I Will Save You (6 page)

I remembered how Maria taught me about fate and how there’s somebody out there for everybody, even people who seem like they’re always alone. But what if you wait too long to go in the campsite entrance?

Could somebody ruin their fate?

All of a sudden she jumped out from behind the big tree in front of me and yelled: “Boo!”

I jumped two feet and spun around, and she bent over laughing, holding her hand over her mouth.

She looked up at me and said: “Oh, my God! You totally should’ve seen your face.”

Then she turned and ran away, still laughing, and I just stood there watching as she got farther and farther away from
me and then ducked around a corner near Mr. Red’s campsite, out of sight.

I tried to think what just happened.

Her eyes big and green.

Her face white and perfectly smooth.

I hadn’t lost my fate, I thought. It was just hiding behind a tree.

I backed up a few steps and sat on the bench near Campsite Coffee and thought how my stomach ached, but I didn’t want the ache to go away. I thought how weekends really are the best part of your week, like Mr. Red said, ’cause when you get a break from working you can explore new places and walk along the train tracks and almost meet a girl.

I imagined talking to her next time. I had to sound smart. And normal. I had to make her think I was a regular kid.

I breathed in the salty ocean air, feeling so excited in my stomach and feeling instantly older.

Dreams from Solitary Confinement

I’m asleep and dreaming right now, but it’s the kind of dreaming where you know it’s dreaming, and since you want it to keep going you refuse to open your eyes and just lay there and watch.

Like it’s a movie in your head.

In this one I’m sucking in my breath and slipping through solitary bars and floating above the empty prison yard, over armed guards positioned in their towers, up into the nighttime clouds.

I’m looking down on scattered freeway cars whose headlights shine beams of light into the pitch black. Over sleeping houses and empty store lots and lonely train tracks. All the way to the campsites, where everybody who saw me push Devon off the cliff is tucked safely inside their tents, sleeping.

In my dream I slowly lower onto a beach towel spread for me on the sand.

And there’s Olivia.

Waiting.

She’s looking at me with sadness in her eyes, her hair and ski cap hiding the left side of her face like always and her faded sweatshirt covering her wrists. Green eyes clear like glass and cutting into my chest.

I open my mouth to tell her I’m so sorry, and how I never knew if she liked Devon, too. But dreams are wordless in solitary confinement. At least mine are.

’Cause nothing comes out, not even a sound. I’m mute.

Olivia continues talking, and I realize she’s been explaining something this whole time, even before I landed from the sky.

I look all around to see who she’s talking to.

There’s nobody.

She’s talking about the people from Horizons coming and how they told her everything about my psychology and what happened with my parents. At first, she says, she didn’t believe them; she even
blamed
them. But now she’s not so sure. The only thing she’s sure about is that she’s made a vow to stay here with me until I get out, as long as it takes, even if she misses going to New York and the big appointment her dad made.

And she’s stubborn, she says.

I look out toward the buzzing ocean, too dark to see, and I think how it must be midnight in my dream.

What’s Olivia doing on the beach this late? Without anyone to protect her from drunk college guys or whoever else. I hear a low horn sound, like maybe there’s a ship somewhere out there in all that dark.

And right then it hits me—the worst possible thing about being in prison:

I can’t protect Olivia.

She takes a drink from her water bottle and clears her throat. There’s something she’s decided to tell me about, she says. Something important. Something she’s never discussed with anybody.

But tonight she’s going to explain it.

To me.

I look in her eyes and watch her mouth move.

Sometimes we have to be patient, Kidd. There are things people will want from us that we won’t be ready to give. Like with showing people my face
.

She smoothes her ski-cap flap and says:
But what I wanna tell you about tonight is what happened with me and the piano
.

In my dream I open my mouth to tell her how great she is. How the song she played me at the music store is my favorite one in the world. But no words come out. So I just keep looking in her eyes and breathe.

You remember what I told you about surfing, right? So what if you didn’t stand up those first few times Red took you. Surfing’s not some stupid race. I told you maybe you’d stand up the next time. Or the time after that. And you did, remember? You stood up that Sunday morning Red pushed you, and I even got to be on the beach to cheer you on
.

She puts her hand on my knee.

My point is, you stood up eventually. At your own pace. And you’ll stand up again
.

I lower my eyes to the sand.

In real life I never stood up.

We both look to the water. A tiny moon piece glowing quietly behind thick fog and invisible waves moaning before us and a dot of a ship way out to sea. The midnight cold kept away by us sitting so close on Olivia’s towel, our sweatshirt shoulders almost touching and her hand on my knee.

She rubs her eyes with balled fists and clears her throat, begins explaining about the piano. She was a little girl when she started, five or six, and she was a natural. At first she was on her dad’s old Casio keyboard, but when he saw how quickly she took to it he went out and bought her a baby grand and hired a renowned private instructor named Hans, who’d once performed with the New York Philharmonic.

