The Keeper's Vow

The

Keeper’s Vow

by

B.F. Simone

Copyright © 2010 by ChunkyCatBooks
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be
reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express
written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review.

[email protected]

www.FrancinaSimone.com

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

Katie should have
known this morning that it would be a bad day. The smell of edible
breakfast should have set her off.

If anything, she should have known when Mr.
Rhineheart didn't care that she’d asked to go to the bathroom five
minutes after class started—she should have known that very moment,
when he said, "Don't forget the hall pass." 

Not now, with this strange boy staring and
talking to her like she was mentally-ill. "Look," he said, "I need
you to come with me." He had “attitude” written all over his long
face. One of those kids who thought they were above everything.

"And I need to pee.” She walked past him
toward the bathroom. To be honest, she really wanted to run to the
library and hide there until the end of class. They’d just started
Shakespeare, and it was better to fall asleep in the library than
in front of Mr. Rhineheart.

"Katalina," the strange boy said with way
too much authority. No one called her that. Why was he still
following her?
Who
did he think he was?

"Do I know you?"

"I already told you. I need to talk to
you." 

And,
she thought. His shirt was a
little wrinkled—like he didn't care—his black pants fit not too big
or small, and he wore ankle-high boots. He wasn’t in full dress
code. Either he was one of those kids who thought he was above the
rules, or the kind of kid who just liked to test the teachers. He
could have been cute if he combed his hair—and didn't come off like
a giant douche-bag. 

He narrowed his blue eyes and she changed
her mind. He couldn't have been cute if he tried. Not with eyes
that probed and prodded like that. "Too bad," she said, pushing the
bathroom door open and leaving him behind.

She stood in front of the mirror scrolling
through her phone. Only two-minutes passed and she was already
going crazy. There was no one to text. The only person she could
talk to was Allison, but Allison would only lecture her for
skipping class again. The same Allison who’d, just last week, said,
“Ew, skipping is like wearing a knitted-hat in the summer. It’s
embarrassing when you’re caught and there is no benifit.”
 

“
I happen to like wearing knitted-hats in
the summer,”
Katie had said knowing Allison was referring to
Katie’s favorite orange and white, hand-knitted, hat with the
lopsided puffball. It was the first and last thing she ever
knitted; no matter how much it resembled a traffic cone, she was
proud of it.  

“
Which is why you see nothing wrong with
truancy.”

But Allison was wrong. Katie did see the
problem. The problem was her standing in a bathroom starting at
wads of toilet paper and tampon wrappers.

“Just go to class. Study once in a while.
It’s not that hard,” Allison said, stuffing her math book in her
locker. Math was the only thing Katie was better at than Allison.
Watching Allison slam the book all the way to the back of the
locker, gave Katie a little satisfaction. Maybe she sucked at
making fashion statements in her school uniform or
always
being right, but Katie had a C plus in math and Allison only had a
C minus it was a start.

“It
is
hard. Brian would understand.
He’s
my best-friend,” Katie said. Allison eyed Katie as she
closed her locker, her red, silky hair swung back and forth in a
high ponytail. “I’m kidding—second best-friend. Lighten up a
little. I have next year to worry about grades and college. No one
ever counts your junior year.”

“Are you serious? You’re going to end up at
some no-name community college,
if
you even make it out of
high school. You’ll end up like Olive-Branch Knowles—aspiring to be
a protest leader of free love. Teachers blame MTV, I blame her
hippie parents.”

“Be quiet she’s right there,” Katie said as
Olive marched down the hall in her
knee-length-Hamilton-High-School-navy-blue skirt, smiling and
shaking hands with anyone who either didn’t see her coming or was
too dumb to avoid eye contact. For a week, last year, Katie
obsessed over farm-animal rights and boycotted all dairy products
until she realized she was boycotting her favorite and most
important food group. Even though she went back to slurping
milkshakes, chomping cheese-sticks, and downing gallons of ice
cream, Olive
still
considers it a perfect conversation
starter. 

Katie grabbed Allison and headed toward the
science hall. “Alright—alright I won’t skip anymore. At least not
this week,” Katie said, catching a glimpse of Brian in the class
just across from hers. He was, sitting on top of his desk talking
to someone she couldn’t see. Even though his back was turned to her
she knew, by the way he slouched, that he was smiling—those eyes
probably turned into little leprechaun-green rainbows. She could
walk over to him now, and they could hate school together—but he’d
probably ignore her for his “more popular” friends.

“Katalina,” a voice, too familiar, said. It
was the same boy from this morning. He frowned, shoving through
bodies as if he and his destination were more important than anyone
else's. 

“Who’s that?” Allison said just as put-off
at hearing Katie’s full name. 

“I don’t know. He was harassing me this
morning when I left class.”

“Not another hall monitor reject?”

