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

and Devon was laughing.
    “Dude, Special,” he said between breaths. “That’s my favorite. When some lady acts like she’s gonna chase me down in flip-flops.”
    “What if we got caught, though?” I said.
    “We didn’t.”
    “I know. But we could’ve.”
    “But we didn’t.”
    I took a deep breath and said: “Why don’t you care?”
    He shrugged. “Dude, we just won’t go back to that store. It’s no big deal. Considering there are about ten on this block just like it.”
    “I know, but …”
    I tried to think what I could say that would make him realize it wasn’t just that, it was everything, but my mind was working too slow.
    “Besides,” Devon said, sliding his stack of clothes out and adding the ones he’d just taken. “Look at all this gear. You can’t tell me we didn’t need new clothes.”
    I looked at Devon, surprised he said “we” and not just him.
    He smiled and said: “You’re my boy again, aren’t you?”
    I told him yeah.
    He looked back at the clothes. “Here, we have”—he counted through the stack—“fifteen things. We’ll just take turns picking. You go first.”
    “Me?”
    “You need new stuff more than I do, Special. That crap you’re wearing is straight welfare.”
    I looked at my clothes and then looked back at Devon.
    “What’d you think, I was just stealing for myself?”
    I shrugged, said: “I didn’t think anything.”
    “Well, go on, dude. Pick something.”
    I looked at the stack, remembering what Mr. Red said about giving my jeans a rest. I took a new pair.
    “There you go, Special,” he said. “That’s the spirit.”
    We took turns picking through the rest of the clothes and then Devon walked me back to my tent, talking about the rush of taking things and not paying a dime, especially when you had money in your pocket like he did.
    He pulled his wallet and opened it and showed me all the twenties and put it back.
    “Where’d you get that?” I said.
    “Come on, dude. I’m a businessman.”
    “You don’t even have a job.”
    “Jobs are for punks.”
    Then he went on and on about how the rich kids in Cardiff all got stuff from their parents and since we didn’t have parents we had to take stuff for ourselves.
    “I’m not gonna sit here waiting for somebody to come along and make things fair,” he told me, shaking his head. “Hell no. I’m gonna make fair happen for myself. Know what I mean?”
    He talked about the rich and the poor for the rest of our walk back to the campsites. I didn’t say anything else, just nodded occasionally and let him talk. And when we got up to my tent he said he had to go handle something and we slapped five.
    “Find you in a few days, all right?”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Maybe we can go to the beach and check out the chicks.” He lifted my chin and said: “Hey, Special.”
    “Yeah?”
    He grinned, let go of my chin.
    I fake-smiled back.
    Devon pointed at the stack of new clothes in my arms, said: “Don’t be wearing those with a bad conscious either. They’re yours now.”
    “I know.”
    “Enjoy ’em.”
    I nodded.
    “We didn’t steal today, Special. We just made life a little more fair.”
    “Okay.”
    He turned and walked away.

Philosophy 3:
About How a Bad Thing
Can Turn Good
Dear Kidd:
You have to find out about a book by this guy who had a stroke and was paralyzed and wrote the whole thing by blinking with his only eye that worked. Olivia talked about it just now, during the first time you ever had a conversation with her, so it has extra meaning. Also, you have to figure out if something good can come from something bad ’cause she asked about that, and you couldn’t think of how to answer ’cause you didn’t want to say anything wrong.
Actually, being in this tent now, and writing … it could have something to do with Mom and that time in the hospital, after Dad hurt her in the living room. Remember?
Mom finally told the doctors she’d see you, and the nurse came and got