The Hard Kind of Promise (5 page)

On one of their after-school trips to the Juice Warehouse, Sarah was amazed to find out that Lizzie's parents were divorced, too.

"Since I was in kindergarten," Lizzie said. "I can barely remember what it was like when we all lived in the same house."

"Is your dad remarried?" Sarah asked.

Lizzie nodded. "My mom, too. To
Doug
." She said "Doug" the way other people said "earwax." "Actually, he's not so bad. He's kind of cool, actually. He's a lawyer. He makes tons of money."

"My mom would probably like to marry a lawyer," Sarah said, although she couldn't imagine her being married to anyone.

"Now, my stepmom, on the other hand, is totally heinous," Lizzie said. "Bunny. Bunny Lowitz. Can you even believe that's her name?"

"What do you hate about her?"

"Everything," Lizzie said, sucking the last of her orange-kiwi smoothie into the straw. "She cleans my room without asking just so she can look in my drawers and go through my wastebasket. She buys me bras. To bond with me, she says."

Gross.

"I throw them away. In the dumpster behind the school, so she doesn't find out." Lizzie sighed heavily. "She always tries to have talks with me about sex and drugs. 'Tell me what all the kids are saying,'" Lizzie said, changing her voice to sound shrill and scratchy at the same time.

"My stepmother collects dolls," Sarah said.

"What kind of dolls?"

"Those big ones with googly eyes and ringlets. They're dressed to look like southern belles and queens and Shirley Temple. No matter where you are in my dad's house, there's a doll on a shelf looking at you. It's so creepy."

Lizzie shook her head. "Beyond creepy," she said.

"What is wrong with people?" Sarah asked. "Especially stepmothers."

It felt so good to talk about it with someone who really understood. Marjorie knew that Sarah hated Diane. Marjorie always tried to make her feel better, which Sarah appreciated, but it wasn't the same as talking to Lizzie, who really
knew.

"Speaking of something being wrong with people," Lizzie said, "what is wrong with Marjorie?"

Sarah felt herself tense up. "What do you mean, what's wrong with her?" she asked.

Lizzie put her hand on Sarah's arm. "Don't worry. I'm not going to say she can't eat with us anymore. I know she's your best friend."

Sarah's muscles unclenched in relief.

"But she
is
weird," Lizzie said.

"I know."

"I mean, the stuff she eats. And the way she doesn't even care about her clothes or the way she looks."

"She does care," Sarah said, wanting to be loyal but
also wanting to let Lizzie know that she knew what she meant. "She just has different taste from everybody else."

"Doesn't she get that no one else wears clogs?"

"She doesn't care about what other people do," Sarah said. "She's an individualist." She felt proud saying it. Marjorie really wasn't like anyone else.

"Well, boys don't like it if you're an individualist. Unless you have a tattoo," Lizzie said. "They might like that."

"I don't think Marjorie has a tattoo."

"She should get one," Lizzie said, throwing her Styrofoam cup into the trash can. "It might help."

They walked through the parking lot. The supermarket was having a sale on pumpkins; lots of moms were hoisting them into the backs of their SUVs. For the first time in months, the sky was cloudy. Sarah had heard on the news that it might rain on Halloween. It made her sad for the little kids, who got only one chance a year to trick-or-treat.

She wasn't sure about trick-or-treating for herself. She still wanted to do what she had done every year: dress up and go door-to-door with Marjorie, then go back to the Fingerhuts' for hot chocolate and five pieces of candy. Just five, Marjorie's mom would say, and then leave the room so they could cheat and eat more.

But she was pretty sure she was too old to do that this year.

"You know," Sarah said as she and Lizzie stood at the curb, waiting for the light to change. "I'm not sure if she's my best friend anymore."

It shocked her when she said it. The minute the words were out of her mouth, she knew they were true.

"She's my
oldest
friend," she said.

"Well, who's your best friend, then?" Lizzie asked.

Sarah was too shy to say that Lizzie was, maybe.

"Maybe I'm just one of those people who doesn't have a best friend," she said. "Who has a few really good friends."

Lizzie watched the cars gridlock in front of them.

