Every Last Promise (5 page)

And Jay . . . His lips press together. His grasp on his backpack is tight. What is going through his head, facing the girl
who killed one of his friends? The girl who knows the terrible things he's capable of. He nods once in my direction, but not quite
at
me, then walks away.

But Jen. She waits for me to approach her, her features hard like rock, bringing a rush of white noise to my ears. It's the same buzzing that follows me around since that night last May, the same sounds I just heard in first period math: crinkling metal, hot rain on pavement. Gravel falling back to earth.

She doesn't approach me but waits for my footsteps to find her.

I've told Jen Brewster that she's my best friend a million times. I've drawn thousands of hearts on notes we've passed. Once, I told her that I didn't know what I'd do without her.

For months, I was without her, and I was scared she was back here despising me with the same intensity that I loved her.

Love her.

I try to anticipate what's going to come out of her mouth, but I have no idea what Jen will say. There's nowhere for me to turn, and I swear I won't run away again.

I fumble for a word, for the right words. But nothing comes. I stop at my locker. Tuck my fingers under the strap of my bag.

“You came back,” Jen says.

I can't tell if she is angry or curious or condescending or
happy. And that's not me and Jen. I used to be able to know what she was thinking with barely a glance. I feel ill.

“Yeah.” The word is husky, filled with unshed tears. “How have you been?”

Her mouth twitches and I can hear what she doesn't say:
Who are you to ask that question?
Instead, “I heard you were back in town. Weird.”

My heart drops to my feet, crushes. She's not even being mean about it, and there's not a trace of bitterness. She's controlled, matter of fact. There's
nothing
.

“I'm back.”

I glance at the people walking past us, staring, not bothering to hide their interest in my conversation with Jen. They want a first-day-of-school scene to talk about. I know, because I would have wanted the same thing last year. Now I want our scene to disappear into the wall.

“I heard you were in Kansas City. Nice there?”

I swallow. “It's different.”

“But it must've been nice. After everything. To go somewhere different.”

“I needed . . .” What did I need that wasn't obvious, that she doesn't already know? “To come back.”

“I thought your leaving was a good idea.”

I clutch my bag to my shoulder, refusing to let it slide down my arm the way I want to slide down these lockers.

She shifts. Less than an inch. A microscopic movement
of the bottom of her shoes, a twitch in her ankle. Something only someone who
knows
her would see.

“Jen . . .” Why is it so hard to say it?
I missed you
. But my tongue dances around the syllables, ties itself like a sailor's knot on the “I” and won't let go. This vulnerability with Jen is new. Unwelcome. Terrifying.

Jen's line of vision shifts to a spot over my shoulder and her eyes narrow. I turn slowly, not knowing what to expect. Bean stands several feet back, watching us, one hand reaching into her locker.

“See you around,” Jen says to the back of my head.

When I twist back to face her, she's already moving away.

“Wait—”

“No, Kayla. I had to wait for you. Now, you can wait for me.”

I stand there in the hallway, watching her back. An arm slams into my shoulder and there's laughter. A random voice I don't recognize mutters, “Killer Kayla.”

Killer.

Like I did it on purpose.

Which . . . I had.

THE FOUR OF US
snuggled under layers of blankets, our fingers greasy with buttered popcorn. Selena had been talking for fifteen minutes about how, since we were almost seniors, she was only dating college boys from now on. Bean rolled her eyes toward me and we shared a secret, patient smile, our hair mingling across our pillows like eddies of yellow and red. Jen licked her fingers clean of butter and perused the bottles of nail polish I'd brought down from my room.

“Steven McInnis had the balls to text me last night,” Selena said. “At, like, one a.m. Like I'm a booty call? I don't even know how he got my phone number. Loser.”

“He was with Jay last night,” Jen said. “Jay was probably drunk and gave it to him.”

“Why do they even hang out together?” I said. Steven McInnis wasn't that well-liked, except for when he was with Jay.

“The great football brotherhood,” Jen said. Her voice lowered dramatically and she waved her hands in the air. “Once, they would have gathered naked in great Roman coliseums and wrestled to the death. Bloodbaths of honor. Now, they hide under layers of padding and throw a stupid ball across a field.”

“Shame how things have changed. They used to get all oiled up, too,” Selena said over our laughter. “Gleaming muscles. Ooh yes. Now we're lucky if guys don't smell like hogs.”

I snorted. “You watch too many gladiator movies. I'm pretty sure those ancient guys were ripe, too. Deodorant wasn't invented back then.”

“Lucky for girls back then, body spray wasn't invented, either. I hate when guys douse themselves in that stuff. Yuck.” Jen shoved a handful of popcorn in her mouth and unscrewed a bottle of nail polish.

