Every Last Promise (3 page)

THIS IS A MOVIE-SET
kind of place.

The two bed-and-breakfasts proudly display their mentions in national travel magazines in glass frames next to their front doors. The grassy park hosts Fourth of July picnics and Easter egg hunts for boys in linen shorts suits and girls in pastel organza. Third Street shops are trimmed with tidy white wood fences and bells on their door handles. It's a dream town to raise a family in. That's what they'll tell you, at least. That's what you'll believe. The way I always have. Because it's the part of this town you can
see
.

Even in a dream town like this, a pain presses on my chest like the drop in pressure before a tornado.

I walk into Toffey's Coffees alone and set my bag on a small table, staring out the window at the streets coming to life. Aunt Bea texts again.
Did you sleep okay?

I quickly text back yes. I don't want her to worry the way she did all those nights immediately following the accident when I kept my eyes open as long as I could at night, because closing them revealed horrors I didn't want to see. Those nights when exhaustion finally took over and I slept, only to wake tangled in damp sheets and mewling cries that brought Aunt Bea to my bedside.

I text back yes because yes is what I want to be the truth.

Erica Brewster, respected wife, mother, and county prosecutor, strides to her office building down the street. The last time I saw her, she told me she trusted me to keep an eye on everyone at Jen's party. Make sure everyone stayed safe, didn't do anything stupid. Used to be, I could be counted on for that kind of thing.

My eyelids fall in a long blink.

That relentless pressure tightens. Slowly releases with my breath.

I grab my wallet, leaving everything else at the little table, knowing that I'm drawing stares from the few customers here this early—mostly old, retired farmers who can't shake a lifetime of waking up before dawn—as I walk to the counter to place my order. Are they watching because they recognize me? Whispering to each other,
That's the girl, the one who killed that boy last spring
? The air becomes thick, like breathing underwater.

I swallow acid and scan the titles on the specialty drinks board. The Mayan Revenge isn't on the menu, and I know it. It's one of those secret-handshake types of things I know about because two years ago Caleb dated the barista who invented it. Ground cinnamon, cocoa powder, and cayenne blended with three shots of espresso, plus vanilla and almond syrups topped with milk foam. Ordering one will help me feel like I'm home. I know about something that an outsider
wouldn't. A town secret.

Caleb's ex doesn't work here anymore and I wonder if the guy in front of me now knows how to make one. Noah Michaelson, a senior like me. His golden skin is darkened after a summer of working outdoors and his sandy hair hangs in his face. I know him. Have known him my whole life. His family's farm is about a mile from my place. We played together when we were little kids, but I can't remember much more than plastic wading pools and him yanking on my pigtails. He was never really part of my world after that. Especially when we got to high school. I talked to him occasionally, in passing. Once, right before Jen's party last spring. He's a quiet, odd kind of guy who is into . . . folk music. Or something. But I can't imagine that playing the banjo is the reason his biceps are gently pushing at the sleeves of his T-shirt.

When I ask if he knows how to make a Mayan Revenge, he nods while looking down at the register, examining the tip jar, checking over his shoulder at the stacks of to-go cups. Anywhere but at me.

“One of those, then. Sixteen ounces.”

Noah writes my name carefully on the cup, finishing the “a” with a sharp, downward movement. The bell on the door tinkles, and I turn to see Selena walking in. She heads for a table on the opposite side of the coffee shop without even glancing in my direction. Unless I turn around and
leave now, without the coffee and without my things, she will see me.

I can't hide forever. I don't want to. But I also can't brush away the fear that gnaws at the lining of my belly. The need to flee from what I did. The anxiety that I've burned my bridges and can't rebuild them. My whole life I've been like a fish in a school, surrounded by friends and family and home, until that May night, when suddenly I was caught in a fisherman's hook, dangling and gasping for air.

I want back in the water.

The sound of the milk steamer wand isn't enough to drive away the knowledge that Selena is right behind me. My ankles cross, then uncross. I lean against the counter, digging my hip into the black laminate, the seam at my jeans pocket cutting my skin.

Noah slides the finished drink to me and tucks his hair behind his ears. I pass him a five and then drop the change in the tip jar.

“Hey,” he says quietly as I'm just about to turn away. His eyes rise, finally, to catch my gaze. “Welcome home.”

My words lodge themselves in my throat. I inhale the cayenne sprinkled on the top of my drink's foam and that startles my senses enough to make me cough. I give Noah a small smile. Because despite the way people are looking at me, despite being afraid to see Selena, despite Noah being no one important to me, his welcome means
everything
.

