How to Save a Life(18)

I dithered and scratched, crossing out more words than I kept and finally tore the paper out of my journal and chucked it in the wastebasket. My brain wasn’t focused on the task anyway. It was thinking about Evan Salinger.

What was he doing right now? Was he getting more grief from his brothers? Or maybe he was at the pool, trying to see how long he could hold his breath. I chewed my lip, wondering if it would be a bad idea to go to Funtown. Why the hell shouldn’t I? I could go wherever the hell I wanted. Free country and all that.

What if he goes there to escape? What if that’s his only goddamn sanctuary?

I chewed my lip some more.

I’d been in survival mode for the last six years. My mom left me alone, every girl for herself. I didn’t give or receive favors unless they were of the meaningless sexual variety. But it wouldn’t kill me to go to Funtown and offer to time Evan while he held his breath…



Hold your breath

I will mark the minutes

And guard your peace…



I blinked at the words I’d written.

Good god, what kind of weird shit is that?

I tossed myself back on my bed, thinking I’d try for a full night’s sleep for once.

I stared at the ceiling.

I stared at my cell phone. Nearly nine o’clock, it said, and in perfectly good working order. Not cracked. My boots weren’t ruined. But I’d been a bitch to Evan, and I hated having that over my head.

I got up and put on some old jeans, and sandals I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing at school, and headed out.





I biked to Funtown through a stifling, sticky night. The cicadas were deafening, their constant chirp winding around a town gone to sleep already. Yellow light burned in the windows of only a few houses. No one was on the street. No cars drove past in either direction. A living ghost town.

The water park was deserted, same as last time. Evan was in the pool, same as last time. He rested his arms on the cement of the deep end, his chin propped on his forearms. He looked exhausted. Defeated. As if he’d swum a hundred laps though the water around him was still.

My sandals slapped the pavement, announcing my trespassing. Evan came here to escape, I told myself. I was an unwelcome intruder. I should go back and leave him alone. But I didn’t. He looked up without lifting his head—just his blue eyes that looked dimmer somehow.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi, Jo.”

What was it about my name in his voice? He was always saying my name. Even in my dreams. I don’t think I’d ever said his out loud.

“I don’t want to bother you,” I said.

“You’re not bothering me.”

“I’ll go if you want to be alone.”

He murmured something against his arms.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. He went under, came back up and pushed the hair back from his face. “Why did you come here?”

I sat down on one of the loungers nearest the deep end. “I have my phone. It has a timer. I thought maybe I could time you. You know…holding your breath?”

“Is this really how you want to spend your Wednesday night?” he asked. He shook his head, silently answering his own question. “You should go. If someone sees you here, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Like I give a shit what people think of me.” Evan looked me up and down, his gaze coming to rest on my long hair that covered my scar like a shield. I crossed my arms. “Do you want me to time you or not?”

“No, thank you, Jo,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.”

I got up, gathered my bag. “You want to be alone. I get it. I shouldn’t have come. Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just not good company right now.”

“Bad day?”

“You could say that.”

I sat back down. “What happened? I mean…if you want to talk about it.”

“Nothing that doesn’t happen every other day.” A thought occurred to him; darkening his face and erasing his smile. He ground his thumb into the cement on the edge of the pool. “But this time he went too far.”

“Who did?”

A beat of silence. “Have you ever lost something precious to you? I don’t mean a person or an emotional loss. I mean like an object.”

I thought of my stuffed blue whale. I’d carried it with me everywhere when I was a kid. I couldn’t even remember why it was so important. Just a comfort thing, I guess. Somewhere in the chaos of my mother dying and Jasper going to jail, I lost it.

“Yeah,” I answered. “But gone is gone, right? What can you do?”

Evan nodded. “I keep telling myself that. It’s not helping.”

“What did you lose?”

“You really want to know?”

I started to bite off a smart-alecky remark that I wouldn’t have asked otherwise, but Evan seemed like he was genuinely curious that I wanted to talk to him. And that sucked. Loneliness taken to a whole new level.

“Yeah,” I said. “I want to know.”

He looked ready to spill it, and then shook his head. “It’s my brothers. My adopted brothers, which they don’t let me f*cking forget. They know how to dig in so deep and push the right buttons until I lose my shit.”