Free I Will Save You by Matt de la Pena Page A

“The Star-Spangled Banner.”
    As I stood just outside the store, watching an old man open his car door, I thought how maybe Devon was right about me secretly wanting to steal. Maybe everybody did. Even A-plus students. Maybe we want to do even worse things, like smacksomebody in the back of the head just to see what happens, or jab a tree branch through a store window to see the glass shatter, or throw a rock off a bridge to see which car gets hit on the freeway and if it causes an accident.
    Regular people may think these things, too.
    But Devon actually does them.
    He’s missing that part of your brain that worries about getting caught or hurting another human being.
    I looked in the store again and it was a perfect example. You could tell by Devon’s face he was actually happy the store woman was following him around the aisles. He held up a pair of dark jeans, and put them up to his body and looked in the mirror. Then he turned around and looked right at the saleswoman and said: “Excuse me, ma’am, may I try these on?”
    He scooped up the pile of clothes he’d picked out and stayed staring right in her eyes, smiling.
    She scowled back and took the jeans and the rest of the clothes in his arms and counted them and said in an irritated voice: “I’m sorry, sir, but you can only try on five items at a time. You have eight.”
    Devon picked five from the pile and looked up smiling and said: “How about just these then, ma’am? Are these okay?”
    The woman rolled her eyes and led Devon to the dressing room and opened the door and held it for him and said there was a five-minute limit in the room and to please leave his duffel bag outside.
    Devon bowed and set down the duffel and then as he went into the little room he looked at me and winked. I turnedaround fast and stared at the street so the saleswoman wouldn’t think I was with Devon.
    After a minute or so I turned back around. The lady stood there for a while, checking her watch every ten seconds.
    Another customer walked in, a woman in a fancy tracksuit who had two little boys with her, and the saleslady looked at Devon’s door again, and at her watch, and then she went up front to where one of the boys was looking at stickers through a glass case. She told him to please not put his face against the glass, and the boy’s mom pulled her son’s arm away from the case and told him not to touch anything. Then she tried on a pair of sunglasses and looked at herself in the circular mirror and pulled them off and held them to the side while she looked for another pair.
    I kept staring at the dressing room door, waiting for Devon to come out, but it stayed closed for the longest time.
    I was just about to go back to the lagoon by myself, to wait, when I heard somebody say: “Psssst.”
    I spun around.
    Devon.
    He was outside, squatting under the store window and laughing without sound. The five clothing items stacked in his lap.
    I looked in the store again and the saleslady was knocking on his dressing room door, my duffel bag still sitting there.
    I turned back to Devon, whispered: “How’d you get out?”
    “I got my ways, Special.”
    He motioned with his head for me to follow him and I did, and as we were fast-walking away the store woman camerushing out of the back door and shouted: “Hey! Come back here! You didn’t pay for that!”
    Me and Devon took off sprinting across the parking lot, weaving through cars and ducking behind a restaurant called Kai’s. We looked at each other, both of us breathing hard, and he held up a finger and ducked his head around the restaurant to look at the store and he said: “She’s gone.”
    “Probably to call the police,” I said.
    “Probably,” Devon said, and a big smile went on his face.
    “What are we gonna do?”
    He looked around the restaurant again and then told me to follow him and we sprinted back through the parking lot and down into the lagoon. When we got to our bush we were still breathing hard