The Hard Kind of Promise (15 page)

The mood in the bus shifted dramatically as the bus pulled into the college parking lot. Without being asked, everyone stopped talking. Sarah saw Robert fiddle with the buttons of his shirt cuffs. Sean Souza, who had been slouched down low in his seat, long legs in the aisle, suddenly sat up straight.

"Cell phones off," Mr. Roche said. "Let's go."

They followed him into the Music Building, whose main foyer was full of middle school kids in formal attire. All the boys wore white shirts and dark pants, but the girls' clothes were different. Girls from one school wore matching floor-length navy blue dresses with high necks and puffy sleeves. Girls from another wore black turtlenecks and black slacks.

"I like the dresses best," Lizzie whispered. "Why can't Keith School get those?"

"They're probably too expensive," Sarah whispered back.

"I hope we don't get judged on what we wear," Lizzie said.

"We're really good," Sarah said. "That should be enough."

She wanted to win. But it was a different feeling
from wanting to win at poker, a game she didn't really care about and barely knew how to play. Last night, she realized with surprise, hadn't really been about wanting to win. She had wanted to beat Sean.

But now, falling in line with the others behind Mr. Roche, who was running his fingers around the back of his neck, making sure that the collar of his tuxedo jacket was lying flat, she heard her own voice in her head saying calmly, Please let us win.

It wasn't a prayer. She wasn't asking. She was urging herself to do the best she could.

They stood in a semicircle on the dimly lit stage, the judges well hidden in the auditorium's shadowy darkness. Facing them, Mr. Roche tapped his baton on the music stand and raised his arms. Uncharacteristically, he met their eyes and winked. It was his way of telling them they had worked hard, that he was proud.

Sarah felt the curious sensation of her body tightening and relaxing at the same time. She opened her mouth, her lungs ready to fill with air, the music at attention inside her, waiting to be released.

They sang for twenty minutes, but when they had taken a bow and begun to file offstage, it seemed to her as though they hadn't even started. She wished they had prepared more songs. She could have sung for hours.

They found out that they won two hours later, after the last chorus had sung, after the judges had deliberated and announced the results on the stage of the now-packed auditorium. Sarah jumped to her feet with her choir mates and whooped for joy. She threw her arms around Lizzie.

"We did it!" Lizzie whispered in her ear, and Sarah hugged her harder, amazed at how proud she was, how good it felt.

And puzzled, too, because she had thought she wouldn't care so much.

On the bus back to the motel, Mr. Roche stood in the aisle. He looked naked without his clipboard, which he'd left on his seat.

"Attention, people!" he called, his feet wide apart to brace himself against the stops and starts. "We're invited to a party tonight."

The boys began to chant, "Par-ty, par-ty," and dance in their seats. Sarah laughed; these were the same boys who shuffled awkwardly around the dance floor at Cotillion, who shoved whole cookies into their mouths and forgot to wipe the crumbs off their lips.

"It's for all the choirs who took part in the competition." Mr. Roche had to yell to be heard. "And even though it's a party, we're still going to be on our best behavior. Is that clear?"

"It's a good thing I brought my Cotillion stuff," Lizzie said to Sarah. "What are you going to wear?"

"Just jeans." Would everyone else have thought to bring fancy clothes? Sarah began to worry. What if she was the only one in jeans and a hoodie? And then, suddenly, the worry disappeared, evaporated like a pool of water on hot cement.

So what if she was the only one?

"Is there going to be dancing?" Molly Worth called out.

"There's going to be music, but no dancing," Mr. Roche said. "You apes can't dance."

Everyone laughed. A few boys hooted and scratched themselves under their armpits.

"Maybe I'll wear jeans, too," Lizzie said.

The party was held in the foyer of the Music Building at the college. The room was crowded with the same kids who'd been there earlier in the day. Everyone wore jeans.

To the left of the front entrance, a table had been set with platters of deviled eggs, cheese and crackers, sliced ham and turkey, rye bread and sourdough rolls, and chocolate chip cookies. Women in black pants and stiff white shirts filled cups with soda and bottled water.

