Salvation

  A revelation

  The night was insane. He must be high on adrenaline. The game had been incredible. The car was—face it, the car was unlike anything he’d ever planned on riding in during his life. And as designated driver, he was going to get to drive it home.

  But really, he wasn’t even thinking about that drive.

  Because he couldn’t get rid of the realization that had rocked and cracked his world like a broken windshield. Just before the car had pulled up.

  She might be crazy—wearing that thin dress on a night that was maybe twenty-nine degrees. And she might be a nerd—because, really, who from Liberty High School ever applied to go to Stanford? And she was most definitely a walking disaster area.

  But she was also beautiful.

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  Salvation

  ANNE OSTERLUND

  speak

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  SPEAK

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 978-1-101-59543-5

  Copyright © Anne Osterlund, 2013

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  Speak 978-0-14-241770-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  For all the cast members of The Tempest,

  Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and The Taming of the Shrew.

  Burn spectacular.

  Salvation

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Sacrilege

  1: Collision

  2: A Graveyard Butterfly

  3: And a Gentleman

  4: Hell or High Water

  5: Brutal Truths

  6: My Life Had Stood—A Loaded Gun

  7: Homecoming

  8: The Dare

  9: ¿Qué Es?

  10: Heroes

  11: Rehearsal

  12: The Shakespeare Project

  13: Language Barrier

  14: Melted Ice Cream

  15: Friend or Foe

  16: The Trap

  17: Rush

  18: Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on

  19: Passion

  20: An Imminent Explosion

  21: Gasoline

  22: Trauma

  23: Eternity

  24: Silence

  25: Speak

  Epilogue: The March

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  SACRILEGE

  “So you gonna ask her out?” came the inevitable question.

  Salva groaned, though it was hard not to let his gaze linger a little too long on Char’s bare shoulders, gleaming in the late August sun. She knew how to look sexy even at church. “Are you kidding me, man? I’ve known her since I was eight. We were practically raised together.”

  “Must have been rough chasin’ her through your sprinkler.” Pepe grinned, then leaned back against the outer brick wall and rolled a wrapper off a limón candy. “You want one?” he offered.

  Salva shook his head. His father would blow a gasket if he caught him with it at mass. “Look, you want to date Char, she’s all yours.”

  “Right. We both know she ain’t lustin’ after my rep,” Pepe said.

  Salva elbowed him, though jabbing his best friend in the chest was a lot like elbowing the statue of El Pípila, hard as stone. “You break a few more sacking records this fall, and she might start.”

  “Everybody knows you’re gonna be the prime merchandise at school this year,” said Pepe. “She didn’t wear that outfit for me.”

  Once again Salva found himself staring at the teal-green top with the off-the-shoulder sleeves. There was no denying the fact that Charla looked fine.

  His best friend might be right that she’d dressed on Salva’s behalf, but that didn’t mean Salva could ask her out. It wasn’t just that he’d known her forever or that their parents were always pushing their children together; he’d dated Char back in their freshman year for two months, and despite the fact that they shared the same culture, their parents worked the same shift at the onion-processing plant, and he and Char had been in the same class since second-grade migrant summer school, they really didn’t have much to say to each other.

  “We have nothing in common,” he tried to explain to Pepe.

  That went over like a flat football. “Have you lost it, man? She’s hot, and you’re a friggin’ god at our school. What more do you want?”

  Salva shrugged. “Someone who wants the same things I do, I guess.” He’d never heard Charla mention any grander ambition than making head cheerleader, which hadn’t worked out, since her mom had refused to let Char join the squad.

  “Like a state football title?” Pepe mocked. “Not a whole lotta girls lookin’ for that.”

  Salva grinned. His best friend had pretty much a two-track mind: girls and football, in the reverse order. “Like college…and a future.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t all be gods and brainiacs, can we?” The linebacker reached out as though to slug him.

  “Knock it off.” Salva blocked Pepe’s fist. “If my father thinks I’m being blasphemous in church, he just might yank me off the team. He already says it’s too much time off from my studies.”

  “Has he seen your GPA?”

  “Yes, but I have to get a scholarship. I can’t just coast in on football.”

  “Hey!” Pepe argued. “I am taking geometry.”

  “Enjoy that. Lundell’s mind-numbing.”

  “I’d rather be numb than dead. I heard AP calc is like an execution.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  The church bell started to ring, and Char chose that moment to stroll past both Pepe and Salva, her brown shoulders glimmering in the sunlight before disappearing into the vestibule. “Don’t know what good all that brainpower is doing you, man,” Pepe whispe
red, “if you can’t even recognize a God-given gift like her.”