“Those kids have no lives.” Katie agreed.
Last year, Principle Boyle got the smart idea to have hall monitors
in a high-school. An incident involving pepper spray and handcuffs
shut down the program. Though, some super do-gooders still
lingered—probably in some underground club scheming to keep the
halls free of Taco-Tuesday wrappers. 

 “I need to talk to you,” he said when
he reached her. If he had said please, or hadn’t been looking at
her like she spit in his cereal, she might have stood there and
listened. One thing was for sure, he acted like a bully—and just
like he missed the memo about her name, he missed the one about her
being a bad target. 

“About what?”

“We need to talk in private,” he said,
raising his eye brows and placing a stiff finger on his left
temple. All of his long fingers were calloused. 

He stuffed them in his pockets.

“I don’t know you. We don’t have anything
private to talk about.” The more she stood there the uneasier she
felt. She
didn’t
know him. Hamilton High wasn’t a big
school. It was private. Everyone knew everyone, and yet she had
never seen him before. 

“My name is Tristan. Now you know me.”

“Unless you can think of a reason for me to
go running off into some dark corner with you, don’t count on
it.”

“Smooth, Kay,” Allison said.

Katie blushed, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She hit Allison with her chemistry notebook as the bell rang. She
opened her classroom door and shrugged at Tristan. Whatever he
wanted would have to wait. 

After school, Katie saw Brian standing near
her locker, surrounded by a crowd of girls complaining about
weekend homework. His short brown hair looking a little too dry and
his lips a little too cracked. She wanted to douse him in
moisturizer. It was a mystery how he stayed popular with those dry
lips. If anyone knew the real him, the Brian whose room smelled
like moldy Doritos and cheese—the kind of cheese she wouldn’t touch
even if it were deep fried and dripping marinara—he’d probably die
of shame and she’d be his only friend.

They locked eyes for a moment before he
turned his attention back to his fan club. The girls giggled and
Katie continued to her locker.

“Hey Katie,” Brian said, pulling on the back
of her book-bag

“The Brian fan club is getting bigger,”
Katie laughed, “And so is your head—stop flipping your hair like
that. It makes you look like such a poser.”

“It’s not posing if you’re the real
deal.”

Katie rolled her eyes and gagged as she
opened her locker and shoved her books inside. She wasn’t going to
go anywhere near that ego.

“I’m so glad it’s Friday. Let’s go to the
movies,” Brian said.

“Aren’t you grounded? Lucy specifically
said, ‘If you can’t keep your room clean you can’t have a life,’ to
which you said—”

“I’ll just tell her I’m studying at your
house. She’s been way uptight lately. God, she’s annoying.”

He wasn’t being fair. He was never fair
about Lucinda and that bothered Katie. Lucinda was the perfect
mother. He was lucky and he took it for granted.

Allison appeared from around the corner and
Katie felt the tension. “You guys done now? We’re supposed to be at
your house in twenty-minutes,” Allison said, ignoring Brian
completely. 

“There goes the movie,” Brian
complained.

“Oh happy-happy, joy-joy,” Katie grumbled as
she adjusted her book-bag and followed Allison out of the
school.

She had completely forgotten today was the
day they were going to help her with the yard work. Ever since her
dad found out she’d turned her room into a hamster-breeding
laboratory he gave her yard duty as a learning exercise:
“how to
be responsible and tell your parent you’re breeding rodents in the
house.”
He’d only found out because she accidentally bought a
gerbil with a nub for a tail and introduced it to its not so
friendly mating partner. She had no idea, when she put the poor
dead gerbil in the plastic-lunch bag, that it would fall out of the
trash can and onto their driveway for her dad to find. 

But, she did know the “learning exercise”
was just an excuse to pawn off yard duty. Their yard was no
paradise. Weeds didn’t just grow there, they had originated there
and it didn’t help that the grass was on some type of steroids and
grew ten-times faster than everyone else’s. It was already catching
the neighbor’s attention, but their stuck-up neighbors could afford
gardeners. They had to be the only house in the neighborhood that
didn’t have landscapers.

He had banished her to Hell.

“I’m not picking weeds. I’m saying that
now,” Brian said as they neared her house. 

“I don’t care what you do, I’m just glad you
guys are going to help,” Katie said, dragging her feet. 

It was extra hot today. No breeze. No
clouds. She was minutes away from backbreaking pain and itchy skin.
It didn’t help that every house she passed was fit for one of those
home and garden magazines.

“We should split the yard into three parts,
we’ll get it done faster that way,” Allison eyed Brian, “And no one
will get stuck pulling all the weeds.”

“Good to see you’re using those tremendous
math skills you’ve got,” Brian said. 

“Well Brian, I’m so busy succeeding in
all
my other classes, math gets pushed to the back burner.
But I would consider
one
‘C’ acceptable, wouldn’t you?”

Brian frowned and stared at the sidewalk,
“Don’t be annoying, Allison.”