The Keeper's Vow (20 page)

“Why won’t any of you tell me anything?” she
screamed.

He turned his back on her like they all did.
Her dad the liar, Lucinda who swept everything under the rug, and
Will who made it very clear that if she wanted answers she wasn’t
getting them from him. This wasn’t some national security secret.
This was her life.

She spent days not talking to any of them.
She trained because it was necessary, but she ignored them all.

Though Katie was most definitely not being
unreasonable, she did give up
Operation: Don’t Talk To Me
when she realized she hadn’t talked to her dad in two months; Will
and Lucinda were too busy to notice; Tristan didn’t care; and Brian
was already doing his best to avoid her.

Her fourth favorite holiday, Halloween, came
and went and she didn’t even notice until the day after. It didn’t
help that it fell on a school day—a school day that was jam packed
with three test and Traci jamming flash cards down her throat. She
was on the third stack when she heard Brian and his new friends say
it again, “
Train-wreck Traci.”

Traci always tried to pretend like she
couldn’t hear them, and Katie did her best to pretend like she
didn’t hear them either. Katie was embarrassed for her and angry
that Brian was worse than usual. Whenever Traci would start to look
like she might cry under her bifocals, Katie would tell Traci about
one of her new and up coming hobbies.

That day it was Origami, but as the days
moved forward again, the only hobby she had was training and
homework. She couldn’t skip training to do anything fun, and it
turned out her teachers were way harder on her when she didn’t turn
in assignments or did poorly on her test. Mrs. Barnes would hand
back homework with a raised eyebrow and a note that read:
See me
after class;
Mr. Carver offered extra lessons anytime she got
something less than an high-B on a quiz or essay; and Mr.
Rhineheart called on her more in class whenever he thought she was
drifting off.

Schoolwork was hard, but it turned out
training was kinda fun. Everyday she could actually see
improvements. When she learned something knew, Tristan would pair
it up with moves she’d learned earlier. He didn’t take kindly to
forgetfulness; the tender spot on her rib cage, just above her left
elbow, was a reminder of that. Every time she missed a step, he’d
tap her there, in the exact same spot, just hard enough to make her
recoil.

It wasn’t so bad all the time, though.
Sometimes her body moved on its own as if it had a conscious of its
own. “
Muscle
memory
,” Tristan would say over and over
when she’d spend two hours throwing single, identical punches, one
after another. It was numbing and exhilarating at the same time.
Most of the time it was boring, but all of it—the movements,
Tristan’s dry low voice,
“again…again…again,”
and the
pain—felt right.

Watching Brian train however, felt very
wrong. Will, Brian, and Allison always used the backyard before
Tristan and Katie. Katie always made a point not to be around when
they did. Will always told Brian he wasn’t doing something right,
or scolded him for not practicing hard enough. He even once told
him that Katie was better than him and it made Katie want to melt
into the wall.

Tonight, Will asked Tristan and Katie to
switch practice times with them. She had no clue that Will was
going to make Brian join theirs. He called it a:
mandatory
warm-up
.

Watching Brian try to block a punch or
carryout more than three offensive moves at once made her stomach
hurt. She’d look away when it was his turn, pretended to tie her
shoe, or shield the nonexistent sun from her eyes.

She couldn’t take watching him fall and trip
over his own feet. Not again. She ran inside for water and waited
by the door until the distant thuds stopped.

“You get to use a knife today,” Tristan said
as she closed the back door.

She stared at him, making sure to squint her
eyes.

“I’m serious. Sort of.” He pulled a white
plastic knife from his pocket.

“Liar, liar pants on fire.” She regretted it
as soon as she said it.

“Wow. Lethal rhyming skills. But, a knife is
a knife, Katalina.”

“Whatever, just show me how to use it.”

“That’s the spirit,” he smiled that
disgusting two dollar smile. “I think you mean
million
dollar smile,” he said.

Been in the mirror lately?
She arched
an eyebrow, but quickly put it back down as Brian eyed them. She’d
forgotten he didn’t know anything about Tristan’s mind voodoo. She
honestly didn’t want anyone to know.

