Every Last Promise (12 page)

I HELP MOM CLEAR
off the dinner table and then head over to Toffey's to meet up with Jen and Selena.

Tuesday is open mike night at Toffey's and the pace is brisk. I grab a tiny table in the corner. Bean's here, with a few other girls, including the curly-haired one from my first day back at school. I chew the inside of my cheeks as Jen slides into the chair next to me. She frowns when she sees me looking at Bean's table. Selena catches Jen's eye and just as quickly looks away and I feel a stab of annoyance. Have I not proven myself enough?

“I'll grab us something,” Selena says. “What do you want?”

“Mocha. Tell them not to be stingy with the whipped cream,” Jen says.

They both look at me. But over Selena's shoulder I see Bean fiddling with the watch around her left wrist and working her jaw, her gaze moving from me to Jen and back.

I hate that I don't know what she's thinking. That I don't know so much of what she's been thinking. Months' worth of thoughts. A hummingbird hovers in my chest. I didn't expect to see Bean here. As though normal, everyday life couldn't, shouldn't go on after that night. As though going for coffee,
laughing with a friend, being
out
, is only for people without secrets weighing them down.

I stand. “Actually, I need to go.”

“But we just got here.” Jen gapes at me.

“Yeah, so just tell me what you want before the line gets longer,” Selena says.

“I'm not thirsty anymore.”

As if anyone gets coffee because they're thirsty. My knuckles knock against the table. One finger hits a dried-out piece of gum.

“I forgot that . . . at home I have to . . .” But I can't think of an excuse that would get me out of here. The idea that I want to run away from the things I've sacrificed so much to get back in my life tears at me.

“I want you to stay.” Jen's voice is soft but I can count the layers of meaning in it.

Stay because I want to hang out with you.

Stay because you owe me.

Stay because there are still things to prove to me, to all of us.

“I'll just get you a mocha, too, okay, Kayla?” Selena says. She pauses for a beat before turning away without waiting for my answer.

I watch her retreat and notice the taut shoulder muscles revealed by her tank top.

My eyes drift from Selena back to Bean.

Bean doesn't know.
Can't
know. But in her expression I
see it all: that she knows I saw, that there is still space to make things right.

If I were only willing to give up my home.

I hold my breath until the room spins. This isn't how it's supposed to happen. What happened that night was supposed to stay in the past. I thought that was what everyone wanted. Once I make up with my friends, we are supposed to stay made up. Things go back to normal, to the way they were.

“Are you going to sit down?” Jen says. She looks at me, picks up her phone to check her messages.

The coffee shop goes quiet but only for me.

Terry Brady still reads a poem. The espresso machine grinds and churns. Other kids in our class get up and down from their seats. It feels like there are too many people, too many eyes watching me.

No, just two eyes.

Across the room, Bean is looking at me, still. Even from across the room, I can tell that her lips are pressed together so hard that they're outlined by a little white line. Suddenly, I'm not sure about what I've done or who I am. An annoying trill begins in my ears. The chair nearly topples over when I push back. “No . . . I have to go.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“I don't feel good.”

Jen sighs. “I'll give you a ride home.”

“I have my bike.”

“Put it in the back of my car.”

Jen knows. She has to know everything. Jen and Selena and Bean. Jay. My parents. Is there anyone who can't see the truth in the terrible darting of my gaze, in the way my hands tremble?

Jen reaches for me. Her look of concern is pure, a best friend's. “You
do
look sick. Your face is splotchy. Let's get you home.”

Her touch is soft as petals. Her touch stings like wasp bites.

I pull out my phone. “I'm calling my mom to get me. I don't want you to get sick, too.” I hold up the phone to my ear and walk out to make a fake call.

I dodge off the road and into dirt, drop my bike, and use my feet. The truth about cornfields is that they're hard to run through. The corn's planted tightly to maximize acreage and the stalks are mean and stubborn, unwilling to bend to a person's will. The leaves are sharp. A slice from one feels like a paper cut times a million.

Still, I push through and they crack and snap under the pressure of my shoes like tiny bones. Every time one breaks, a pain shoots into my ankle.

The night air smells like this sweet, new corn so I breathe it in as I run, and it comforts me and fuels my anger at the same time.

I wish I hated this smell.

But I love it and I love this town and I want to love everyone the way I used to love them. I want for them to love me the same way, too.

I just need to keep running.