“I prefer a little smelly to oily and naked.” Bean wrinkled her nose. “But mostly, I wouldn't want to see their . . .
things
flinging all over the place when they wrestled.
Ew
.”

“Your imagination is lacking.” Selena giggled and reached over me to tickle Bean in the ribs. “I just wouldn't want to see the junk of anyone around here. But gladiators? Oh yes. Give me a real man any day.”

“Blah, blah, college guys. Yeah, we've heard it before. This town isn't a complete wasteland of boys,” I said, shoving Selena back in her place. A half-popped kernel stuck in my teeth and I paused to dig it out.

“Are you talking about T. J.?” Selena said. “Hotness is not everything.”

“Works for now.” I shrugged. “Not like I'm trying to find my soul mate and settle down or anything.”

“What about Jay? I can imagine him in some kind of
gladiatorial combat,” Selena said.

Jen scowled at the way her nail polish brush skipped across her finger messily. “Can we not talk about my brother and oil at the same time? I'm going to puke.”

“You two would be cute together,” Selena continued, nudging Bean. “He keeps sitting next to you at lunch.”

“Seriously?” Bean gave Selena an incredulous look. “He just barely broke up with Hailey. It's like second degree of separation spit swapping.”

“Gross,” I agreed.

Jen blew on her nails to dry them and looked at us. Saying nothing.

“This town needs some new blood.” Selena sighed. “Did you happen to invite anyone I don't know to your party, Jen?”

“I invited everyone who matters.” Jen frowned at her nails and reached for a cotton ball to wipe off the red polish.

“So, same old, same old, then,” Selena said.

“There are some nice guys around here,” Bean said. “What about Noah Michaelson? Didn't you say you invited him, Kayla?”

Selena pulled her shoulders a few inches off the floor so she could give Bean the evil eye. “He's weird. Does he ever say a word to anyone? I don't think you actually love me anymore.”

“You're one to talk. Didn't you just suggest Jay—” She broke off, her smile fading and her glance flicking up at Jen.

“Oh Jesus,” Jen said, choosing a new nail polish color. “It's not like I don't know the truth about my own brother. Even if he wasn't my brother, I'd never date him.”

That strange, heavy silence fell over us again. Selena finally broke it by grabbing the remote and pointing it at the TV. “This movie is crap. Let's dance.”

The quick inhale of air the rest of us took left me light-headed for a moment. I ran upstairs for my laptop and put on my dance playlist, then sat on the couch next to Jen and slowly unscrewed the cap to the glittery gold polish.

I thought about the time I'd had a crush on Jay Brewster. I was probably ten or eleven and he was just starting to form muscles in his scrawny arms. He'd so far avoided the awkward phase it seemed every other boy our age was going through and looked poised to dodge it completely. But my infatuation had faded quickly. Even then, Jay Brewster knew he was something special, and his ego's growth spurts matched his body's.

When Hailey first started going out with Jay last fall, we'd thought it was strange. Jay usually dated girls who worshipped him, but Hailey wasn't the kind of girl to have patience for diva types. She was Bean's older sister, and we all looked up to her as an example of independence and strong will, staying at the top of her class all throughout high school, getting into big-name schools, leading the field hockey team in goals. Over the past year, Jay had mellowed a little bit,
though. Her influence seemed to be good. Until the weeks leading to their breakup.

Once, back in February, I came down Jen's stairs to overhear Jay telling Steven that he always got what he wanted. And Steven agreeing with him. Who could stop boys like them? They'd laughed. I'd brushed it off then. It was easy to talk big. Nothing to take seriously.

Still, I'd felt compelled to grab the cookies I'd come down for and hightail it back upstairs, crossing my arms over my chest because I was wearing a fitted T-shirt and no bra underneath.

In my living room now, Selena flung her head and arms around to the music. Her reaction to bralessness and boys was different than mine. She'd given me a flippant
I don't care
earlier in the evening when I'd mentioned that my brother was home and so she might want to wear more than a sports bra and boy shorts, but I knew she cared very much because her eyes roved from the front door to the stairs to the kitchen as though waiting for him to come in and see how beautiful she was.

He was almost a college guy, after all.

I always liked watching Selena and Bean dance. They were so different. Selena looked like she should have been dancing on a stage at a club. But Bean moved like she heard a different song than the rest of us. Her movements were a little
off-tempo, slower. In one moment, Bean reminded me of a little girl. But then I blinked and she swung her hip to the left and she looked so confident that she seemed impossibly far away, older, closer to womanhood than the rest of us. More like the woman Bean's real name, Sabine, suggested. Even though she was the only one of us four who was still a virgin.

