Promise Me Something (5 page)

“Flip,” I sighed. “Whatever.”

The clock on her wall ticked quietly above us as we worked, and before I knew it, my dad was honking in the driveway.

I’m glad you didn’t…you know…

What, blow my brains out?

Pretty much, yeah.

I’m glad you didn’t either.

How have you been since then?

Fine, I guess.

How have you really been?

I swear to God, better.

Then promise me something, and I’ll promise the same to you.

I don’t even know you.

Never. Lie. To. Me.

I
t was Saturday night, and Leah was sitting at the foot of her bed, braiding Madison’s hair, while Abby sat cross-legged on the floor behind me, combing my hair with her fingers. We were taking turns giving each other French braids, but as usual, it wasn’t about hair. Leah and Madison talked about boys and gossip while Abby tried to psychoanalyze all of us. As for me, I loved falling into rabbit hole conversations—those weird, quasi-philosophical discussions that anybody besides the four of us would have found stupid.

Abby straightened my part with her fingernail. “So, Reyna,” she said. “Have you made any new friends yet at Belltown?” Her psychoanalysis had begun.

“Sort of,” I answered, hoping to leave it at that. At our last sleepover, we talked about whether colors looked the same to different people, and how it felt lonely to live in a world where you couldn’t be sure. I would have rather gone down that rabbit hole again.

But Leah spoke up a little too quickly, giving the conversation a rehearsed feel. “Belltown has super lame people,” she said with a furtive glance at Abby. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes you a while to find your crowd, Reyna. Don’t feel bad.”

They were obviously worried about me; otherwise they wouldn’t have prepared talking points to make me feel better. My cheeks prickled. I didn’t need their pity.

“You must have met
some
people,” prompted Madison, eyeing me from the bed.

“I have,” I sighed. If they were staging an inquisition, there was no avoiding the subject of Olive. “I’ve been eating lunch with someone. It’s just—” I paused to think of the best way to explain it. “Have you ever been friends with someone you don’t really
understand
?”

Leah and Madison nodded, pointing at each other. Then they laughed.

Abby asked, “What don’t you understand about her?”

I thought of the time Olive threw a pebble at my head, but that seemed too weird to even describe. “Sometimes I like her,” I said. “She can be funny when she’s in a good mood. But most of the time she’s in a bad mood. And then she’s rude and bossy.”

“Reyna, you have to stand up for yourself.” Abby tugged on my hair. “Obnoxious people will take advantage of shy people like you.”

“So true,” said Leah. “Don’t be a doormat.”

Madison smiled. “Remember the time in fifth grade you let a boy draw on your pants with a sharpie because you felt bad saying no?”

“Can we talk about something else?” I asked. On Monday, Dad would be going back to work for the first time since his car accident; I would have liked to talk about that—to get the worry off my chest.

“Sure,” Leah volunteered. “I hooked up with Drew Tubman.”

“
What?
” Madison practically fell off the bed.

Leah giggled. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you guys.”

I wasn’t sure what was worse—reliving embarrassing memories from elementary school or discussing high school gossip that had nothing to do with me. I decided it wasn’t the right time to bring up my dad going back to work. “Who’s Drew Tubman?” I asked.

“A sophomore on the varsity soccer team,” said Leah, positively glowing. “I cornered him on the field after Thursday’s match.”

Madison looked meaningfully at Abby as though to say,
I told you this was going to happen.
Then she turned back toward Leah. “What base did you guys—”

“Third.”

Madison gasped. “In the middle of a soccer field?”

“On the sidelines.”

“Wait a minute,
which
third base?” asked Abby. We all knew it had several possible interpretations ranging from a hand down the pants to full-on oral sex. “A blow job?”

“The other one.”

“Are you serious?” Madison’s mouth was hanging open.

Leah laughed. “You guys will get there soon!” She sounded like a kindergarten teacher consoling a bunch of kids who failed to make it across the monkey bars.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Madison, standing abruptly.

“Me too.” Abby let go of my hair and stood up, obviously following to talk to Madison.

And that was how I ended up alone in the room with Leah, wondering how long it would be before the four of us didn’t know each other at all.

On Sunday morning, I got up extra early and had the urge to go to Mass. I hadn’t been in ages—not since Dad’s accident. Mom used to go every weekend. Once in a while I would go just to feel closer to her, but sometimes being there would bring back too many memories and I’d have to get up and go to the bathroom to wait for my throat to stop feeling so choked.

Dad refused to come with me. (“Church was your mom’s thing, not mine,” he said.) He dropped me off while Lucy stayed home and cleaned the house. As we pulled into the church’s circular driveway, I felt a swell of excitement in the pit of my stomach. But when I glanced over at Dad, his eyes looked distant and clouded.

“Memories?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“I’m sure,” said Dad.

I rolled down the window to let in a gust of crisp autumn wind. The sky was a bright and vivid blue, the color of my old retainer—the one I got to match Abby’s braces in sixth grade.

“I just thought it would be nice to go together,” I told Dad, unbuckling my seat belt. “We can sit near the back, if you want.”

“Reyna, that part of my life is over now,” answered Dad, the expression on his face hard to read. “I’m going home to make an omelet.”

“Have it your way.” I climbed out of the car and closed the door. After seven years, I didn’t expect anything different. I just wished he could see what I saw.

