Every Last Promise (15 page)

Grace looks up at me and her mouth twists with a sheepish smile. To catch her acting like a kid.

But when Bean sees me her face loses its smile. She presses her lips into a thin line and sticks the sword back in the vendor's basket.

“Hurry up, Kayla,” Jen calls, and I follow her, pretending that I haven't been looking at Bean. I don't think she's noticed and then it doesn't matter because everyone starts cheering.

“Yeah, man, there he is!” someone yells next to me,
clapping his hands above his head. The whistle he gives is shrill and hurts my ears.

Jay Brewster has finally decided to grace us all with his presence.

We get ready for the homecoming dance at Jen's house because she has a date to come pick her up and I'm just riding along in the backseat.

Maybe I
should
have asked Noah to come with me.

Maybe I shouldn't be going at all.

Jen's white strapless dress hugs her body, beginning where her small breasts start to squish out at the top and ending halfway up her thigh. Her legs are long, long, long. She leaves her hair loose and does her face in mod makeup: thick black eyeliner on her top lid and nude lipstick. My dress is black with a full, but short, tulle skirt. I pull my hair back into a bun and fill my lips with deep red lipstick. We teeter around Jen's room in our sky-high heels; I'm a little better at walking in mine than Jen, despite my ankle. Her date rings the doorbell as I'm pulling on my lace gloves.

Erica Brewster pokes her head in.

“T. J. is here,” she says to Jen. Always to Jen, even when I'm standing next to her. Never saying something to me, looking at me, thinking about me.

“My mom's a bitch,” Jen always says, even if I don't bring it up. “Ignore her.”

I do ignore her, and Erica ignores me back, and that, I know, is as good as it will ever get with her.

Downstairs, T. J. stands in the entryway with Jay. They're both wearing black dress pants, but T. J. has a gray vest over a pink dress shirt while Jay's wearing a tie and jacket. A few months ago, I would have gotten mad at Jen for not asking if it was okay for her and T. J. to go to the dance together. T. J. had been
my
crush. But now, I hear him say, “Hey, Kayla,” and my name sounds a little bit like “killa” still, and I don't care that Jen didn't ask me if it's okay to go with him.

I'm not the same Kayla.

Jay says hi, too, and not for the first time, I wonder,
How can he look at me when last summer I drove into a ditch to escape him?
How can our interaction right now be so normal? As though Jay doesn't care what he's done, what I've done, what I might know about him?

He has never had to care.

T. J. looks up at Jen with the smile of a boy who knows he's getting lucky later on. Jay slaps him on the back, says, “Keep it clean, kids,” like Jen isn't the older twin by five minutes, and heads out the door, his keys in hand, to meet up with his own date.

“Shall we?” T. J. holds his arm out toward Jen. I look away from his white-knight performance and fall in line somewhere behind the two of them and their nervous laughter.

The high school gym is decorated like every high school
gym in every teen movie's dance scene. Balloon towers flank the doors; there are food tables and a picture-arch thing. Long streamers crisscross over our heads. And there's a DJ on the stage under a rainbow of strobe lights. By the time we arrive, couples are slow-dancing badly to an administration-approved soundtrack.

I look around for Bean.

Then force myself not to look around for Bean.

Jen and Selena ditch their dates for three songs in a row so we girls can dance in a little circle. We let a few others in—the other homecoming princesses, a friend or two—but not everyone. In between songs, I look out and think how, with another decision, those people might have been me.

Halfway through the night, I allow myself to recognize that Bean isn't here. Then the main lights come on and the homecoming court is introduced, one by one. There are jokes about a brother and sister winning king and queen, but I guess the jokes aren't wrong because, sure enough, it's Jay and Jen standing on that stage with crowns on their heads when all is said and done.

It's the culminating moment they both have waited on for years. In another life, it could have been me up there with Jay. Or Bean. Always, though, it would have been Jay.

Instead of dancing with each other, like the king and queen normally do, Jen and Jay each grab their dates and take the floor.

I smile for Jen because the spotlight lifts the gold tones in her hair and her dress flashes and T. J. smiles like he's the luckiest guy in the room. The moment passes when Maria and Jay, slowly spinning in a circle, block my view of Jen. I shiver. Someone has opened the doors to let out some of the sweaty stink of a bunch of teenagers packed into one room and it's suddenly so cold. My jaw muscles clench. Selena and her home-from-college date head out onto the dance floor when the DJ announces it's open to everyone, and I'm left standing here alone.

