I Will Save You by Matt de la Pena

that book only made it worse. But you should’ve seen your face when I scared you. I don’t know why, but it totally cheered me up.”
    I looked at the sand thinking how I cheered up Olivia.
    “By the way,” she said, pointing at my neck. “Is that a hickey?”
    “No,” I shot back. “It’s a rash from a bush.”
    I covered it with my hand, wishing it would just disappear.
    “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys.”
    “What guys?”
    “The ones who think it’s hilarious to hook up with a new girl every weekend.”
    “I’m not like that,” I said.
    She patted my arm and then we both went quiet and kept walking. I wondered if my stupid neck mark made Olivia think less of me, even though it wasn’t from kissing.
    After a couple minutes she smiled at me and then sped up a little and walked with Blue and Jasmine again, and that was the last we talked all night.
    But her smile.
    It made everything feel okay.
    After walking for over an hour Blue made us turn around and we started going back to the campsites, and people broke off from the group. Blue went with the long-blond-haired guy with green tips, Jackson, and they walked way ahead.
    Mary went with Frankie.
    Dorna went with the spiky-haired guy, Jeff.
    Olivia went with Jasmine and Rob.
    After a while I realized I was no longer walking in the middle of everyone, I was by myself. But I didn’t care. For the first time in forever I felt like I was normal, like my mom always said I could be. Not a Horizons resident. Or a troubled teen. Or an at-risk case.
    I was just Kidd Ellison.
    A guy who went on a spooky midnight walk.
    Someone who could talk to the girl he likes.
 … After you told the doctor hi back he went to Mom’s bed and read all her charts and asked her some questions and wrote things down on his clipboard, and then he smiled at you again and put his hand on top of your head and left.
Mom looked at you, said: “Come here.”
You went to her and she touched your hair just like the doctor and smiled and said: “I know what has just happened seems so horrible right now, but it’s not all bad. Believe it or not, I’m actually thankful. It lead to me having a moment of clarity. When I woke up in this room, in these bandages, with this ridiculous fear, I realized what I have to do.”
“You did?”
She nodded and rubbed your hair again with her good hand. “I did, honey.” She tried to seem really happy, even though there was a tear going down her right cheek, and she had to reach up with the back of her hand to wipe it away.
“We’re going to be okay,” she said, nodding her head up and down and biting her bottom lip. “You and me. We’re a team.” You told her okay and she laughed and rubbed your head some more and then let her arm go back next to her on the bed, and she looked up at the ceiling.
It went dead quiet and you looked all around the room. The glass jars of medicine and the health posters and the bars and levers of her bed and the muted TV up by the ceiling and magazines spread out on the table and the black-and-white tile. You looked back at Mom and her eyes were closing and you could tell by her breathing she was falling asleep.
But you should’ve thought about that hospital night when Olivia asked her question about bad things turning good. “Yes,” you should’ve told her. “ ’Cause when bad things happen to people they can have a moment of clarity where they realize what they have to do, like my mom did.”
And if you think about it, you had a moment of clarity, too. After Mom was gone. At first when they came to get you at school and told you what happened you thought you died right with her. But then Maria said you could think of it a different way, like how nobody could hurt your mom ever again and how there was still a piece of her inside you, everywhere you went, and about her going to a better place. And after thinking about it for a while you decided maybe Maria was right about that.
If Olivia ever asks