put a finger to his lips for me to keep quiet.

I looked back at the ocean and felt more frustrated than I’d ever felt in my life. It was such an important night. Just me and the surfer guys and the dark ocean. And then Devon had to show up. Like he always showed up.

But at the same time I felt worried, too.

I didn’t know what Devon would do.

I looked at him again, just sitting there, smiling, sifting his fingers through the ocean water.

•  •  •

Eventually, without even saying anything, the guys all turned around, one by one, including me, and started paddling back to shore.

Devon stayed.

Jeff looked at him and sort of nodded for him to follow us, but Devon just stayed floating in the kelp beds, on his beat-up board, staring into the black night.

The rest of us got off our boards near the shore and walked out of the water, onto wet sand. The wind was freezing. We wrapped our leashes back around our boards, down by the fins, then we hurried up to the girls who were standing in a circle holding out towels for us.

Jackson went to hug Jasmine to get her wet, but she backed away squealing.

“So?” Blue said, pulling her hood off her head. “How was it?”

“Cold,” Jeff said.

I looked at the ocean.

Devon was still sitting in the kelp beds.

“You guys were out there long enough,” Jasmine said.

We dried off and left our towels draped over our backs for warmth, picked up our boards and started toward the stairs.

Olivia touched my arm, said: “What’d you think?”

“I loved it,” I told her.

“I’m so glad,” she said.

We both smiled, but inside I was still worried about Devon. The look in his eyes when he paddled up to us was different. And he barely glanced at me. Like he was trying to
prove we weren’t friends anymore. Which made me think of his revolution.

“I can’t believe you guys won’t even wear wet suits,” Jasmine said.

“It’s all good,” Jackson said.

Blue laughed out loud, and Rob said: “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, what?”

“I was just thinking of everybody’s shrinkage.”

The girls laughed.

“Shrinkage?” Frankie said.

“You know,” Blue said. “When your little wee-wees get cold and try to suck back into their little homes.”

The guys all frowned and said that never happened to them, and the girls kept laughing. Then Jackson said: “Why don’t you join me in my tent, Blue. See for yourself.”

“In your dreams,” she said, and everybody laughed some more.

When we got to the top of the stairs I looked out over the ocean and saw a shape that I knew was Devon, still way out there, in the kelp beds, sitting alone on his board.

I stopped and stared.

This weird feeling came over me, like right that second I knew something bad would happen between me and Devon. Something that would change both our lives forever.

Then I felt a tug at my shoulder and when I turned around Olivia said: “You coming?”

I pop open my eyes
in the pitch black of solitary confinement and suck in a huge breath, like I’ve been holding it all this time, imagining the summer and Devon and everything that’s happened.

I pull against my straps to sit up, but I still can’t budge. And for the first time I start wondering stuff about my cell.

How long have I been in here? Two months? Or two days?

And why can’t I remember any guards coming in with a tray of food? Or at least doing a bed check like they always did at Horizons?

Then I start wondering something else.

What if it wasn’t the police who picked me up, but people from Devon’s revolution? Maybe when they found out I pushed their leader off the cliff they rushed the scene and threw me in their van and brought me to a secret torture chamber. And this is it.

Maybe Devon didn’t die when he hit the sand. And they’re waiting for him to get better so he can decide what to do with me.

My heart starts racing and I yell:

“Is anybody out there? Please! Help me!”

I listen for footsteps.

There’s only silence.

I lay here breathing hard, trying to think, eyes shifting back and forth even though I can’t see. If it really was regular policemen who brought me here, what if they’re experimenting
with some new psychological drug, and all my dreams of Olivia and the beach are really just a chemical hallucination?

Or what if this is death row?

I close my eyes and picture the summer again.

Devon paddling up behind us in the ocean that midnight. And two nights later, when I saw him stalking around Olivia’s tent again. This time with a knife in his hand.

The more I lay here, thinking, the more I believe I was right with what I did.

I
had
to push Devon off the cliff.

Even if the police are testing new medicine on me. Or they’re studying a criminal’s brain. Even if Olivia and Mr. Red and everybody else never understand why I did it. If I’m never allowed to leave my cell again. And all I have left of my friends are hallucinations from solitary confinement.

Still.

All that matters is Olivia’s okay.

And I saved her.

Like my mom saved me.

What Else I Know About Devon

How he stopped going to my tent after the kelp beds. And he stopped looking at me whenever we passed each other in the campsites or at the beach.

The Tuesday morning I woke up and went out of my tent and went to wait for Mr. Red so we could work, and Devon was sitting on my usual railroad tie, holding his knife. I stopped and he kept looking at Mr. Red’s tent, even when he got up and walked away. And later that night when I came out of the bookstore with the first book Olivia ever mentioned, about the paralyzed guy, and Devon was standing on the sidewalk with his hood up, watching me.

The weekend day when he was out in the ocean on his trash Dumpster surfboard with a bunch of other kids Mr. Red was teaching to surf. And how he kept paddling for them and trying to stand and falling down. And then Mr. Red paddled over and gave him a boost and Devon stood up and rode the wave all the way to the sand and pumped his fist and all the campsite girls were together on the beach, watching, including Olivia, and it was the first time I saw her notice him, and my chest felt worried and jealous.

I ran with Olivia
onto the Coaster train just as the doors were shutting, and together we fell into two empty seats in back, both of us laughing so loud people looked. As the train broke its stillness and started moving along the tracks she put her hand on my arm and said: “Now I
know
today’s the right day.”

“For what?” I said, still catching my breath.

“What I have to show you,” she said. “Today’s a showing day.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but before I could open my mouth she told me: “Don’t stress, Kidd. You’ll see.”

I glanced at the scuffed train floor where somebody had carved
OTNC POR VIDA
in big block letters and under it somebody else had written
GO BACK TO TJ, ESE!