I walk outside and call my mom to ask her to come get me. I know she's surprised by the way a too-long silence answers my request for a ride. But then she simply says she's on her way and I'm grateful that she sees some things clearly but not other things. I let the heels of my shoes sink into the grass.

“The party's inside,” Noah says, coming up behind me.

“Then why aren't you in there?” I turn to look at him. His button-down shirt is open at the collar and he's wearing skate shoes with his khaki pants. Shivers erupt over my bare shoulders, but they have nothing to do with the cold. “Who are you here with?”

“No one. I just got off work.”

“And you came here instead of anywhere else?”

He doesn't answer. A roar of laughter comes from the open gym doors, but I don't see who's making the noise or what they've done that's so funny because I'm watching Noah
watch me. My ribs feel like a cage for a panicked bird. His gaze travels over my bare collarbone but no more before returning to my chin, my lips, my eyes. Boldness and timidity battle in me until I catch a breath at the way he swallows nervously and then I make a decision.

I square my body to his and take his hand in mine before I can stop myself. Think better of it. Let my arm settle on his shoulder and then, when his goes around my waist, curve mine around his neck. He knows how to keep rhythm and so we shuffle in time to the song drifting over to us, my heels crushing grass, his shoes sliding over dirt.

“You came here instead of anywhere else,” he says into my hair. Somehow I know he's not talking about the dance.

Headlights brighten the night and I pull away from Noah. My body is not happy. It wants to stay in that embrace, under that warm, searching gaze.

But I open my mom's car door and get in.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I tell her.

“Is that Noah Michaelson?” she asks, peering out my window as we pull away.

Noah waits, hands in his pockets, until we're out of sight.

“Yeah.” I prop my elbow against the door and rest the side of my head in my hand. “That's Noah.”

When we pull into our driveway, I say, “I'm pretty tired. Going to head to bed.”

I'm halfway up the stairs when she says my name. I look down at her, standing in the entryway with the car keys held in her fist. She isn't wearing her gardening hat anymore like she was before I left for Jen's house earlier in the day, but her hair is still flattened against her head. It's not the sort of thing she worries about.

She worries about me.

It takes her a few moments to decide what to say to me. I guess at the possibilities but there are so many I lose track. In the end, she only says, “Good night.”

“Night, Mom.”

I wait until I hear her and Dad's low voices talking in the kitchen before climbing the rest of the stairs. I replay Noah's face and words in my mind with each step I take. Yes, I came back here. I came back to reclaim a world of love and laughter, a place with sprinkles of magic at the edges. But the people who used to live there aren't the same. The dust in the air at sunrise doesn't shimmer anymore; it just looks dirty. The river smells murky instead of fresh. The magic is gone. From this place . . . and from me.

And what do I do about that? I walk into my room. For a moment, facing my closed closet door, I wish I had asked Mom to come up with me. To face this excavation together. To tell me what to do.

I open the closet door. Pull out the bag from the hospital. The bag from that night. Everything inside is folded neatly.
There's a form on top with my name on it. It's obvious no one has gone through this bag until now. And I get that—the desire to be distanced from that night. These things are better left in the back of the closet, forgotten.

No. They're not.

I scratch my shoulder absently, gathering strength. Then I reach in. Feel the remnants of that night. Silky black shorts. The hardness of a high heel.

The paramedics would have assumed every item on me was mine. My clothing. My shoes. Whatever was in my pocket.

What about what wasn't on me? My purse. My driver's license.

I pause with my hands buried in purple sequins.

Why did no one say anything about me not having my license?

The heat on my face is like sticking my head too far into an oven. I get up, leaving the bag on the floor, and splash my face with cold water in the bathroom sink.

I go back to my room.

This time I pull everything out. Fling out the clothing piece by piece. The heels thump against the wall. And, at the bottom, is a memory.

A phone.

I walk away from it again. Then back to it. Pick it up and cradle it in my palm. It's not my phone. It's Steven's. Just
something else thrown from the car that night. Like Steven. Like me.

I'd tucked it in my pocket, that night last spring.

And made a promise to Bean.