And I can't wonder about whether or not people know I remember what happened at Jen's party last spring. Because then I not only have to question the kind of person
I
am, but the kind of people Jen and Selena are. So many people in this town. I run fast and I run far to keep my mind away from those questions.

I reach a dirt road and dart across it, belatedly hearing the honk. A truck slams on its brakes, raising a cloud of dust and rock. I am frozen in the road like a deer.

The driver's door opens and a worn pair of jeans and faded T-shirt appear through the cloud.

“Why are you always in
places
?” I ask Noah, fighting back a swelling urge to run to him. “Places I am? You used to be invisible.”

“I watched you leave Toffey's.”

“I didn't know you were there.”

“Then I guess I still am invisible.”

I swallow hard and walk to him, staying on the other
side of his still-open door. My palms on the window frame steady me.

Pieces of Noah's dirty blond hair blow back from his face. Behind him, the sky has taken on the colors of fire.

“I want to be invisible,” I whisper.

“Then get in.”

Noah moves aside so I can climb into his truck. I slide across the seat and watch as he gets in and settles himself behind the steering wheel.

We don't say anything. Not yet. We drive around, looking for a place we can both talk and feel safe. A fairy-tale land.

We pull over at an abandoned house on the south side of town. The porch has half fallen off and there are old, yellowed curtains in the windows, drifting like ghosts, but I go in anyway. There are candle stubs and empty bottles in the corners of the front room. Overhead, a wide hole in the ceiling affords me a view of the darkening sky.

Noah follows me, a guitar in his left hand. His keys in his right.

“I thought you played the banjo,” I say.

His lips turn up. “I can only play one instrument?”

“Play whatever you want. Play all the instruments. Play me something.”

“That's why I brought it in.” I realize his voice is husky. Always? Or just at night. Just when he's about to play music. Just when he's sheltered by invisibility.

I pick a spot on the floor and lower myself, cross-legged.

He sits across from me, just a few feet away, cradling the guitar across his lap. His fingers move like ghosts across the strings as he thinks about what to play. The silence between us is comfortable, but then he looks up and gives me a small smile and suddenly, out of nowhere and everywhere at once the silence is charged, trembling with possibility, with things I've seen and not seen, with the way he's been near me lately and the way he's granted me space and the way he's been careful. Careful like he understands what it is to be delicate. A struggling thing just planted in its home.

His ghost fingers finally make contact with the strings and he begins to play. Every strum, every chord change, every gritty slide across the guitar, amps up the electricity in the air until my breath slows and deepens. I breathe lower, from my belly, from my legs, and from my reconstructed ankle.

While Noah plays, I study his profile. His neck is long, his jawline strong. Some of his features are his dad's: clean-shaven Midwestern guy, while others must also belong to his dark-eyed mom. They blend in a uniquely beautiful way, so different from the typical boy from around here. I know it means something to him to be different, to look different, to do different things from everyone else.

In an instant, I hate everyone who's ever made life difficult for him, who's teased him for creating music rather than
being an athlete. Who's called him a name behind his back while smiling to his face because his skin doesn't go pale like everyone else's in the winter.

“It's beautiful,” I say.

His eyes flick up to meet mine.

“Your playing.”

“Thank you.” He strums a few more times then says, “Things will go back to normal, you know. It takes time, but it will be like before for you. If that's what you want.”

He clears his throat and loses the easy rhythm but catches it again quickly.

I almost tell him I don't know what I want. Not anymore.

“Like they were before,” I whisper instead. “You have no idea.”

And I almost tell him everything, but I don't. Maybe because I'm scared he'll hate me if he knows the truth.

Instead I say, “Remember when we were little and your family came over sometimes for barbecues?”

“I didn't think you remembered that.”

I run the hem of my shirt between my fingers. I remember everything. Some things I don't want him to know about. Others mark us, make old friends of us. Connect me to him in a way I only just started wanting.

He keeps playing.

“Sometimes we'd have them in the late autumn,” I say.

“More time to hang out after the harvest is finished.”

“It got dark earlier. You always stayed long enough to watch the stars with me.”

Noah doesn't say anything for a minute. The silence feels long. Old memories feel good.

“I named a star after you,” he says.

My back straightens. “Which one?”

His chest shudders under a soft chuckle. “How would I remember which one? It was a long time ago. Stars were different then.”

“Everything was different then.” I tip my chin back and stare at the night sky through the ceiling hole, searching for the winking spot he would have given my name.