He would come to our house twice a week
, she says, staring down at her flip-flop feet.
Wednesdays and Saturdays. I picked up everything incredibly fast that first year, and Hans would praise me and tell me I was one of the most gifted students he’d ever taught. Dad would stand there with his arms crossed, beaming with pride
.

Before bed my parents would sometimes ask me to play whichever piece I’d just learned, and they’d clap when I finished, and I’d bow. I felt so important as they led me to my room and tucked me in. The sound I’d made was so beautiful that the mark on my face disappeared. I wondered what my older sister thought as she sat all alone on the other side of the wall. An ordinary girl doing ordinary homework. No applause
.

I’d lie in bed dreaming of performing onstage in New York. My parents sitting center orchestra. The standing ovation I’d receive. People turning to my dad as everybody filed out of the packed amphitheater, saying: You must be so proud. So talented and beautiful. My parents smiling and nodding and thanking them all for coming
.

But after that first year a weird thing happened. I stopped improving so quickly. I was trying just as hard, practicing just as many hours, but Hans wasn’t praising me as much. My dad no longer beamed as intensely. I was only seven years old, Kidd, and I was washed-up
.

But here’s what I’ve figured out. Back then, that was all I played for. Praise. And as soon as I started getting a lower dose, I stopped dedicating myself to the practice
.

The following year it got worse. I started dreading the hours I was
expected to sit on that rigid bench, fingers on those icy keys. I dreaded Hans standing over me with his arms crossed, shaking his head whenever I hit a wrong note. At night I’d lie in bed fantasizing about all the ways I could quit. I started intentionally making mistakes. When Hans asked me to perform a basic run, something I’d mastered long before, I’d strike a series of wrong keys and act oblivious to the hideous sounds I was making
.

Olivia picks at the corner of the towel.

She looks at me.

It went on like that for over a year. Until Hans moved back to Long Island to care for his sick mother. When my dad brought up finding a new instructor I cried and begged him to let me stop. I’ll never forget the look on his face that night. It was beyond disappointment. It was repulsion. Dad was humiliated to have a little quitter for a daughter
.

But then the strangest thing happened. When I didn’t have a lesson hanging over my head I found myself drawn to the piano again. My parents would go to a friend’s for dinner and I’d sneak over to the baby grand and run my fingers along the keys. And I’d play. Whatever I felt like playing. Mostly I’d just make stuff up, silly little songs like the one I played for you at the store. But I also started learning again. I’d pull out my old lesson books and work through them one page at a time
.

In my dream Olivia takes my hands and puts them in hers and rubs warmth into me.

The difference is I no longer played for an instructor’s praise, or for my parents’ approval. I played for me. Do you understand what I’m getting at, Kidd?

I nod but she’s looking at the sand.

I’m gonna be honest with you
, she says.
I still can’t comprehend
why you would do something like this. I honestly can’t. But I know as soon as you come out you’ll explain it all to me. And I promise, Kidd. I’ll be here
.

Waiting
.

In my dream I wanna tell her how confused and worried I am. About everything. I don’t know if I should have pushed Devon. And if Devon actually died. And I don’t know how long I have to be in prison. Or if I
ever
deserve to be free.

Go home, I wanna tell Olivia.

Please.

Go to New York for your appointment.

You’re too smart and talented and beautiful to wait for someone like me.

I don’t deserve to be sitting next to you, Olivia. Not even in a dream.

And right as I’m thinking all this, a strong wind comes and starts pulling me away.

Olivia’s face gets worried.

She reaches out her hand for my hand.

But it’s too late. I’m already sucked back into the clouds; I’m flying back over the train tracks and the dark park and the scattered freeway cars.

And now I’m squeezing back between my prison bars and laying on my cot, my head settling on the pillow and the straps instantly wrapping back around my arms and legs and forehead.

When I open my eyes, having left my dream, I’m all tied down in the dark and totally alone and it feels like dying.

The second time I saw
Olivia was on the campsite steps. It was a few hours after Mr. Red tried to teach me to surf, and I couldn’t stand on my board. I went to his secret place where he checks out waves, thinking I could write in my philosophy of life book about how hard it is to learn surfing, and how I hated making Mr. Red frustrated.

But I kept thinking about other things instead. Like fate and girls that could make your breathing change, and was it some group of people in the olden days that decided what pretty looks like, or were we all just born knowing?

Mostly, though, I was thinking about the girl I’d seen on the swings.

Again.

Since the day she tried to scare me, she was all I’d thought about: during work and when I fell asleep at night in my tent and first thing in the morning and when I brushed my teeth in the drinking fountain outside the bathrooms and while I read magazines in Campsite Coffee and while I sat on the railroad tie next to Peanut, waiting for Mr. Red to come out of his tent so we could work.