"You know how at Cotillion the moms make this
big deal about eating neatly and not spilling? And how by the end of the night, the boys' shirts are stained and crumby?" Sarah said to Lizzie. "Isn't it funny how no one's spilling anything here?"

"I think it's the fact that they have to wear suits," Lizzie said. "I think they can't move right. Or maybe the suits are too tight and cut off circulation to their brains." She took a careful bite of deviled egg and surveyed the room. "See any cute boys?"

"Not really," Sarah said, pretending to look. Really, she was just trying to spot Robert.

"Are we supposed to be talking to all these kids we don't know?" Lizzie asked. "I hate that."

"We can talk to anyone we want," Sarah said. "It looks as though everyone is just hanging out with people they already know."

"Then what's the point of having a party?"

Sarah folded a piece of ham onto a roll and took a bite. "Let's just go up to some people we don't know and say 'hi,'" she said.

Lizzie stared at her. "Really?"

"Well, what
is
the point of having a party? You just said."

"But what if no one says 'hi' back? Or what if they say 'hi,' and then no one can think of anything else to say?" Lizzie looked as though Sarah had just suggested
that they make a running leap from one ten-story rooftop to another.

"Oh, come on." Sarah felt bad at the impatience in her voice. "We'll think of something," she added, forcing herself to sound encouraging. "Let's just do it."

"But what if—?"

"Come on," she said again, putting her hand firmly on Lizzie's back, propelling her forward. "Be brave."

Standing near the door to the auditorium was a cluster of kids. They were all munching on sandwiches and cookies, concentrating on tidy eating, momentarily not talking. Sarah recognized one of the girls from earlier in the day.

"Were you wearing those cool long dresses this morning?" she asked, gently inserting herself into their circle.

The girl she recognized had nearly black hair and blue bangs so long that they hung over her black-framed glasses like a patio awning.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "I dyed my hair to match."

"Cool. I'm Sarah, by the way. And this is Lizzie," she said, stepping to the side, allowing Lizzie in.

"Oh, we loved your dresses," Lizzie said. "Those were the coolest uniforms here."

"I'm Daisy. And this is Jeanette and Paul and Lindsay." Daisy gestured feebly at her friends. "Where are you from?"

"Keith School, near San Francisco," Lizzie said.

"Ooh, you guys won!" Jeanette beamed with excitement. She was the kind of girl, Sarah knew, who pretended that everything was exciting. "That is so amazing!"

"Thanks," Sarah said.

"You guys always win," Paul said. "We suck."

"We pretty much suck, too," Lizzie said. Sarah knew she was saying it just to be nice.

"We suck more, though," Paul said. "If there was a contest for sucking, we'd win."

They made conversation for a while. Sarah learned that they were from Deer Mountain Middle School in Fresno, that their choir director had hair plugs but pretended he didn't, and that the best thing about Deer Mountain was one of the science teachers, who let you listen to your iPod while you did experiments.

They talked until more kids from Deer Mountain joined the group and eventually overtook the conversation. Sarah thought that maybe she and Daisy might exchange e-mail addresses, but in the end, that seemed pointless, a gesture that would have felt insincere. "See ya," she said, and Daisy smiled warmly and said, "Yeah, okay." It was just right.

"They were nice," Lizzie said as they inched their way back to the food table. "It was good that you made us go talk to them."

"It's not so bad talking to new people," Sarah said. "I used to hate it." She remembered the first time she and Lizzie had gone to the Juice Warehouse after school: how hard it had been to think of things to say, how important it had seemed to fill in all the pauses with more words.

"You're good at being friendly," Lizzie said.

"You're friendly, too," Sarah said, flushing at the compliment.

"Yeah, but I'm only friendly if someone else has been friendly first," Lizzie said. "It's hard for me to be first."

Sarah tried to remember back to the first days of chorus. Hadn't Lizzie made the first overtures?

"People like you," Lizzie said. "People feel safe with you."

"Really?"

Lizzie nodded. "Everybody," she said.

"Not everybody," Sarah said. "Alison Mulvaney said I was a loser."

They had reached the snack table, where the crowd had thinned considerably after the last chocolate chip cookie had been eaten. Still, Sarah lowered her voice when she said it. She felt ashamed, as though she had committed a gross faux pas in public.