"Carly's my best friend because we live on the same street and eat lunch together every day," she said. "Rachel Zeigler's my second-best friend. She goes to my temple. You're my third-best friend."

"Really?" Sarah said, feeling flattered.

"It might change after the trip," she said. "Rachel's chewing really gets on my nerves."

The light finally changed. As they crossed the street, Sarah wondered if Alison Mulvaney would still think she was a loser if she knew that Sarah was Lizzie's third-best friend and gaining.

***

That evening, after homework, Sarah was lying on her bed when her mom knocked on the door.

"What are you reading?" she asked, making room for herself on the bed.

Sarah showed her. It was a book written by a nurse about her experience in the Gulf War.

"Pretty grim reading," Mom said.

"It's not so bad," Sarah said. "I like the part where she talks about how she helped the soldiers."

"Doctors help just as much as nurses," Mom said. "Maybe you should think about being a doctor."

"They help in different ways," Sarah said. "I like the way nurses help more."

It was an ongoing battle. Sarah didn't expect to convince her.

Mom looked around. "This room could use a little dusting," she said.

She was always offering to tidy up Sarah's room. Sarah liked it just the way it was: the bookshelves full of all the chapter books she'd ever owned, and even some of her favorite picture books that she couldn't bring herself to give away, her bed up against the wall under a poster of penguins on a glacier. Her desk, which was kind of beat up from all the pen marks and nicks and scratches on it, sat under the window, where she could look out and see the street three floors down. It wasn't
much of a view—just the sidewalk and other apartment buildings that looked almost the same—but she liked it anyway.

"I'll do it later," Sarah said.

"You always say that, and you never do."

Her room at Dad's was full of new furniture and carpeting, and always clean. She had tried putting a poster on the wall, but Diane said she didn't want holes in the new paint, so Sarah had to take it down. It didn't feel like a real room. It felt like a motel. Sarah was glad she had to go over there only one weekend a month and for dinner once a week.

"A little dust isn't going to hurt me," she said. "I read somewhere that kids whose rooms are dusty have less asthma than kids whose rooms are really clean."

"Where did you read that?"

"Some book. I forget."

"When I was your age, I liked
Forever
and
He's My Baby Now.
Don't you ever read books like that?"

"Sometimes."

Mom reached out and gently pushed the hair off Sarah's forehead. "You can't save people, you know," she said.

"What about all the kids you teach?" Sarah asked. "You help them."

"Helping isn't saving," Mom said.

Sarah moved her head away from Mom's hand. "Well, I think you can do both. Sometimes," she said.

"You're a very sweet girl," Mom said.

Sarah thought Mom might cry. "If I promise to dust, will you stop saying things like that?" she asked.

Mom laughed. "Don't promise. Do it. Promises don't mean anything," she said, standing up and backing toward the door.

"All right, all right." But inside Sarah felt sad, because she knew that was what her mother really thought.

She resented the way her mother seemed to think that she never kept her promises. She kept promises all the time. She filled Henry's water dish whenever it was empty. She turned off lamps whenever she left a room. She did her homework without fail.

The thing was, there were different kinds of promises. The kind you wanted to keep—the easy kind—and the kind you didn't. The kind that made you feel terrible when you broke them, and the kind that made you feel terrible when you kept them. Those were the worst: the promises you were stuck with.

There should be extra credit, like on a test, for keeping those, she decided.

***

After dinner, Marjorie called.

"You have to come over and get fitted for your space-alien costume," she said.

Sarah had almost forgotten about Marjorie's space-alien movie. Also, she realized that she hadn't been over to her house for a while. She kept canceling to make time for going to the Juice Warehouse with Lizzie.

"Okay. When?" she asked, promising herself that she would go whenever Marjorie said.

And promising herself to keep her promise.

"Louellen is coming home for fall break on Wednesday," Marjorie said. "Come on Thursday. You can stay for dinner."

Sarah loved dinner at the Fingerhuts'. Mr. Fingerhut usually cooked. He liked serving food from foreign countries that no one knew about, like Mongolia and Finland. And he didn't care if you didn't eat something that looked gross. He made squid once, and when Sarah told him she didn't want any, he laughed and didn't say anything about just trying it.