“Thanks.”

I take a sip of my Mayan Revenge and my lips prickle. The rush that dances through my veins gives me goose bumps before settling into a comforting, slow burn down my throat. But it's not enough to forget where I am. To stop wondering if Selena's seen me yet. What she's thinking if she has.

Selena was always Bean's best friend first, the way I was Jen's. But it was rare for any of the four of us to split that way. We all were bound together by girlish secrets told under starry skies. Who we had crushes on. Crying together over heartaches from stupid fights that never lasted long. Our dreams for what our lives would be like after we graduated. Jen talked about starting her own business and watching it grow from a big-city high-rise. Bean wanted to be an art teacher, was always joking about warping the minds of the next generation. Selena craved getting in front of the camera to give the sports report. And I always said that I would stay behind, because the idea of leaving home was unbearable. Study nursing at the community college. Always keep a spare room for when my best friends came back to visit.

I set my drink down slowly, turn, and lock eyes with Selena.

She rises out of her chair and my stomach flutters as she approaches. Her expression is carefully neutral, but that doesn't stop my smile from beginning, growing, stretching from my face down to my heart. I pick up my drink.

“Selena,” I begin when she gets to the counter.

She faces the menu. And hip checks me.

I stumble backward, my heels thudding against the tile floor as I try to catch myself. My hot drink sloshes over the front of me, soaking into my shirt and searing my skin. I pull my shirt away quickly, gasping. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I bite my tongue and battle them back. The other customers cradle their coffee mugs and look from me to their companions and back, not knowing what to do. One rises halfheartedly, then changes his mind and sits again. Selena stares straight ahead. Noah is grabbing a wet towel and heading around the counter and I think he's going to bend down and wipe the puddle on the floor but he doesn't. He holds the towel out to me.

I shake my head and leave my drink on the counter, my hand trembling so that I'm sure the mug's rattle can be heard across the coffee shop. My face burns. It is everything I can do not to cry as I move back to my table, forcing my feet not to run. A black hole opens in my chest and I want to curl into it and hide.

I stuff my things into my backpack, crushing paper, snapping the tip off my pencil because my body can't stop trembling, and push through the door. The damned bell alerts everyone to my escape. The sound rings through my head long after the bell stops moving.

Kayla Martin. Running away again
.

I don't care. I hurry away. People are watching. My movements are staggered, jagged-edged like a broken window. My shoes slam against the concrete of the sidewalk, and I wish my skin was thicker, dense enough to not care about what I know everyone's thinking. What they're all saying.

About the girl who killed a boy then skipped town.

A sob escapes and my shoulders quake and I can't help it. I wish I could. I don't want sympathy.

I don't.

I want home.

I want this place so much.

But they don't want me back.

“ALMOST FORGOT TO TELL
you before, I invited Noah Michaelson to your party. Told him to bring his banjo,” I said to Jen as we watched T. J. pull his truck next to Jay's SUV.

“When were you talking to him?”

“Between third and fourth. He asked me for riding photos for the yearbook ages ago and he wanted to tell me that they ended up making them a full-page spread. He's nice.”

“He's a nerd. Didn't Jay beat him up in middle school?”

“Him and everyone else. But so? Everyone's coming, right?” I stepped off the porch to meet T. J. on the driveway.

“I guess,” Jen said to my back.

I'd showered and changed into a T-shirt that I'd left at Jen's after our last sleepover, so I didn't feel as much like something my horse had rolled around in.

T. J. noticed. His eyes swept me appreciatively head to foot. I fought back a smile. “Mind if I ride with you?” I asked.

“Think you can handle this bad boy?” He raised an eyebrow and I laughed.

“You're talking about your truck, right?”

“Obviously,” he said.

“Selena and Bean are coming together and Selena's
driving, so I'm going with you two because Selena is crazy,” Jen said, slamming the front door behind her as she came out of her house. “But you have to knock off the flirting when I'm around.”

“Harsh,” T. J. said. “Okay, but I get to pick the music.” He jangled his keys in his pocket.

“No.” I flashed a playful glare at Jen. “I'll pick the music.”

“Who're we still waiting on?” Jay yelled out the window. He'd already started his car, and it was filled with guys from the football team hollering for him to get going. Behind Jay, Steven McInnis had another four guys crammed in his Ford. People loved riding with Steven because he knew, completely, that his car was a pile of crap, which meant he held nothing back on the slick gravel.

