I Will Save You Read Online Free PDF Page A

shrugged.
    “Me and the big guy were stuck mopping sewage in the girls’ bathroom.”
    “Blah blah blah.”
    “Not a pretty sight. You women are deceiving.”
    Lea rolled her eyes, said: “By the way, wanna know what I overheard?”
    Mr. Red was stirring sugar into his coffee.
    “Some of the girls were talking about your new assistant here. Saying how handsome he is. What are you gonna do if Kidd steals all your women?”
    Mr. Red turned to me. “Hear that, Kidd? Lea just made a pass at you.”
    I looked at Lea and she rolled her eyes and laughed a little.
    “Don’t worry,” Mr. Red said. “I plan to teach Kidd everything I know.”
    Lea took my hands, said: “Be sure to listen, Kidd. Then do the exact opposite.”
    She smiled and let go of my hands.
    Outside Campsite Coffee, Mr. Red told me: “As I was saying, I have a tough time with the whole monogamy thing.”
    He veered us off the road again, toward his tent.
    “Don’t get me wrong, I recommend it for ninety-nine percent of the population. But I’ve been divorced three times, Kidd. Three! I’m only thirty-six years old. Let’s crunch the numbers on that: twenty-seven the first time, add nine, divideby three, that’s only three years per ‘I do.’ A guy can only bark up the wrong tree so many times, right?”
    I shrugged.
    “And it’s not like I don’t explain my position to every woman I meet.”
    He stopped suddenly and looked me in the eyes. “Look, Kidd, you’re not some kind of moralist, are you?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    “Are you affiliated with a fundamentalist church?”
    “No.”
    “Do you sympathize with the banning of books?”
    “No.”
    “Have you ever donated money to the NRA?”
    “I never had money.”
    “Good,” Mr. Red told me, and he started walking again. “Way I see it, Kidd, communication is the key. You can be anything you want in this country as long as you’re honest about it.”
    He looked up at the pack of blond girls in the campsite next to his. They waved and he waved back and then he turned to me and said: “Wait a sec.”
    “What?”
    “Kidd … you’re not a virgin, are you?”
    My eyes went wide and I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
    “I’m staring into the eyes of a damn unicorn.”
    “I was gonna say—”
    He waved me off. “Look, it’s none of my business, big guy. Like Lea said, you’re handsome enough. It’ll happen.”
    I looked at the ground.
    It’s not that I hadn’t thought about girls before. Or that I didn’t like them. It’s just at Horizons I never had enough time by myself to actually talk to one. And I wasn’t brave like Devon, who snuck out late to meet with them.
    “Okay,” Mr. Red told me. “Maybe I chose a drastically different path when I was your age. I mean, I knew dozens of girls by the time I was your age. But that doesn’t mean my way’s the right way. Apples and oranges, big guy.”
    Mr. Red dipped into his tent and came out with two ripe bananas. “Speaking of fruit,” he said, and handed me one and we both peeled them and started eating as we walked down the long campsite stretch. He said since there wasn’t a whole lot that needed fixing before his lunchtime surf session he’d give me a tour of the campsites.
    We walked past every campsite plot and he told me the best and worst things about each of them and how much they cost per day and how they held a drawing to determine who got which spot. He explained that most people stay a week or two, but that some groups, like the blond girls across the road from his tent, keep a campsite all summer. The girls and their parents come and go throughout the day since they all live in the neighborhood. Sometimes they sleep at home, he said. Sometimes they’re gone for chunks of time because they go on real vacations to Hawaii or Europe or the Caribbean. But throughout the summer they always have a place to crash at the beach.
    Me and Mr. Red walked along the fence by the