“Stop calling it that,” Tristan
murmured.

“Can we train?” Brian said, pushing up his
dusty sleeves. The dirt on his face made his jaw look sharper than
usual.

Tristan showed Katie how to disarm an
opponent with a knife. He made her repeat the move slowly, twenty
times before they did it. She felt her body pull and snap as if she
were dancing—fast, but smooth. Each time she missed the disarm,
he’d slap her ribcage, and pain would shoot down her leg and up to
her arm. They kicked up dirt and sweat burned her eyes; but, each
time she was more determined than the last.

Until finally, she got him to drop the
knife.

It hit the ground and in one quick movement
she picked it up. Her chest bounced up and down, and her arms
burned, but she couldn’t help the smile that stretched across her
face. She couldn’t help the electricity spreading throughout her
body.

“That’s called pride,” Tristan said, looking
at the small white piece of plastic. “Hand it over. It’s Brian’s
turn.”

She gave it to him, but not before running
her finger over the shiny bits of white. She moved to the edge of
the yard to give Tristan and Brian space and catch her breath. She
tried to ignore the fact that she saw Will looking through the back
window. It was where Lucinda sat and yelled things while she
watched Tristan and Katie practice.

Katie watched as Tristan went through the
same steps with Brian. The first two moves he got easily and
Katie’s stomach jumped a loop of joy. It was nice to see him
standing on his own two feet. At first, she used to feel a little
triumph when he fell. Seeing him covered in dirt and sweat,
scrunching up his face in anger was like payback. Payback for
pretending she didn’t exist. Payback for acting as if this space
between them, this thick silence, was normal. But then she’d see
the desperation in his eyes when Tristan hit him hard for missing a
step; when Tristan would say,
“I’ve killed you three times in
the last ten minutes. That’s pathetic.”

Brian only made it through half of the steps
before he started to lose balance and misstep. Even though she
couldn’t read his mind she could feel the desperation seeping out
of him. It was as if her smile, the electric pulse, and the pride
she had felt about herself had turned against her, becoming a mass
of bile in her stomach.

He fell to the ground. Again. She didn’t
turn away. She watched him and each time he’d leave an opening for
Tristan to land a fatal move.

“If you—"

“I’ll get it,” Brian said, cutting off
Tristan.

Katie watched him fail ten more times. Each
time, the dirt kicked up more violent as he hit it.

She moved over, toward them. Each foot-step
heavy, and thought out.

“It’s your footwork,” she said, offering him
a smile. “You just have a small misstep. Try it like this,” she
showed him the maneuver slowly.

He wasn’t even looking in her direction.

“You see if you put your left foot higher,
the swing will come more natural.” Just standing next to him felt
violently wrong, like being on a frail bridge as all the ropes
creak with tension. All she had to do was run to the other side
before the bridge collapsed. “You just have to move your foot—"

“Shut up, Katie.” Brian voice was low.

“I’m trying to help.”

“I’m not doing it wrong. I’m doing it the
way my dad showed me. I think he knows more than you do.”

Her cheeks were on fire. He looked at her
with disgust. A look she didn’t deserve.
Does your dad know how
much of a failure you are?
She wanted to say it, but she
couldn’t. “What’s wrong with you? What have
I
done to
you.”

“You think you know everything. You’ve been
a junior guardian for what? A few months? And now your living in my
house. Trying to throw crap in my face. Get over yourself.”

She didn’t think her mouth could drop any
further.
What is he talking about?
She lived in his house
because her father
abandoned
her
.
She didn’t think
she was any better than him. She didn’t even know what she was
doing half the time. She had more bruises than she could count. She
earned every little victory she got. She worked harder than she’d
worked for anything. Never once had she flaunted any of that in
front of him. And whenever he made an idiot of himself she made it
a point to look away, to spare him any more embarrassment.
You
want me to get over
myself
?
“You’re right, what do I
know? I’m not the one who spends most of practice on the ground,”
she spat.