None of them looks right. That childhood moment of naming the particles of the universe feels too far away, and even if I reach my arm for thousands of miles, I know I can't touch the children we once were. “The stars were different once upon a time. Brighter. Now they've lost their luster.”

“You haven't,” he says, and strums again.

I STOPPED BY MY
house to grab my new top before heading over to Jen's the Friday after school let out. I passed by Caleb's room as I walked down a hallway that was covered with photos of the two of us, in varying thicknesses of brown wood frames. Caleb's legs stuck out from under his bed. Dad sat opposite in the chair at his desk, wrapping computer cords into neat bundles.

I paused with my shoulder against the frame of his door, remembering how Mom's been wanting to paint the trim white for ages. Farmers don't have a lot of time.

“Hey, Dad. Caleb, you're coming tonight, right?”

“To Jen's?” His reply was muffled by his mattress.

“To Jen's.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Trying to clean up the last of this. Get packed. Leave Monday.”

“Can't you do all that tomorrow?”

“Nah.”

“Come on. You should come over for the last time. A bunch of people will be there. Say your good-byes and all that.”

“You should go,” Dad added. “There's not much here to finish up.”

Caleb's palms reached back and he slid himself out into the middle of the room. A dust bunny clung to the edge of his hair.

“I'm just not in the mood, you know?”

I took a long look at my brother. The kind I hadn't for a while. Maybe never had. There was something new around his eyes. A seriousness I hadn't noticed before. Caleb was always the energized, goofy big brother who made everyone laugh. But now he looked older. He looked like an outsider.

“If you change your mind,” I said. “You know where to find me.”

He nodded.

I STAND IN THE
entrance to first period math and scan the faces inside. Pete. T. J. No Noah yet.

Selena comes up behind me. “What are you doing?”

I clutch my books to my chest and turn to her.

“I'm tired.” I press the corner of my math textbook into my palm to keep emotions at bay.

But Selena sees everything. “Come on.”

We tiptoe out of the school and head for the girls' bathroom out by the fields, where no one bothers to go except when there's an evening game on. The mirrors are old and scratched out here but clear enough for me to stare listlessly at myself: round eyes, snub nose, long blond bangs. I stare so long that I cease making sense—the outline of my head, my body blurring into the fluorescent lights above me.

“Can't sleep?” Selena pulls lip balm from her bag and sweeps her lips with it, ending with a pucker and a popping noise at her reflection.

“Something like that.” I sigh. It's not something I've told Aunt Bea or my parents because I don't want them to think I'm regressing after having settled into a better sleep pattern once again in Kansas City, but it has been hard to sleep since I got home. I lie awake at night and hear things out my
window, under my bed, in my mind. When I close my eyes, I see things like twin flashes of light and ragged-edged glass. I play over and over again what Noah said about my luster and how I haven't lost it and decide I can't believe that to be true. There is too much darkness for me to shine anymore. No matter what Noah says. No matter how I feel when I'm with him. Because of this feeling I'm having right now, when I'm with Selena or when I'm with Jen or around Jay or my parents or, most of all, when I feel Bean is watching me.

I scratch my elbow. “I just think about how much has changed between us. I changed things when I left.”

Selena leans against the sink and snaps her bag shut. “Yeah, but . . . things were going to change anyway, right? I mean, we're all going to different colleges and after that . . .” She shrugs. “I never really saw me or Jen coming back here for good, you know? Not like you. The way you love this place. Everyone else will be heading off to other things. New things.”

I place a hand on my shoulder and rub my thumb along my collarbone. “I hate thinking about everyone leaving.”

I hate thinking about what it takes to stay.

“It's gonna happen. Lots will change.” Her eyes flick to me then away. “Lots changed that night.”

Her voice sounds so far away that I start. Study her face. She looks away to play with the keychain dangling from her bag strap. It's a Shrinky Dink turtle she made years ago.
She used to have one half of a silver BFF heart on the ring, too. It's gone now and the bag doesn't look right without it.
She
doesn't look right, never walking with Bean. Laughing with her.

Every time I see a person, a part of this town I used to know, something doesn't look
right
.

I wanted to ask Selena about Bean the last time the two of us stayed over at Jen's house. Selena brought a bottle of vodka and some juice and she and Jen had a few drinks. I sipped at one the whole night, too afraid of what someone might say or think if they walked in. If Jay walked in. If his mom did.

We didn't say much to each other when I was over at the Brewsters', me and Jen's mom.