SELENA AND BEAN SHOWED
up in a cloud of perfume and flowing dresses an hour before the party started, just as Jen and I were starting to get dressed.

“When do your parents leave?” Selena checked her hair in the bathroom and added a spritz of hairspray to an errant flyaway.

“Any minute,” Jen said.

As if she knew we were talking about her, Erica Brewster poked her head in Jen's room and tapped her red fingernails against the doorframe. “We're going,” she said. Her eyes swept over me and Jen and Bean. “You girls look so nice.”

“Hi, Mrs. Brewster,” Selena yelled from the bathroom.

“You look nice, too, Selena,” Jen's mom called across the room, even though she couldn't see Selena. “Have a good night and be good. I have my cell so call if you need me. Kayla, I'm sure you'll keep everyone out of trouble.” Her smile reached the corners of her eyes. “I know I can trust you for that.”

“I will do my best.” I waved as she faded out of sight down the hall.

Jen turned to me, her eyes sparkly. “Alone. Finally.”

The four of us grinned and a shiver of anticipation bolted up my spine. I reached for Jen's music and clicked it on, turning on the balls of my feet to the thump of bass.

In the bathroom, Selena exchanged the hairspray for the bottle of vodka and cranberry juice she'd stashed in her bag and began passing it around. The juice mix was warm and I declined.

“Orange juice next time,” I said. “That cranberry stuff you get is basically red sugar water.”

“Lighten up, Kayla,” Selena said. She lifted an eyebrow at me over the lip of the bottle.

“I'll wait for something better.”

“Don't we all,” Jen said.

Jay came home, bringing a handful of noisy guys with him, and we watched them set up the kegs in the backyard and pull the cover off the hot tub. Jen told them where to sink tiki torches into the grass and set tables up on the wood deck off the back of the house. Bean and I emptied bags of chips into big plastic bowls.

“You're missing the bowl,” I said as half of the pretzels Bean was pouring ended up on the table.

“Oops.” She giggled and moved her whole body to see the mess she was making. Her feet stumbled over each other and I laughed and put a hand to her shoulder to keep her steady.

“How much booze has Selena given you?” Bean and I
were the nondrinkers, usually. The lightweights.

“Oh God, I don't know. We had some at my house before we came over.” She stopped, her eyes lifted to some point over my head, and pointed. “Look at that.”

I turned and together we watched the gold and scarlet brushstrokes of the sunset deepen and bleed into one another. Across the table, Bean's hand found mine. We breathed out the air of day and in the air of the falling night. “You should paint it.”

“It's beautiful,” she said softly. Her pale face reflected the dying yellow rays of the sun, her eyes took on a washed-out turquoise color that reminded me of the waves that lapped against the shore during our Florida spring break vacation. I squeezed her hand.

“Now kiss.”

The moment was broken by a grating boy voice behind us. We turned.

Steven McInnis pointed his phone at us, his arm steady, his eyes fixed on the screen. Bean frowned.

“We're not here for you to get your rocks off.” I swiped at his hand, but he whipped it away too quickly.

“Too bad. I could get into this thing.”

“Piss off, Steven.”

Steven shook his head. “Don't be like that, Kayla. Why do you have to be cruel?
Smile
. It's the first day of summer. You look prettier that way.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “I'm not trying to look pretty for you.”

Walking up behind him, Selena pulled her fist back and slammed it into Steven's shoulder.

His face crumpled. “What the hell . . .”

“Stop being an asshole, asshole.”

Steven flashed her a look, all dark eyebrows and shaded eyes, but skulked off to bug someone else.

I flashed Selena a grateful smile. “I'm going to run in the house and grab Bean some water,” I said. “You should stay with her. She might need . . . holding up.”

Bean stuck her tongue out at me and Selena laughed and slipped her arm through Bean's.

Through the window above the kitchen sink, I saw Steven do a dorky dance toward Maria. She planted her fists on her hips and ignored him. But the girl she was talking to giggled at him.

I took a drink of Bean's water. The yard was filling quickly as carloads of people emptied onto the Brewsters' sprawling green lawn. Someone turned the music up.

Jen caught sight of me and beckoned. I laughed at her come-hither expression and started to dance out to her.

I left the cup next to the sink. I forgot my worry for Bean in the house.