His nostrils flared and he bit his lower lip
until it turned white. Neither of them moved, stuck in the eye of a
hurricane waiting for the storm to hit. The longer they stared the
more she saw the desperation in his eyes. He was looking through
her, and that was worse than anything he could possibly say. She
wanted him to—wished he would—say something. Yell, scream, or call
her names. The only sound was the last creak of their friendship
finally snapping.

He turned and left her and Tristan standing
in the backyard. Her eyes burned and her hands shook.

“Now that the dramatics are over, can we get
back to work?” Tristan said.

Katie sat on the ground. She couldn’t train
after that, her mind surged replaying the last few moments over and
over in her head.

Tristan sat next to her. “Let’s work on your
meditation then. You really suck at it and there is a test next
month.”

“No.”

“Okay. Let’s talk. You two always been this
weird?”

She got up, grabbed her bag and got ready to
go inside.
Of course we haven’t always been like this.
Everything started to crumble the day you showed up.

At school was no different. Instead of
politely ignoring her, Brian acknowledged her presence with
contempt. In chemistry, she watched Brian chat with his new circle
of friends. She didn’t hate him having other friends, she just
hated two things: he had stopped being her friend and Christi was
officially apart of that new group.

Christi wore her skirt hiked up higher than
the dress-code allowed and her button-up shirts always hugged her
breast so tight, Katie counted down the days before one of the
buttons would pop off and blind someone. Her perfume reeked and the
nasally voice she used when answering questions was horrid. What
did guys like about her? Christi wasn’t
that
pretty. Katie
wasn’t exactly a heartbreaker, but she knew she was definitely
prettier than that smelly thing. How could Brian even be friends
with someone like that?

Tristan nudged her. “Stop obsessing over
Brian. Let it go.”

“Get out of my head.”

“I’m not in your head. You’re staring—in a
psychotic way.”

“It’s obvious you’ve never had a best-friend
before. You just don’t stop being best-friends. That’s not how it
works.”

He looked at her. “Maybe Brian’s right.
You’re a little know it all.”

“He didn’t mean that.”

“Just like you didn’t mean to say you’re
better than him?”

“Shut up—"

“Miss Watt, can you finish balancing this
chemical reaction?” Mr. Beaver said, looking over his shoulder, a
green dry erase marker in hand. He had a way of getting the ink
from the green marker on all his white shirts. Always the
green.

“No, sorry I—”

“Then you’ll kindly refrain from asking your
teacher to ‘
shut up’
.” He went back to writing on the board
and chuckles filled every corner of the class—especially Christi’s
nasally one. Katie opened her notebook and drew a stick figure.

This is you,
she thought eyeing
Tristan. When he looked at it, she scribbled all over its body. She
looked back at him waiting to see the shock or disbelief in his
eyes, but none of that was there. His face turned red, and then he
laughed. His laughter shook her bones and jostled her heart. She
frowned, but her heart pounded even more.

“You’re like a five year-old,” he said as
tears glassed his eyes while he tried to stifle the noise. He
laughed harder.

“Shhh, you’re going to get us in trouble,”
she whispered, feeling his laugh itch up her throat. She smiled,
and then it was over. They laughed so loud Mr. Beaver threatened to
give them detention.

After school—even though it was cold—Katie,
Allison, and Tristan went to get ice cream. They went to her
favorite shop and Larry, the owner, looked pleased to see them.
Tristan didn’t actually order anything. He looked uncomfortable
when Larry tried to strike up a friendly conversation. It
embarrassed her when he blatantly ignored him and walked over to
the window.

Katie ordered a triple scoop of rainbow
sherbet and Larry plopped on a fourth scoop free of charge.

“Always the best for my best customer,”
Larry smiled he had an accent that Katie still couldn’t place. He
looked fairly young, maybe in his thirties, but she could tell he
was older by his eyes. He had gray eyes like hers. “Your friend
seems charming,” he said.

“As charming as they come,” Katie said,
exaggerating an eye roll.