Promise Bound

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  “I can’t.” I was crying all over again. “You all know I can’t! I don’t have any electrical charge. You heard Calder.” My voice broke on his name. I wondered where he was. What was he doing? How badly had I hurt him?

  Mom said, “We have other options. Two, I think.”

  I hiccupped, holding back a sob. “Maris and Pavati? They aren’t in the business of doing favors. And you’re missing one important part, Mom. You’re not dying.”

  “I am.”

  “No, I mean, you’re not dying right now. Even if they would agree to change you, they’d have to stop your heart first. Is that really a chance you want to take? With them?” I turned to Dad. “You can’t be serious about any of this.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Dad said.

  “Really? You’re going to fall back on lame clichés? This is Mom we’re talking about!”

  Dad hung his head.

  Mom reached for his hand, and he took her fingers lightly in his. “This isn’t your dad’s idea,” she said. “He’s doing this for me. Because I asked him to. Lily. Baby. You need to at least ask. For me. This is my only chance.”

  “Mom, don’t say stuff like that. You’re freaking me out.”

  “This is my only chance,” she said.

  I shook my head, scrambling for a way out. It was too dangerous. “Calder would never let me even discuss it with them.”

  Dad said, “Listen, Lily. You know how I feel about Calder. I love him like a son, and I sincerely hope he comes home soon. But this animosity toward his sisters … he’s stubborn, and he’s holding a grudge, but his personal vendetta should not prevent your mother from finding a cure.”

  “Dad, I think he’s earned the right to be bitter. And don’t forget what they planned to do with you.”

  “To err is human, to forgive—”

  I rolled my eyes. “If you had any idea how ironic you’re being.”

  “Honey,” Mom said, “if it’s not too selfish of me … If Calder’s going to be gone for a while, now might be the perfect time to at least test the waters, so to speak. There’s no harm in asking his sisters. And he doesn’t have to know.”

  “Mom, this is so unfair. You’re ganging up on me, and you’re taking advantage of Calder’s being gone. What are we going to tell him when”—if—“he comes back?”

  She leaned toward me and I moved to the edge of the daybed. When she reached for me, I took her shaking hands in mine. “Lily,” she said. “Sweetheart. This is my only chance.”

  I threw back the blanket, and Sophie scooted to her left as I jumped off the daybed. After so many hours of inertia, my sudden movement startled Mom. She protested, saying I should stay put, sleep on the daybed for a while longer.

  “I’m going to my room,” I said, and I staggered through the house and up the stairs.

  I pulled MY SCRIBBLINGS from my underwear drawer. It had been a long time since I’d tried to write anything worth keeping. I had so many different emotions racing through me, I thought I was ripe for writing a life-changing manifesto, something as deep and grief-gripped as Tennyson’s In Memoriam. But I couldn’t make the pen and paper connect. My head was too noisy, my thoughts too tangled.

  I bent over the page and growled at it. My fingers were still cold and I had a hard time gripping the pen. I wrote a title:

  APOLOGY

  Then I underlined it. Twice. But nothing else came, so I crossed it out and wrote:

  PROMISE BOUND

  I tapped my pen on the paper like a woodpecker at a tree, but when that failed to extract any nugget of profound, poetic genius, I flung my journal across the room. It opened and flapped its paper wings for a second, then thumped pathetically to the floor, the cover torn from its silver spine.

  A breeze blew through the open window and ruffled the poet portraits on my wall. Somehow, they looked sad and unfamiliar hanging there—like a memorial to someone I couldn’t remember. Me, I finally realized.

  With a burst of angry energy, I got up from my bed and went to the wall. Emily Brontë hung precariously from one corner. I tore her down, pulling off a large flake of paint with her. Then, with a cold shudder, I tore down Robert Browning, reciting through my teeth like a curse: “ ‘The rain set early in tonight / The sullen wind was soon awake.’ ”

  Charlotte went next. Then Matthew Arnold. “ ‘It tore the elm-tops down for spite.’ ”

  Down came Rossetti and Keats. “ ‘And did its worst to vex the lake.’ ”

  Then Yeats and Tennyson, with an agonized groan. “ ‘I listened with heart fit to break.’ ”

  I shredded them all, reducing them to nothing more than a useless litter of words and faces on my bedroom floor.