I drew the polish brush along my thumbnail and thought again about our one year left to be together in this town. How I wanted to make it special. Sometimes, it felt easy to figure out who everyone else was in our group. Jen, our leader. Selena, the warrior. Bean, the peacekeeper. But me?

Across the room, my most recent competition ribbon sat on the mantle above the fireplace. A huge, ruffled blue thing that I hadn't yet taken to Caramel Star's stall to put with the other ribbons and cups I'd collected over the years. Jen had taken first in dressage but hadn't placed in the top three in jumping. I'd congratulated her, and she'd said, “We did all right, but I just can't get off the ground like you can. You're so much stronger than me. Better grounded in your saddle.”

And maybe that was me. Strong and grounded. I knew, somehow, that after high school, I was going to be the one to keep us close. I was going to be the one to insist we come together, insist they come home regularly and reconnect with one another. Without that, I was afraid the four of us would drift apart.

But we never would. I'd make sure of it.

WHEN MY FIRST DAY
back at school finally ends, I wait for the bus several feet away from the little groups of two and three students, my collar drawn up, my shoulders hunched to my ears even though it's sweltering. My fingers search for fuzz in my pockets.

I stare at Ulysses S. Grant High School to avoid looking at the people around me. To avoid meeting their eyes. Guessing what they're saying because none of them bother covering their mouths with their hands as they gossip about me. T. J.'s so-clever “Killer Kayla” has spread. At first, I wanted to puke every time I heard it. From my old friends. From people I barely know. But now my ears have started tuning it out like background noise.

It's just a beginning, I know. I fluctuate between feeling slowly destroyed and feeling almost buoyed by their actions, as though their words are a penance I have to weather before I can belong again.

I have three classes with Jen and Jay Brewster. Three hours each day to sit in the back corner and pretend to be invisible while people glance over their shoulders every few minutes to check up on me. Three hours to watch her talk and laugh with her friends—our friends—and watch him
give teachers lopsided grins when they reprimand him for talking over their first day of school syllabus reading. Even the ones who frown at him give a reluctant pass. Boys will be boys, and Jay, he's a star in whose orbit everyone shines a little brighter.

Bean stands on the school's front lawn, in front of the boulder engraved with a picture of the mascot, with another girl, someone I don't know, who might have moved here over the summer or is bused in from one of the four towns surrounding ours. I'm not sure if her new friendship makes me happy for Bean or sad. For her, for me. For Jen and Selena. She seems to feel my eyes on her because she looks away from the other girl, and her expression as she faces me is different from everyone else's. There's no hostility. Nothing to read in her eyes, her mouth, her stilled body language.

I watch Bean for too long. My thoughts form questions I've gotten good at ignoring. For a moment, I wonder if she's thinking the same thing I am:
What does she know?
What does she remember?
I tuck the possibility away in a corner of my mind and turn away from the school to face the highway.

I grip my bag tighter. With my other hand, I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, finger my shirt collar, and finally, rest my hand stupidly by the top of my thigh.

I jump when a voice sounds in my ear. Noah Michaelson
stops next to me. “Why are you standing here all alone?”

He doesn't seem uncomfortable to be talking to the school pariah. I study his face: golden skin across high cheekbones, dark, almond-shaped eyes, lips set in a serious line. His dad's white and his mom's Filipina. I recall he spent a year during elementary school in the Philippines with his mom. When he came back, he was different. Something was different. But I didn't see him enough anymore to put my finger on what. When I don't answer his question, he rummages through his backpack, pulling out a candy bar.

“Twix?” he says.

“I'm okay,” I say.

Noah looks over at the school mascot boulder. When he starts to stuff the candy bar package in his pocket, I fiddle with my sweatshirt zipper and begin to turn away, my chest stinging more than I want it to from our three-second exchange.

“Glad to be home?” he says.

I squint down the road, searching for the telltale yellow of the school bus. “I don't know.”

I'm not sure what compels me to be honest with Noah Michaelson. Maybe it's the way he approached me, first. Or how he didn't call me Killer Kayla. Or how we're both kind of outcasts now.

“It's good to see you again,” he says.

I'm glad my face is half obscured by my collar because
my chin trembles when he says it. I swallow back a lump and can't answer him.

The candy wrapper crinkles again. Noah's dark eyebrows are drawn, but then he looks up at me from under his lashes and gives me a weak smile.

“Thanks,” I finally say. I scan the crowd around us, my glance falling, again, on Bean. She's still watching me and something inside me twists. I adjust my bag strap on my shoulder as the bus approaches. “See you later, Noah.”

“Yeah.”

I climb onto the bus, relief taking over when I spot an empty seat. I fall on the bench and look out the window. Noah waves his Twix at me as the bus pulls away from the school.