Just then, Bean's car rounded the corner in the distance, with Selena at the wheel. Bean never drove during joyriding, and Selena didn't have a car but loved driving, so they traded places on nights like this. Bean was belted in and shrank down in the passenger seat and Selena whooped it up out her window as the Honda approached.

“Just Pete and whoever he's bringing, but he'll have to meet up with us there. I'm tired of waiting,” Jen hollered back as I slid across T. J.'s seat. Jen pushed in after me. She slammed the door shut and grinned. Her light brown hair was covered with a turquoise cowgirl hat. “Giddy up, pardner.”

T. J. hopped back in and fired up the old truck. We
peeled out of the driveway after Jay and Steven. Selena and Bean sped toward us, bringing up the rear. A quarter mile past Jen's house, we took a right and headed out to the gravel county roads. Just as Jen said, there was machinery out there and bright orange Fresh Oil warning signs on the sides. The workers had gone home for the day and we were out here alone.

I rolled the truck radio dial between my fingers, honing in on a rock station through the static.

“Why don't you ever replace that radio?” Jen said, putting the window up so her hat didn't fly off her head.

“It's vintage,” T. J. said. I snorted. But I loved this old truck. Its half powder-blue, half red-brown-rust paint job, the long crack running across the bottom of the windshield, even the manual door locks. The way the guy driving it fit the whole image, with his perfectly faded T-shirt and jeans.

“Yeah, right,” Jen said. “I'm just hoping we don't break down out here because Jay's car is going to stink with all those boys in there, and I do
not
want to ride home with him.”

“There is a well-loved machine under this hood,” T. J. said.

Jen rolled her eyes. “Pull your machine over. Jay's going first.”

T. J. took the truck to the side of the road behind Steven's Ford and let the engine idle. We watched Jay's SUV pick up
speed, then, with a suddenness that slammed bodies against doors, launch into a doughnut. The guys inside yelled and stuck their heads out the windows as they spun. When the car stopped, Jay returned to the middle of the road and shot off into the dark for a second spin on the next stretch of road. Steven pulled his car out and followed Jay's tracks, his car spinning, catching enough air to spin on two wheels for a split second. When they landed, his passengers pounded their fists on the roof of his car.

Then we were up.

T. J. pulled out. His foot pressed harder on the gas. The truck bellowed in response, pushing our backs against the seat as we went faster and faster. My pulse pounded with the thrill of sixty, seventy, seventy-five miles per hour. Gravel flew up behind us, blurring my view of Selena and Bean in the rearview mirror. When we got close to the spot where Jay and Steven had spun out, I needed air.

“Trade with me!” I said to Jen.

I flung my body over Jen and she skidded underneath me. Our limbs knotted up for a brief moment, but then we were free again and she was fixing her hat. I clutched the window crank and pumped. As the window lowered, cool air—the temperature caught somewhere between winter and summer—filled the cab.

Before I could think too much about it, I grabbed the edge of the truck roof and hauled myself through the window to
sit in the doorframe. My heart pounded in my shoulders and neck. In the distance, the soft lights of my hometown glimmered. The heady scent of hot oil filled my nostrils, lying heavy in my lungs.

“Kayla!” Jen screamed. A light on the dashboard illuminated her face with green. “I'll kill you if you fall!”

“Hold on to her legs,” T. J. yelled, not looking from the road, his face screwed up with concentration. I felt Jen's arms wrap around me. Wind whistled around my upper body, filling my ears with so much sound I almost couldn't hear Jen's uncontrollable laughter or the shocked screams coming from the other cars.

My long blond hair whipped around my face and neck, the rushing air pricked at my skin. I felt free, like I was soaring. With my chin tipped back, I saw a black sky full of pin-drop stars. They were so still, the enormous backdrop of them, and I was moving so fast. Blood rushed to my head as I threw it back farther, exposing my throat to the night.

“Spinning!” T. J. hollered.

On cue, my hands gripped the truck as tightly as I could. T. J. turned the wheel and, like magic, his tires caught on enough oil to send us spiraling across the gravel. But I felt weightless. Floating. I closed my eyes against the beautiful dizziness that was building inside me. Car horns honked their approval. Inside the truck, Jen still laughed. With her holding my legs, I was secure. Safe. And even if I did slip
from her grasp, the blanketing sky above me, I knew, would catch me as I went flying out of the truck. Would cradle me gently. In a moment that felt like time had stopped for me, that nothing bad could ever happen to me, not in this town, not with these people holding me tightly to them, I let go of the truck, raising my palms to the air, and shouted my joy to the sky.