Lizzie laughed and shook her head. "Remember that first time we went out for smoothies?" she asked.

Sarah nodded.

"The next day, Alison cornered me in the hallway. She asked me why we were at the Juice Warehouse. Like, were we working on a class project together? Or did we each go separately and just happen to run into each other? I said no, that we'd gone together, that we were friends."

"Why was she asking?" Sarah said. "Why did she even care?"

"When I said we were friends, she said I should be careful, that you never liked anyone but Marjorie. That she tried to get you into her group and you weren't interested."

"What group? With Zannie and Yvonne?"

"That's what she said." Lizzie pulled her hair off her neck and puffed upward, trying to cool herself with her own breath. "It's hot in here!"

"They never wanted me in their group," Sarah said. "But I wouldn't have wanted to be in it anyway. And not because of Marjorie. Because they're mean."

"Well, that's what she said," Lizzie said. She fanned the back of her neck with her hand. "I didn't tell you, because I knew it was stupid."

"Of course it's stupid," Sarah said, but less vehemently, with less certainty, thinking it was funny that Alison would have told Lizzie such a lie when she had called her a loser in the girls' bathroom.

"I mean, it's not like there's some rule that you can only have one friend," Lizzie said.

THE NEXT MORNING on the flight back, Sarah sat next to Robert. She had been intending to sit next to Lizzie, but during preboarding, Lizzie had begun asking Jason Webb about the details of various poker games and had become so engrossed in his answers that she and Robert had agreed to switch seats.

Now, as the plane soared above the gray, barren land below, Robert said, "My parents won't believe we won. They'll want to see a trophy or a plaque."

"My dad will say if I like winning so much, I should try out for soccer or baseball. He won't get it at all," Sarah said.

Just saying it made her sad.

"My mom will be proud, though. And my grandpa," she added.

"Have you ever heard of Knights in the Round?" Robert asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went on. "It's a men's a cappella group. They sing madrigals and rounds. Without instruments," he added, as though she might not know what "a cappella" meant. "My parents got me two tickets for my birthday. They said I could bring a friend."

"Cool," she said, trying to breathe through the bubbly chaos that had suddenly erupted in her body. Realizing that she knew what was coming, that it was what she thought she had wanted all along.

Robert hunched one shoulder toward his ear, then said softly, "You want to go with me?"

She breathed and smiled. She thought, Lizzie will kill me.

"I can't go on dates with boys until high school," she lied. "My mom's pretty strict about that."

Maybe it wasn't a lie. Now that she thought about it, she imagined that her mom had rules about boys and dating. Rules that hadn't yet been articulated, but existed nonetheless.

All she knew was that she wasn't ready. Dating hinted at new obstacles, new complications for which she still felt unprepared. She was just starting to get the hang of friendships. Friendships were hard enough.

"Oh," Robert said. His eyes, cast downward, refused to meet hers. She was surprised to see how crushed he was. She had forgotten to think how hard it had been for him to ask.

"Is the show sold out?" she asked.

He barely shrugged.

"Because if there are more tickets, maybe we can try to get more kids to go. I could go if there was a group," Sarah said. "Lizzie and Jason, maybe."

Robert brightened a little. "I'll ask my mom. She bought the tickets," he said. "That might be fun."

He sounded, to Sarah, a little relieved.

"Yeah," she said, turning to watch as the cars and houses—ant-size, unreal—slowly came into clearer view beneath her. Enlarging, they became the things they really were, hinting more concretely at the people who drove and lived in them, their pleasures and sorrows and wonders and aches, their complicated lives.

"Maybe we can all get together for poker night once a week," Robert was saying.

"Sure," she said as the plane touched down and her own life came rushing up to meet her.

Mom made a special dinner—meat loaf with strips of bacon on top, mashed potatoes with garlic and sour cream, a salad, and brownies for dessert—to mark her return. Grandpa arrived, even though Friday was usually the night he had dinner with his Alcoholics Anonymous friends. "Missed you," he said, hugging Sarah against his side.

"I was hardly gone at all," she said, glad anyway for the hug.