  18

  CALDER

  The old man’s absence amplified every other innocuous sound: the tires clunking over each crack in the road, the windshield wipers scraping on the glass, and something vibrating in the center console. Oh! He had left his phone behind. That was an unexpected luxury.

  I did some impressive contortions to pull off my boots and wet socks while still maintaining speed, and stuffed the socks into the vents so they’d dry. I reached over to turn on the radio just to feel less alone, but before I could, I heard the thoughts of something on the roadside—thin, reedy animal thoughts calling “Danger!” and then “Stop!”

  I looked up just in time to see a speckled fawn step into the road; its panicked mother was barely visible in the trees. The beams of my headlights caught the fawn’s eyes, two silver moons, and I swerved, jerking the wheel too hard to the left. My tires skidded on the wet road, and though I felt like my body should be going one way, the truck spun in the opposite direction.

  And then I was rolling. Tumbling. Down the embankment. Boots and cell phone and quarters flew through the cab. The truck hit with a jolt that was followed by a grinding shudder, as if the truck were shaking off the mud.

  When the whole thing was over, I hung upside down and dangling from my seat belt. A wet trickle ran down my temple into my hair. I touched the spot with my fingers. Blood. Damn it. Now what?

  Lake Superior raged and crashed against the rocky Minnesota shoreline mere feet from my window. For a second, I thought about swimming the rest of the way to Thunder Bay. But there was the matter of my newly acquired clothes and phone. I was going to need to keep up the human charade, at least until I could find a safe place to stash my stuff and maybe find some new clothes. The socks I’d jammed in the vents had disappeared.

  I unlocked my seat belt and gravity took over. I fell onto the steering wheel—hard—then dug through the debris strewn over the cab ceiling to find the boots, the phone, and its charger. After I’d managed to get the boots on, I kicked open the door and stepped out—wet. And pissed. Any other time, the rain might have calmed me down, but tonight it only made me feel cold and empty and far away from home.

  Climbing the embankment, I twisted my ankle. The soft ground gave way beneath me, and the mud suctioned off my boot and I stepped barefoot into the muck. I staggered around—hopping on one foot—before I was able to shove my muddy foot back into the boot. Sludge squished between my toes and up my ankle.

  This whole thing was stupid. I had no interest in finding my family. The fleeting curiosity of last summer had long since left. And that’s all it had ever been—curiosity—never a need. But that was the word Lily kept using. “You need to find your mother.”

  The only thing I needed was to be with Lily. What happened with the kayak girl was testament to that.

  I fished the old man’s phone out of my pocket and punched in Lily’s number to send her a text:

  Do me a favor. Check the beach N of your house. There might be a girl there who needs some help. She’s probably gone by now. Hopefully she is. But just check. K? Bye.

  Another minute passed and I added:

  Call the police if you need to. Here’s your chance 2 keep me from coming back.

  I shoved the phone in my pocket and kept wa
lking. Two hours passed before Lily responded.

  Calder? Whose number is this? And I never said I didn’t want you to come back.

  ME: You told me to leave.

  LILY: Not the same thing.

  ME: Sounds the same to me.

  Another twenty minutes passed.

  LILY: Dad called the cops but there was no one there. Is it my fault whatever happened to that girl?

  I stared at that text for a while. But I was too angry to respond. All I could think was, Great. Now Jason knows.

  The wet leather boots tightened their grip on my ankles. I grumbled silently as I walked. The waves teased me, saying, “You could be there by now.”

  “Shut up” was all I said.