"Joey and I are halfway finished with the script," Marjorie said. "Maybe we can do a read-through."

Sarah still had no idea who Joey Hooper was. She had asked Marjorie to point him out at lunch, but Marjorie always said she couldn't find him.

Sarah had a feeling Joey Hooper ate out by the soccer field.

"Come at four," Marjorie said. "And be prepared. Louellen uses lots of pins."

Great, Sarah thought. Now I get to be weird in public
and
get stuck with pins.

"We have a title, though." Marjorie paused. "Don't you want to know what it is?"

"Sure," Sarah said, sighing. She knew Marjorie could tell from the way her voice sounded how little she cared. But she couldn't seem to manage to sound excited.

She wished she'd never agreed to be in Marjorie's weird movie.

"
Middle School Space Alien,
" Marjorie said. "Doesn't that have a great ring to it?"

I guess.

"That way, if there are sequels, they can be
Attack of the Middle School Space Alien!
or
Middle School Space Alien Rides Again!
"

"Wouldn't that be for a cowboy movie? Like, if the space alien was riding a horse?"

"You can ride a spaceship," Marjorie said defensively.

Sarah sighed. Even her movie titles were weird.

"You never know," Marjorie said.

She sounded like Sarah's mom. Sarah felt irritation surge in her veins. "And anyway, why are you talking about a sequel?" she asked crankily. "I never said I'd do a sequel."

"Directors have to think like that," Marjorie said. "I probably won't do one, actually. Next semester we have to make documentaries."

Immediately Sarah felt sorry. "I
might
be in a sequel," she said. "If I have time."

She hoped Marjorie believed it: that the only reason she didn't want to do a sequel was because she was busy.

She hoped so, but she was pretty sure Marjorie knew she was lying.

Marjorie always knew.

"HOLD STILL!" Louellen said grumpily. She knelt at Sarah's feet, fiddling with the hem of her costume. A red cushion wrapped around her wrist was full of pins.

They were in Marjorie's room, on the second floor of the Fingerhuts' house, under the eaves. Sarah guessed that no one had cleaned it since Marjorie was a baby. There were clothes all over the floor, even things that didn't fit anymore, things she hadn't worn in a year. There was no desk: Marjorie liked to do homework on her bed. Mrs. Fingerhut (who always insisted that Sarah call her Roxie) said she didn't care as long as Marjorie's grades were good, and she had moved the old desk out. In its place was an ugly green metal filing cabinet, where
Marjorie kept her DVDs. She had so many that the cabinet was full. There were at least ten stacked on top.

The walls were covered with movie posters. You couldn't even see the walls anymore. There were so many posters that most of them were partly under other posters. Marjorie's grandma sent them to her all the time, not just on birthdays and Christmas. Sarah's favorite was a poster of Walt Disney's Tinkerbell, with all the
Peter Pan
movie information written in French. Marjorie said her grandma found that one on eBay.

Louellen looked critically at the hem of the costume. Under it, Sarah's feet in black rubber flip-flops looked strange to her, like pale, shy sea creatures peeking out from under rocks.

"Marjorie, are you sure you don't want this shorter? Because you want her to be able to walk in it," she said.

From the way they looked, you would never know that Louellen and Marjorie were sisters. Louellen had wispy blond hair and red skin on her face and neck, as though she'd been standing over a hot stove. She always looked frazzled and worried, as if a lot of people were depending on her to get things right and she'd better not screw anything up.

Marjorie was staring at Sarah's feet, too. She had her hands on her hips and seemed to be thinking hard.

"No, it has to be long, because I don't want her feet to show. I think it would look wrong if you could see that an alien has feet. I want it to look like she's all blue, and I want the costume to go to the floor."

"Well, okay, but you don't want her to
trip,
" Louellen said.

"And it can't look like a dress," Marjorie said. "Can you make it look like more of a tube?"

"You mean like the alien is a worm?" Louellen asked.

"Maybe it would look good if you made it shorter and I wore blue high-tops," Sarah said. She was a little worried about walking around.

"Yes, a worm! Exactly!" Marjorie said, ignoring Sarah completely. "And then you can make the head covering tighter. So it looks like skin."