I Will Save You - Softcover

De La Peña, Matt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385738285 ISBN 13: 9780385738286

Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Newbery Medal-winning author Matt de la Peña’s I Will Save You is a "heartwarming, root-for-the-underdog novel." [SLJ]

   Kidd is running from his past and his future. No mom, no dad, and there’s nothing for him at the group home but therapy. He doesn’t belong at the beach where he works either, unless he finds a reason to stay.
   Olivia is blond hair, blue eyes, rich dad. The prettiest girl in Cardiff. She’s hiding something from Kidd—but could they ever be together anyway?
   Devon is mean, mysterious, and driven by a death wish. A best friend and worst enemy. He followed Kidd all the way to the beach and he’s not leaving until he teaches him a few lessons about life. And Olivia.

"A taut psychological novel...[with] intriguing, well-developed characters...[that] will stay with readers."-Booklist

"De la Peña skillfully captures the slippery sides of a schizophrenic personality in this heartwarming, root-for-the-underdog novel."-SLJ

An Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Finalist

ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Readers

An ALA-YALSA Quick Pick

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Matt de la Peña is the first Mexican American author to win the Newbery Medal. He attended the University of the Pacific on a basketball scholarship and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at San Diego State University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches creative writing. I Will Save You is his fourth novel. Look for his other books, Ball Don't Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, The Living, which was named a Pura Belpré Honor Book, and The Hunted, all available from Delacorte Press. You can also visit him at mattdelapena.com and follow @mattdelapena on Twitter.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I keep picturing it over and over in the pitch black of solitary confinement. With my arms and legs strapped down and my head taped in place so I can't move or barely even breathe.

I see me pushing Devon off the cliff.

Him in the air reaching, ricocheting off the ice plant cliff, hitting the sand, people circling his crooked body.

The grunion coming from the ocean.

Olivia crying in her hands.

And every time I picture it a worse feeling goes in my stomach, like my whole body is unbalanced, or when you drop straight down in your roller-coaster cart and everybody has their hands up, screaming.

Except for me there's no end of the ride where I can get off and just sit on an empty bench with my soda watching people. This kind of roller coaster keeps going.

'Cause what if I was wrong about Devon?

What if the whole time he wasn't trying to hurt her, he just loved her? Same as me. What if that's the reason he was always wandering around alone in the middle of the night like he was depressed?

And what if Olivia actually loved him back, and I got in the way of people's fate?

That doesn't make sense, though. 'Cause he kept telling me she thought she was better and he would use his gun on her.

And Olivia liked me.

She even said it at Torrey Pines Beach while we sat together on her special rock and watched the sunset colors spread over the ocean.



They put me in Horizons after my mom died 'cause they said I had post-traumatic stress. They believed it was the reason I was always so tired and confused and bad to myself.

But right now it's even worse.

I can't think.

I can just stare at the total darkness in front of me, which feels like being inside a black hole. Or if your boat drifted into the Bermuda Triangle.

Solitary confinement is like you don't exist.

If I had my philosophy of life book and a pen I'd try to write about what happened on the cliff, and how maybe now I understand why some people have to be put in jail. They've shown they're capable of crossing a line, like pushing another person off a cliff, and maybe it wasn't even for the right reasons, which shows you their judgment, and what if they did it again.

But I can't write anything 'cause the police didn't put my book with me.

That's the first thing I checked when I woke up in this blackness. I tried to reach, but my arms were strapped too tight. My whole body ached after I just barely shifted, parts I'd never even thought about like in between my fingers and behind my knees.

The police must've pounded me with their billy clubs when they loaded me into the back of their squad car and drove me to prison. They probably thought I was evil for what I did to my best friend. Everybody probably did.

Even Olivia.

But they didn't know Devon.

They'd never heard him talk about rich people, especially girls. They'd never seen his gun or how he made a throat-slashing sign at Olivia or how he'd stand there staring at her tent in the middle of the night when she was sleeping.