  The rain finally stopped sometime after midnight. But a blanket of clouds snuffed out the stars, and the moon was nothing more than a hint. I followed Highway 61 north along the shore, yelling at the waves, yelling at my feet that were burning with a strange new sensation. I slipped my finger into the back of a boot and felt the skin on my heel tear away. The salt from my finger burned the patch of raw flesh. I was pretty sure mermen were not supposed to get blisters. This had to be some kind of crime against nature.

  I hopped around on one foot and then the other, pulling off the boots and continuing the forced march in bare feet. I tilted my head back and yelled at the sky, “Would a goddamn car be so difficult? Where is everybody?”

  Yes, yes, I answered my own question (because God knew He wasn’t going to), it’s two a.m. Any decent person is asleep right now. Only thing stirring out here are psychopaths and rejects. “Could you send me a fellow reject?” I yelled up at the sky. “Preferably one with a car?”

  Nearly two hours after I rolled the old man’s truck, I made it to Bon Chance, Minnesota (Unincorporated)—a hamlet with nothing more than a one-pump gas station, a bar, and a sign that read POP. 223.

  It was four a.m., but as luck would have it, some guy had pulled off to the side of the road and was asleep in his car. The front bumper was dented and pressed against a lamppost like he’d run into it. The pale flood of light revealed a dozen crushed cans and a crumpled pack of cigarettes outside the driver’s-side door. I set my muddy boots on the roof of the car and rapped my knuckles on the window. Once. Twice. Third time, the kid jumped.

  “What the—?”

  I twirled my finger in the air to suggest he roll down his window. It was an old car. He had to turn a crank, and the window lowered unevenly. He pressed down on the edge of the glass to finish the job. The yeasty stench of stale beer washed over me.

  “What do you want, pretty boy?” he growled. I bent over and rested my forearms on the window frame. I couldn’t tell if it was going to be easy to push my thoughts onto this bleary-headed guy—or difficult, given that he could barely focus.

  “I want your car,” I said.

  “Yeah?” The kid leaned away from me and narrowed his eyes. “You going to fight me for it?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “What’s someone like you want with this piece of crap?”

  “You got gas?”

  “Enough.” He pulled his lips back over a haphazard arrangement of teeth.

  I pretended to consider the negotiation while casing the contents of the car. “Hmm. Tell you what, I’m feeling strangely generous. How ’bout I trade you a six-pack for your car?”

  He didn’t make any note of the fact that my hands were empty. “You think I’d trade my car for beer?”

  “No?” I asked, pushing my will onto his. “You want to just give me your car?” The kid’s mind turned slowly. It was like wading in molasses.

  “Ha!” he finally said, surprising me with his volume. “Make it a case, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “Done,” I said, opening the car door for him to exit.

  The kid climbed out and belched, blowing it in my face. “Guess you picked the wrong guy to negotiate with.”

  “Apparently,” I said, sliding into the driver’s seat, my feet ankle-deep in old hamburger wrappers. I kicked some of them out, then reached into the backseat and handed the kid his own case of beer.

  “Yesss!” he said. Then he reached on top of the car and grabbed my boots, passing them to me through the window. “Fool like you … almost drove off without these. My mother told me you can tell a man’s worth by his shoes. By the looks of these”—he snorted—“you must be the biggest loser on the face of the earth.”

  “You might be right,” I said, and threw the car in reverse, spinning the tires in the wet dirt.

  19

  LILY

  I slept late the next morning. Actually, I slept late into the afternoon and woke in a tangle of sheets, with two wet circles on my pillowcase. My sleep had been laced with dreams—but not the Nadia kind. Instead, Maris and Pavati and Mom and Dad had loomed over me all night in gruesome silhouettes, jabbing me with sticks and shoving me down onto the clattering rocks that lined the shore.

  Peer pressure and social norms had never had much effect on me. In fact, sometime after eighth grade, kids gave up on the idea of me ever fitting in. Some kids called me weird, or worse. Others—like Jules, who herself was a specimen of social perfection, and Robby and Zach—stood by me. But pressure from my own family? Well, I didn’t have the same kind of resolve.

