I Will Save You (30 page)

I seem so naïve in this version of me, just out of Horizons, in my old clothes, walking that long stretch of beach looking for Mr. Red, not understanding anything about who I am or what I will soon discover.

I fly away from the old me, lower onto a towel on the sand again, where Olivia’s waiting. Like she’s been waiting in all my dreams. The sun starting to climb into the sky over her shoulder, fingers of light gripping the campsite cliff and slowly pulling itself up.

Olivia doesn’t notice me land, though.

She’s too busy holding open my philosophy of life book and saying the first part of the secret letter I wrote her.

Her face swollen like she’s just been crying.

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.