But Selena got tipsy enough to want to dance around in her bra and underwear. To spill at length about this college guy she saw on the weekends sometimes.

I wanted her to tell me more. Not about the college guy, but about what happened with her and Bean.

Something held me back. The way Jen and Selena both always tensed up when Bean was around. The way they'd laid the blame at Bean's feet when, really, ditching people was not the way Bean ever operated.

Now, though, being alone with Selena gives me an opening.

“What happened with you and Bean?” I ask.

“Me and Bean,” Selena repeats. She rummages through her bag again, this time bringing out a handful of Starburst. She tosses an orange one and a pink one to me.

We unwrap and chew them. Mine stick in my teeth. I'm glad for something to do. I don't entirely want to hear what she has to say. What she knows.

Finally, she says, “Bean had some stuff to say about that night.”

I dig a piece of candy from my molar with my fingernail. She doesn't seem to notice the way my back has stiffened. “Like what? What could Bean say that would change the two of you?”

“You say that like it's impossible for best friends to change.” She tips her chin at me. The example in front of her. “Anyway, I can't say. Can't speak for Bean. You'll have to talk to her about it. Just . . . don't tell Jen you're snooping around.”

It's as though Selena
wants
me to talk to Bean. To discover something.

Selena tosses her candy wrappers on the concrete ground and fixes her bangs in the mirror.

I lean back against a stall and read the writing engraved on it.

Tory Worth is a ho.

Kat and Lance 4eva.

P.M., T.F., I.Y. Class of '06 BFFs

When I look up again, Selena's finger has paused on the center of her forehead and she's looking at me through the mirror with narrowed eyes.

I open another candy and stuff it in my mouth, startling when I accidentally bite the side of my tongue.

“Careful, Kayla,” she says, picking her bag off the ground and reaching for the door.

When Selena decides to head back to the main building, I tell her I'm going to stay out here a little longer. She enfolds me in a tight, quick hug and says she'll take notes for me in our next class.

I stand at the entrance to the bathrooms and watch her stride across the baseball field. She's shorter than me or Jen, but she walks faster than either of us.

I wait for the next PE class to come out, but it's freshmen and they stop at the running track to time their miles, and I'm still alone. A bunch of birds are picking at the days-old remains of chili fries hidden under the bleachers. They scatter when I sit on the ground with my back to the bleachers but approach again cautiously when I don't make any sudden movements.

Selena's words echo in my head, and I can't decide if they were meant as a suggestion or as a warning. Because they sounded like a warning, with the way she bit them off and looked at me hard as she spoke. But if they
were
, then that
means there's something some people know and that some people don't.

Or shouldn't.

And I
really
don't want there to be.

I finally feel like I've come home. Jen and Selena are on my side. Jay doesn't hesitate to join our group as we walk down the school halls. I feel the protective embrace of being near my mom again. And although the newness of being here again stings now, there's a part of me that can see beyond today to a time that will feel better and completely normal again.

At this moment, however, I ache. For the divide between us, for Selena's having to use the word “snooping.”

I knew it would be hard to come home.
Hard.

Hard doesn't begin to describe it. When I decided to come home, I thought finding my place again would be like a steady, dependable climb up a slowly rising mountain path—but the reality is that the journey home has been full of peaks and low valleys. Reconciliations and retrogrades. Inconsistencies and changes that leave me brittle like glass. Too easy to shatter.

I should have known it would be like this. Even if I am eventually successful in ignoring it. The way I've chosen to ignore the way I think Bean looks at me, like she hopes I'll admit I remember and say something. The certainty that, were I in her position, I'd have dumped my old friends, too.
The knowledge that this town, this place, can never be for me what it once was, because I've seen a dark side of it I hadn't known existed before that party. I'm fighting against a current and it's only a matter of time before I tire out and let it pull me under.

I know this. I know it. And I keep swimming. What is wrong with me?

I pick a few dandelions from a patch struggling through the ground next to me. Their yellow blossoms are cheerful. Over the summer, there were enough in our yard for Mom to fill our pantry with dandelion syrup and dandelion jam. This morning, the floral syrup was on my pancakes.

The third period bell rings, and I stand and brush off the back of my jeans. I walk over to the football stadium.

It's a special place, this stretch of bleachers, emerald-green grass, and recycled-rubber running track. Students and alumni squish into the seats until people are half dangling off the edges then continue spreading out on the ground from there with blankets and picnics and toddlers digging for bugs. People have first kisses under the bleachers, share nachos with plastic-cheese sauce with their best friends, listen to the band play big, brassy songs.