  1

  COLLISION

  “Salvador Resendez.” The sharp tone came from inside the Pen—aka the school’s ominous square front office with its bulletproof windows, legal-form wallpaper, and particleboard cubicles for dividing kids in trouble. Principal Markham appeared. His flabby arms crossed over his paunch as he leaned up against the wraparound counter that separated the office staff from the reality of Liberty High School. “It’s about time. The welcome ceremony starts in five minutes.”

  Salva shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, the girls are taking care of that. I’m doing activity sign-ups on Friday.” He figured he ought to be able to relax and enjoy the first day of the school year.

  Markham’s uneven mustache dipped down at the corners. “You are the president of the Associated Student Body.”

  It’s not my fault Julie Tri-Ang transferred to some fancy prep school. VP would have looked plenty good on a college application. Salva started toward the gym, braving the last-minute traffic of sprinting achievers and dawdling slackers, but Markham called after him. “I need you back here before you go to class.”

  “Why?”

  “Later, Resendez. Now move.”

  The assembly lasted twenty minutes. Nalani Villetti, who’d been elected secretary and was now vice president, at least did her job introducing the teachers and staff members, but Kaitlyn, who had left her speech at home, panicked in front of the crowd. Salva ended up having to vamp and do the whole “Welcome back, everybody. We’re going to have an awesome year” bit. Not that giving the speech was a big deal. It just wasn’t the low-key start he’d intended for his senior year.

  Neither was visiting the principal’s office.

  “Come in, Salvador,” Markham said, dropping his thick body into the padded chair behind his desk. “Seems we have a problem with your current class schedule.”

  Do I have to go through this again? Salva braced his hands against the doorframe. Just because he had taken a few classes ahead of the curve didn’t mean he should have to fight for the advanced courses every year. Why did they always try to schedule students into a box?

  “You aren’t signed up for an English class,” Markham said, the joints on his chair squealing as he leaned back his torso.

  Salva let out a breath. Was that all? “I took senior English last year, remember? I started freshman lit as an eighth grader. You’re the one who made me do that.” Well, technically, it had been Mrs. Lukowski, his middle-school English teacher, who had strong-armed the high school into accepting him and four other top students. Back then, Salva had been a bit afraid of Mrs. Lukowski.

  “You still need four years of English in high school. It’s state law.”

  Salva just stared. This was stupid, far too stupid for him to waste his breath explaining why. “You’re saying I need to retake freshman English in high school to get it to count?”

  “Don’t be obtuse.” Markham wrapped his thick fingers around an insulated coffee mug. “You need to take AP English.”

  Salva’s grip on the doorframe faltered. “With the Mercenary?”

  Markham grimaced, looked as though he might rebut the use of the school-wide moniker, then disdained the effort and took a swig from his mug. Coffee drizzled around the edge of his mouth and dripped down onto the mountain of papers piled on his cheap metal desk. “You’re more than capable of taking her course.”

  Capable. Not stupid. “I have advanced physics and AP calc. You can’t expect me to take on the Mercenary, too.”

  The principal gave him a look of false pity, then lifted a coffee-stained printout from the top of his pile. “Your new schedule. I removed you from phys ed II. A waste of your time, Mr. Resendez.”

  Salva fumed. He knew better than Markham what was a waste of his own time.

  “That’s all.” The principal tossed the printout across the desk and gulped another swig of coffee. “Hurry, or you’ll be tardy for second period.”

  That would be AP English. Great.

  Salva snagged the revised schedule, then freed himself from the Pen and made a beeline for his locker. By the time he’d retrieved his notebook, the hall had cleared. He allowed himself to lengthen his strides and pick up speed. The walls flashed past, a blur of peeled paint and dented steel. He swept around the corner—

  And ran headlong into the walking disaster area.

  Beth could have killed him. All the time he spent oblivious to her and he chose this moment to intersect her path. She was already late, and she’d been trying desperately to unwrap her remaining school supplies so that the second-period teacher wouldn’t glare at her the way the homeroom instructor had. Papers flew out of Beth’s arms, across the floor, and under the slice of space beneath the lockers. Her open backpack fell, emptying its contents into the pile. Devastation.

  She dropped to her knees.

  He had the audacity to sigh. As if ramming his way around the corner was her fault. Frantically, she started to scramble, cramming pencils, folders, notebooks, erasers, and books into her backpack.