  How was I supposed to deny my mom her chance at a long life? But I didn’t want to do what she asked of me. Even with the tentative peace between my family and Nadia’s, the old history was not that old.

  The Maris option was a no-go. Calder—I winced at the thought of his name—would never forgive me for trusting my mother to her. I trusted his judgment on that.

  That left me with Pavati by default, but just barely. I’d never answered her letter, so that made a good enough place to start. She wanted something from me. Mom wanted something from her. We were both reasonable people … and that’s where my mind stopped, because the thing she wanted from me—my alliance—wasn’t something I could give. At least, not until Calder came back. If Calder comes back. And even then there was the matter of convincing him we owed Pavati our allegiance. Fat chance.

  I wondered if Pavati would take an IOU. Could that be up for debate?

  Debate, I thought, and pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Jules. She’d gone to the U without me, baffled by my unwavering decision to stay at the lake—a place she called “the death trap.” I couldn’t blame her. Her one and only visit had been a disaster that culminated with one of our friends attacked and nearly drowned.

  “To what do I owe this supreme honor?” she asked, and I immediately started counting backward in my head. How long had it been since I’d called? Six weeks? Seven? More?

  “Hey, Jules. Got a sec?”

  “Sure. I guess.” Knowing Jules as well as I did, I could picture her narrowing her eyes as she spoke. “I’d love to hear how life has been treating you since you fell off the face of the earth.”

  I sighed. So it was going to be like that. “Sorry.” There was an awkwardness between us that had never been there before. “I’ve been really sick. And it’s hard to get good service up here. North woods, y’know.”

  “Yeah, I remember. So why are you calling now?” she asked.

  I straightened the sheets, then tucked them in tight around and under my legs, making—it occurred to me—a mermaid’s tail. “I don’t know. I missed you?”

  That softened her. “Aw, hon.”

  “And I could really use you right now.” I flexed my feet, then pointed my toes.

  Now she laughed. “Make note of the date.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Jules said.

  “You were in debate in high school.”

  “I know.”

  I rolled my eyes even though she missed out on the effect. “I’m saying, can you give me some pointers? I need to win an argument.”

  “With Calder?” she asked.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled
slowly. “Not exactly.”

  There were some muffled noises as Jules told someone to go on without her, then she was back to me. I broke out of my encasement and rolled over to get a pen and a café receipt from my bedside table.

  “Coach would say, first thing, dress the part. Which means none of your normal costumes.”

  I wrote dress the part on the back of the receipt, then stared at my closet doubtfully.

  “Then come up with two or three arguments for why your side is right. You can’t even be a little iffy. You don’t want them to smell weakness. Oooh, Lily. What are you up to? I’m starved for gossip.”

  “Keep going. Then what?”

  “Don’t get crabby. I’m skipping out on ice cream for you.”

  I was one of the few people who knew what a sacrifice that must be for her. Jules was a foodie at heart, the kind who ate anything and everything and still fit into size 2 jeans. “Just tell me what else,” I said.

  “Know what their counterarguments are going to be and have evidence to support your side and disprove theirs.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Note cards help. Lily, what’s going on?”

  Suddenly the image of me, underwater with note cards and a flip chart, burst into my mind. I took a sudden breath and choked on it. “I don’t think that’ll work where I’m going.”

  “Where you’re going? Oh my gosh, are you trying to convince your parents of something? Are you and Calder eloping?”

  A sharp barb of adrenaline poked at my stomach as I pictured the small velvet box lying in Calder’s palm, the earnest question in his eyes. I tried to laugh Jules off, but it only came out as: “Heh.”

  “You are! You can’t do that to me. I’ve had dibs on maid of honor since we were six.”

  “I know. It’s not that.” It’s far from that. “So, thanks, Jules. I gotta go.”

  “Wait! What do you mean you’ve got to go? You just called.”

  I crinkled the receipt between my fingers, right in the receiver. “The line’s getting a little fuzzy.”