I climb the bleachers halfway and sit, staring out at the field as though there's a game on now.

Our high school crest is freshly painted at the fifty yard line in preparation for the homecoming game. Two years ago,
Jay Brewster threw a sailing, forty-yard pass from there, right into the hands of his receiver, and brought glory to this town. He took the team all the way to the state championships with a golden arm that obeyed his every command. And then he did it again last year. He expected one more repeat before heading to one of the colleges clamoring for his presence.

All that and he keeps up a solid GPA, has a strong jawline to offset his bright blue eyes, and volunteers at the elementary school. A college team's dream. A true golden boy.

Everyone knows he'll go all the way. Be a small-town kid hitting it big in the pros. We'll all have something to tell our grandkids about when we visit his display at the Hall of Fame someday. He is everything a nice boy in a nice town in the Midwest should be. Can be. In every way.

I stamp my feet. A metallic sound rings out, fading somewhere in the hills.

“I'm sorry, Jay,” I tell a thin cloud over my head. “I'm
sorry
for what I did. But mostly, I'm sorry for what you did. You destroyed everything I believed in.”

I clomp down the bleachers, kick at the white line at the edge of the field. Chew on a strand of hair and stare at the sky for a while, thinking about what I still believe. But I can't come up with anything. Then I walk home.

My brother's truck is coming up the dirt road in the distance, flinging gravel off his back tires at the poor, straggling corn
planted nearest the road. It's Wednesday, and he probably has classes at Missouri State tomorrow and Friday, but a small-town homecoming is a big deal and he's not going to miss it. The last time I saw Caleb was the day of Jen's party. When I woke up in the hospital, he'd already left for his summer job in the Ozarks. I wonder if he'll look different. I wonder if he'll look at me differently.

It will be a little while until his truck finishes navigating the bends in the road and pulls up by our house. Instead of rushing into the house to meet him, I climb into my boat, pull the air filter over my nose and mouth and my headphones over my ears, and start up the sander.

Sanding the exterior was a quick project, my hands guiding the machine across the gently sloping surfaces easily. Inside, though, the skeleton of the boat is exposed and it takes patience to sand each piece protruding from the outer boards. How simple it would be to be a boat, with a strong, visible interior and an exterior that can be beautified with nothing more than a blast of rough paper.

Music blares through my headphones, loud enough to be heard over the sander's buzzing. There is noise and sawdust and there are muscles in achingly strange positions and there is the anticipation of seeing my brother. But through it all there is a small opening for those thoughts to break through. When I think about Bean, my wrist shakes the sander and there is a loud screech.

I push up the protective goggles and aim a heavy blow of air and tears at the patch I just sanded, realizing with a start that I am done. This boat is ready for a first coat of primer. For a new life.

I replace the sandpaper with a new piece, wrap the cord around the machine, and set it next to the boat.

By the time I get back to the house, my brother's voice has filled every corner of every room and our mom looks like she's about to cry, holding tightly to her boy. He releases her and bounds through the kitchen when he hears the back screen door slam shut and, before I can shout a welcome, scoops me in his arms, lifts me off my feet, and hollers: “Kayla Koala!”

I giggle despite myself at the old nickname. It's such a reminder of who we used to be. It's an assurance that, after everything, Caleb is here and he's my brother and he's on my side.

“Put me down,” I protest.

His energy, like always, brightens the room.

When Caleb drops me to my feet, we grin at each other, taking in how we both have changed since before the summer.

His hair's shorter than before, the waves that used to tickle the back of his neck neatly trimmed to above his ears, and his hazel eyes are clearer and brighter. Same old jeans and T-shirt, which reveals the half-sleeve tattoo that almost gave our parents dual heart attacks back in the day.

A lump catches in my throat. He looks so happy.

“You're filthy,” he says.

I laugh. “You're ugly.”

Caleb reaches for my head, but I duck under his arm while Mom stands and tells us to knock it off and get in the dining room. Dinner smells amazing. It's Caleb's favorite: pot roast, potatoes, and green beans. While we stuff our faces, Caleb tells us about school. I can tell he's sugar-coating it for Mom and Dad, but I know I'll get the details from him later.

After we finish cleaning up dinner dishes, I decline dessert and escape out the front door, sitting on the porch steps, waiting for the sun to set. Dragonflies buzz around my head, their constant chatter lulling me into a half-nap.