  The bell rang.

  She reached for a binder, and his hand stopped her.

  He pulled the object toward him and snapped open the rings. “You know,” he said, “if you put the paper in here, it won’t make such a mess.”

  She glared at his slicked hair and spotless T-shirt. Why did organized people act so patronizing? But it was hard to argue with him when she realized he’d picked up every stray piece of lined paper. “We’re late,” she muttered as her only form of revenge.

  In the nine years she’d known him, she couldn’t remember El Perfecto ever being tardy.

  He just nodded, handing back the filled binder, then stood, straightened his shoulders, and walked into AP English.

  Salva scanned the stark classroom. The seniors sat so frozen in their seats you’d have thought the air-conditioning was working. Every chair at the back of the room was already filled. With nerds.

  Luka was in the front row. Salva liked Luka. If it weren’t for his phenomenal speed as a running back, nobody at Liberty High would be headed for the state football championship. But sometimes the white guy was just strange.

  What sane person would sit in the front row before the Mercenary? Her scowling expression curled Salva’s stomach. The pointed toe of her shoe tapped out a funeral dirge, and she wielded a bright red marker as if she might stab him with it.

  Salva cut his losses and sat down behind Luka.

  The walking disaster area came in next. But she didn’t know when to hide. Instead, she stood there, stuttering her apologies, trying to untangle the strap of her backpack from her frizzy brown hair, and dropping things, first her pencil, then an eraser, while the entire class waited for her to just sit down.

  “What are you doing here, man?” Luka whispered to Salva.

  Markham, Salva mouthed. Enough said.

  Luka rolled his eyes in response.

  What are you doing here? Salva wanted to ask, but a second glance around the room revealed the presence of Nalani Villetti, the girl whom Luka had been following around like a puppy for the past six months. Sooner or later, he’d wake up to the fact that she was letting him follow her.

  But Salva didn’t have time to clarify that point just now.

  The Mercenary had headed his way with a stapled form that was already in everyone else’s possession. Her hand slammed down on his desk, leaving a synopsis of the three million hours of work she expected this quarter. “Welcome to AP English,” she told the class.

  Yeah, friggin’ welcome.

  Somehow Salva made it through the rest of that torture session. He cruised through finance and survived the first-day lecture for AP calc. Mostly due to the promise of lunch.

  He conquered the food line by piling his tray with as much protein as he could and snatching an extra milk, then touched down on the prime spot in the cafeteria, Table Numero Uno, bequeathed to him by last year’s seniors
and now solely the possession of Salva and his friends.

  “What the H, man? I thought you were takin’ PE. You know I had to run relay with Tosa here?” Pepe elbowed Ricardo Tosa, whom Salva liked almost as much as his best friend. Tosa was huge. Maybe six-three. Despite his extra height, he mostly just warmed the bench, but his goofy, lighthearted personality was the heart of the football team. Everybody loved him. Even Pepe, who was all about the win.

  “D’you lose?” Salva asked, sitting down on the bench beside his best friend.

  “No, of course not,” Pepe replied. “The class is mostly just sophomores. I had to talk Gregson into letting us in, you know. I thought you were comin’ with.”

  “Markham,” Salva said.

  Pepe just stared, French fries in his hand. Not as quick on the uptake as Luka.

  “He stuck me in AP English,” Salva explained.

  The fries dropped to the table.

  Tosa picked them up, dipped them in Tabasco, and swallowed them before his friend had recovered.

  “You aren’t serious,” Pepe said.

  “As a playoff game,” replied Salva.

  “F-it. Tell Markham to go for a dunk. I bet he never took an AP course in his life. You don’t wind up in a sinkhole like this with a high-powered degree.”

  Pepe had a point, but it wouldn’t do any good to go on hating Markham. It was a little late to undo the decision to take freshman lit in the eighth grade. Salva explained the logistics.

  “You see.” Tosa grinned. “It pays to be an underachiever.”

  No way. Salva’s gut rebelled against the statement. The cost for that mind-set was far too steep. He glanced around the sunken cafeteria. Salva knew the life story of probably 90 percent of the kids filling the room. Despite the open campus, almost the entire student body was here for free and reduced lunch. The one thing that made you stick out at Liberty High like nothing else was money. No one had it.

  If they did, they switched to somewhere out of the district, like Julie Tri-Ang. Not that Julie really had money. She just had the grades for a prep-school scholarship. And a set of parents who weren’t afraid to have their daughter board two hundred miles away.