How to Save a Life(2)

Sunday afternoon, with the sun beating at my back, I biked to downtown Planerville. One bank. One auto shop. One grocery store. A pizza place and a sporting goods store. That’s it. I’d later find out that all the action took place up in Halston, about a ten-minute drive north. I could see why.

I wrote poetry, and I usually wrote a few verses about whatever new town Gerry dragged us to, pinning down first impressions. For Planerville, a plain piece of blank paper would’ve sufficed.

Only one point of interest: the town had put up a new aquatic park last year. I rode by it on my bike, and it was no Raging Waters, that’s for sure. Only three slides—none of them huge or scary—a lazy river, a pool. One of those shallow areas with sprinklers and mini-slides where toddlers splash around, pissing in the chlorine to their hearts’ content. High bars kept people out after closing at 5pm and the whole thing shut down in winter.

While I had zero intention of ever swimming there during business hours, it looked like a good place to hang out at night, dip my feet. Maybe scratch out a poem. I made a mental note to test the security features of Funtown Water Park sometime soon.

As the sun was beginning to drop and the bugs began their twilight symphony, I biked to Wilson High School. It became immediately apparent this was a Friday Night Lights situation. Football was life in Planerville. The field was newer by a good ten years and better maintained than the shabby brick buildings of the school proper. I had images of raging pep rallies, marching band fight songs, and the entire f*cking town cramming the perfectly maintained stands. Jocks were kings, the cheerleaders queens.

With football season long over now, the tiny school populace was desperate for the next big distraction. It was the end of May, so that meant prom, probably.

Or maybe the new girl in black, hiding behind a wall of hair, and who had a penchant for screwing boys she didn’t give a shit about and who didn’t give a shit about her. Uncle Jasper had ruined me; no guy would ever consider me girlfriend material. Those were the cards I’d been dealt and so I played them the only way I could. On my terms.

I mentally prepped for my first day at Wilson High School (population: 311), ready to take on the mantle of class slut or freak.

Turned out ‘slut’ was available, but the title of ‘freak’ already belonged to someone else.





I didn’t even make it to lunchtime before I’d heard all the dirt on some poor schmuck named Evan Salinger. Without speaking to a single person directly, I learned Evan had been a foster kid. A weirdo. A loner. There’d been some kind of incident here at school three years ago. Something about him having a major breakdown in algebra class. I didn’t have the details, but that breakdown had landed Evan Salinger in a mental institution, and permanently awarded him the name “Freakshow.”

As resident freak, I half-expected Evan to wear the title as I would have: dark clothes, long hair from behind which to hide and observe, maybe some emo eyeliner if he was really feeling it.

As it turned out, I sat next to Evan in Western Civ—my last class for the day. I didn’t even realize it until the teacher called on him to answer a question. He sat to my left, and the hair covering that side of my face had blocked him from view. I turned and nearly choked on my contraband chewing gum. No black clothes or emo makeup or stringy hair. Not this guy. Evan Salinger was, to put it mildly, f*cking gorgeous.

He wore his blond hair long, like Leo DiCaprio in his Titanic era, but Evan was bulkier than young Leo. I only saw him at profile, but Evan’s biceps stretched the sleeve of his t-shirt quite nicely, and his shoulders were broad and looked strong, even if all they did was hunch him over a book. He was tall—his knees bumped the underside of his desk—and when he looked up to answer the teacher’s question, I caught a glimpse of striking, sky blue eyes.

Gorgeous.

Impossible, I thought, this guy could possibly be the same notorious weirdo the school populace couldn’t shut up about. I would have cast him as the quarterback for the Wilson Wildcats. Or captain of the local 4H. Class president. This guy was Prom King, not Freakshow.

From behind my half-wall of hair, I took in Evan’s clothes, searching for clues, but I found nothing to support the whisper brigade. He wore faded jeans with his plain t-shirt, and work boots. The jeans were smudged with what looked like faded motor oil stains. This at least made sense: I’d heard he was the adopted son of Harris Salinger, who owned the town’s mechanic and auto-body repair shop. The Salingers lived in a big white house on Peachtree Lane and Mrs. S drove a Lexus.

Evan’s adopted family had money—another thing he had going for him. Obviously, his position on the lowest rung of the social ladder could only come down that stint at Woodside Institution. I hoped that wasn’t the case, but what else could it be? In a school of only three hundred kids, that sort of history would kill Evan’s chances of ever being named anything but the local mental case, never mind Prom King.

Wilson High, I quickly deduced, was isolated as hell. Its kids so bored with each other, you couldn’t pass gas without everyone whispering about it.

And goddamn, they sure whispered about Evan Salinger.

When Mr. Albertine called on Evan to answer that question about the Roman Coliseum, the entire class seemed to flinch all at the same time. The air tightened, and then everyone—and I mean, everyone—swiveled in their chairs to hear Evan’s reply.