Inside, the sanctuary was soaked in light. It poured through the stained glass windows and lit up the hairs on my arms. Mom was everywhere at St. Stephen’s—in every Bible, in every pew, in every nook and cranny of the sanctuary. Everywhere my eyes landed, I felt a memory move through me like a ghost. The day she took me to my first confession because I stole a dollar from Dad’s wallet. The night she brought me with her to light a memorial candle for my great-grandmother Alma. The morning of my first communion, when she reminded me a million times not to spit out the wafer because I was a picky eater and she knew I wouldn’t like the taste.

Dad didn’t know what he was missing. In here, she was still alive.

In History on Monday, Olive invited me over to her house again after school. “Or we could work in the media center,” she said, “but then we’d have to whisper.” She didn’t blink as she waited for my response, and it was hard to say no to a face that wasn’t blinking.

We ended up agreeing to meet in the parking lot at the end of seventh period, and as I waited by the flagpole for her to arrive, I remembered with a jolt that it was Dad’s first day back in the office. I pulled out my phone and texted him,
How’s it going?

Busy
, he wrote back right away.
I have 900 unread messages!!!

The exclamation points were a good sign. Dad only used them when he was in a good mood.

“What are you so happy about?”

I jumped. Olive had appeared out of nowhere, ready to walk with me to her house. “Nothing important,” I said, slipping the phone into my pocket. “I’m ready if you are.”

But she wouldn’t drop it. “Exchanging texts with Lover Boy?”

“Lover Boy?”

“Banana Boy, if you prefer.”

It took a minute to click, and when it did, I had to remind myself not to get annoyed. In her own way, Olive was just trying to be funny.

“No, I don’t have Levi’s number,” I said. “I wish I did though.” If I’d been walking with Abby or Leah or Madison, they would have said, “What are you waiting for? Ask him!” but Olive just made a sound somewhere between a cough and a snort.

“What?” I felt the familiar prickle of annoyance that always seemed to lurk under my skin whenever I was near her. “What’s wrong with Levi?”

“Frankly? You want to know what I
really
think of him?”

“What?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“As my Aunt Millie says, I’ve met more interesting carpet samples.”

“At least he’s friendly,” I said.
Unlike some people
.

“Sure, he’s friendly,” she conceded. “Like a dog that walks up to another dog and sniffs its butt.” Then she laughed at her own joke. “Plus, his hair is stupid. I hate red hair. Yours is so much prettier.” Without any warning, she reached up and touched the back of my head. “It’s so silky.”

“Whatever,” I said, stepping away from her hand. Why did she have to be so weird? For every rude thing she said to me, there was another opposite nice thing. The traffic light changed from red to green, and we crossed the street.

The worst thing about walking to Olive’s house was crossing the train tracks that ran parallel to her backyard. Ever since Dad’s accident, I was afraid of objects that moved quickly. Scratch that—ever since
Mom’s
accident. No matter how many times I looked both ways before crossing the tracks, I always held my breath as I stepped over them.

Olive didn’t understand, of course. When she saw me pause near the crossing gate, she just laughed, stepped out into the center of the tracks, and stood there with her arms wide open. “Hit me with your best shot!” she called in the direction of Talmadge Hill, where the next train would come from. Then she laughed, hopped off the tracks, and led me across the remaining distance toward the edge of her backyard.

Olive’s mom wasn’t home that afternoon, so we took a tub of ice cream and a canister of whipped cream to her room. She looked gleeful as we shut the door behind us. “I’m not supposed to eat junk in my room,” she explained, handing me a bowl. “I do it all the time, but not usually with a friend over.”

“Me too,” I said. “Sometimes I eat cereal in bed.”

“My mom would kill us if she saw this.” Olive sprayed whipped cream directly onto her tongue. “She’s opposed to gluttony of any kind, which is why she hates herself so much for being an alcoholic. And me, for being addicted to candy.”

I put down my spoon, surprised. “You’re addicted to candy?”

Olive scooted away from me on the carpet toward the same oversized filing cabinet where she’d shown me her mother’s alcohol. Only this time she opened the middle drawer instead of the bottom one, so I got to my knees and leaned over to see what was inside. Sure enough, it was filled to the brim with candy. There were hundreds of Tootsie Roll Pops, miniature Twix bars, Starbursts, and lollypops. “I have a good metabolism,” was all she said.

It might have been a sudden rush of sugar from the ice cream or it might have been the sheer quantity of candy in the drawer, but for some reason, I lost it. I started to laugh.

At first, Olive looked upset. She frowned, popped a Tootsie Roll into her mouth, and waited for me to collect myself. But I couldn’t. It was impossible. Laughing, like crying, becomes an automatic reflex capable of sustaining itself, and the more I tried to stop myself, the harder I laughed. “I’m not laughing
at
you—” I tried to say.

Olive chewed her chocolate slowly and stared at me as though trying to figure out what was so funny, but when I finally fell over onto my side, something changed in her face. She covered her mouth with her hands and began to laugh.

We were both embarrassed. Neither of us knew what was so funny. But we just kept laughing, and before I knew it, we were hysterical. Bent over and gasping for breath, Olive took a handful of Tootsie Rolls out of the drawer and threw them at me. They landed in the folds of my blue jeans, so I scooped them up and threw them back at her.