They'd think different if they knew.

I wake up and try to reach out my hand again, to feel for my philosophy of life book, 'cause I need it, but I still can't move. The straps feel even tighter. My breaths barely have room. And it's still the blackest black you could ever picture, like everything got burned up.

I keep thinking if this is the form of torture that happens in solitary confinement, even though you're not supposed to torture people in the United States.

And then it really sinks in.

Where I am.

Strapped down in a bed behind bars.

Locked up.

And all my mom ever said was for me to be a good person. And be polite. And respect my elders.

I imagine her looking down from heaven right now. Her only son in solitary confinement, being tortured. And I see from her expression how heartbroken she is. Tears running makeup stains down her cheeks and her chin quivering and her eyes so sad, like two cat's-eye marbles nobody wants to shoot for.

Just thinking about my mom crying makes my lungs start going too fast. Like I've just sprinted up the campsite stairs. And now I'm gasping for air and my heart's pounding my ribs and it feels like I'm lifting out of my own body, floating above my prison cot. . . .

I'm hovering by the ceiling now.

Next to my mom.

We're both watching me lay here, unable to move, chest going up and down and up and down, too many times a second. We're cringing at the welts on my arms and legs and face where they clubbed me.

And this loud ringing noise starts in both my ears.

Little gusts of wind pass over my skin like prison ghosts are moving all around my cell. They're waiting for me to die so they can take me to what comes next for a person who pushed his own best friend off a cliff.

And my mom's sobbing and holding them away and saying for me to hurry and remember.

Philosophy 1:

About Being Awake

Dear Kidd:

You have to always remember the time you escaped Horizons with Devon and ended up at that street fair downtown and how you and him had to pee so bad you couldn't even stand still. It doesn't seem important just thinking about it, but it goes exactly with what Mr. Red said about not sleepwalking and knowing you're alive. . . .

You and Devon slipped past the night watch, remember? And hopped a bus all the way to the Gaslamp District and walked through the different booths where bands were playing and people were drinking and laughing and dancing. And you drank that huge Coke and had to pee. But when you looked at the line for the portable bathrooms it stretched all the way around the block. You turned to Devon and without even saying, you and him walked up the street together looking for any random place.

There were people everywhere, though, way more than what's in Fallbrook. You went into a liquor store with elephant tusks over the doorway, but it didn't have a bathroom either, not one you were allowed to use, and by that time your bladder was so full it was pounding and you could barely walk. Devon held on to one of the magazine shelves and said it was the exact same for him.

The back door was open a crack and it looked like there was a little yard and Devon nodded and you peeked at the worker who was busy with a customer and you snuck out there behind Devon and went to the opposite part of the wall from him and unzipped your zipper and started going, your eyes making tears 'cause it was the most total relief you'd ever felt, the thin yellow puddle rolling between your shoes just barely missing them and going in the grass behind you like a contaminated ocean for the ants. . . .

On my first day working at the campsites Mr. Red told me how most people are asleep even when they're awake.

We were in the main campsite restroom, the one right by the coffee shop, mopping where a toilet overflowed all this nasty brown sewage and both of us were making disgusted faces and holding our noses and mouths as far back as possible.

"Trust me, big guy," Mr. Red said, wiping his frown on his shoulder and spitting in the toilet. He was as old as most people's dads, with floppy blond hair and tan skin, and he always had a grin on his face like everything was funny. My old counselor, Maria, said people always looked twice at Mr. Red when they passed him 'cause he was so handsome and he resembled a famous actor.

He looked at me and then looked back at the mess. "Monday through Friday. Pretty much everybody I know, Kidd. They walk around half conscious."

I kept mopping the floor and listening.

"They flip it to autopilot," he said. "You understand what I mean by 'autopilot,' right?"

I nodded, picturing a plane soaring high above the clouds and the pilot just...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Children's Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385738285
• ISBN 13: 9780385738286
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 337
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland