I Will Save You Read Online Free PDF Page B

nine on that night, but you’ll never forget.
Dad turning around to leave, him crying, too, like he was already sorry, and then him looking at you, looking down at your pee. His chest going in and out and in and out and yours not moving. When he looked up at your face again his eyes stayed stuck on yours for the longest time—even now, all these years later, with you in this campsite tent on the beach, in this new life of freedom, the sound of the actual ocean outside and your pen scribbling in this philosophy of life book.
Sometimes it feels like his eyes are still on you. Exactly how they were that night. The last time the three of you were in the same room. Dad’s chest breathing and yours not moving and Mom knocked out against the wall and then later the paramedics would rush her out on a stretcher and put her in an ambulance that had its lights going but no sound. And later when the doctor stood over her in the hospital room reading her chart and asking questions and writing things down in a file and sometimes looking at you.
When Dad finally turned to leave the apartment that night you concentrated on how the back of his head looked walking away ’cause you knew you’d never see him again and you never did.

Dreams from Solitary Confinement
There are dream voices in here. That’s something I never would’ve thought, but it’s true. Or maybe it’s a real dream. But it doesn’t feel like a dream.
I’ll just be laying here and I’ll hear a voice start going, sometimes a man and sometimes a woman. I don’t always understand what they’re saying because they sound far away, like if I’m in one room and whoever’s talking is down the hallway or on the other side of my cell wall.
But mostly I swear it’s a girl saying the words from my philosophy of life book. Like I was just hearing the words I put about my dad hitting my mom and him leaving and me and my mom going to the hospital.
When I hear something from my book I stay super still and listen, pretending it’s Olivia’s voice and that we’re laying together on the beach in the middle of the night. I pretend she’s reading to me ’cause she’s knows the police didn’t put the book with me.
I can’t really tell who the voices are, though, ’cause they keep it so pitch black in solitary confinement.
You know how after you’re done using the bathroom in the middle of the night and you flip the lights back off and everything goes so dark you can’t see? You always have to wait like five or six seconds before a few shapes slowly come into view. Then a few seconds after that you can see enough to walk back to your room and climb in the right bed.
Well, in solitary confinement it’s like those first few seconds of dark, except it’s all the time.
You can’t see shapes no matter how many seconds you wait.
You can only hear dream voices.

What I Know About Devon
How he’s lived in group homes and foster homes ever since I’ve known him and since he can remember. Twice he even got sent to juvenile hall, though he didn’t have to stay long.
He swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills when he was fifteen. In his group-home bathroom. Passed out in the tub. His counselor found him and called 911 and the ambulance rushed him to the hospital where they charcoaled his stomach and saved his life. And when I visited he wouldn’t look up or say what happened or even why he did it.
This one time in an arcade in Fallbrook when a big Samoan guy said it was his game, not ours, and shoved me out of the way and put in his quarter. Devon smacking him on the top of his head and everybody stepping back and watching the big Samoan sock Devon in the side of the face and throw him into the wall. Devon getting back up and the Samoan socking him in the mouth, lines of blood going down Devon’s shirt and him out cold on the floor. But Devon got up and laughed and charged the Samoan again, and the Samoan smacked him in the ear. Everybody telling Devon to just stay down,