Every Last Promise

by Kristin Halbrook

  I don’t know the people we’re standing behind and it’s a small blessing.

  “Getting warmer,” Mom says, as though I want to talk about the weather, too.

  I love that this town is so small that sometimes there is nothing else to say.

  But when we step inside the diner, I’m reminded how much people in small towns talk about one another. The din of conversation grows softer. The clatter of forks pauses. Selena and some other girls I used to call friends sit at a booth in the back. Selena raises her glass of orange juice as though it’s easier to look at me over the top of it than full-on.

  Bean is absent. Her parents are here. Her brother is here. The girls I’ve seen her with since I came back are here. If we’re going to pretend nothing happened, where is she?

  Mom prods me with the plate she’s been holding for a minute already. She knows I need something else to hold, something to balance out the weight of the pie. A task to take my focus from the people watching me.

  She’s so smart.

  I shift the lemon meringue pie to my left hand and take the plate with my right. Along the buffet table, scrambled eggs and bacon rest in heated pans. Behind the pans are members of Mackleby’s staff and the homecoming court.

  I force myself to look into Jen Brewster’s eyes.

  “I brought a pie,” I say.

  She reaches for it from behind the bake sale table and I prepare for our fingers to touch. I crave some connection. A whisper-sweep of our skin, an accidental scratch of her nail on my palm, even. The last time she touched me was to deck me. But she carefully takes the pie plate around the edges, avoiding my hand.

  “Thank you.” Jen’s hair curls around her shoulders and the lace collar on her dress makes her look sweet. But her words are clipped and edged.

  My plate nearly slips out of my hand as I fish in my pocket for a dollar bill. I shove it across the table. “I’ll buy one of those brownies.”

  She rolls her eyes and indicates with her hand that I should get one myself.

  “Thanks.” I bite the inside of my mouth to keep my jaw from shaking. This person I’ve known and loved my whole life stands across from me as though I’m a stranger.

  Someone makes an impatient sound behind me. A gap has opened between me and my mom and I’m holding up the line. I scurry past the bacon and eggs and find myself in front of the griddle.

  Four or five guys from the football team are here pouring batter from pitchers onto the hot surface, flipping cakes, laughing at a joke one of them made. In the far corner, a framed photo of Steven McInnis presides over the breakfast, his round face in a perpetual frown. I turn my shoulder to him.

  The boys quiet down when I hold my plate out.

  Jeremy North leans over a batch of pancakes with his lips pursed. For a second, I think he’s about to spit on my plate—

  But a strong arm holds him back.

  “Chill,” Jay Brewster warns him.

  Jay’s eyes are bright blue over his sharply defined cheeks. Blond hair is slicked back from his forehead. He looks . . . cautious. Over Jay’s shoulder, T. J. folds his arms across his chest.

  I clear my throat as quietly as possible. It’s still too loud.

  “Hi, Jay.”

  It’s strange to say his name, the syllables tripping over my tongue. Neither of us is really sure what the other knows, except for the most important thing: neither of us will tell. Somewhere in the lights flickering off our pupils, we communicate.

  Keep your mouth shut, Kayla.

  Haven’t I, Jay?

  The diner is quiet. We’re all waiting. For something. The tick of the second hand of a clock. The blow of a game-over whistle. A cough, a shattered glass of orange juice.

  For a final understanding.

  “Welcome home, Kayla,” Jay finally says. He breaks out his wide, white smile. “You look amazing. Kansas City agreed with you.”

  I drop my plate. It hits the ground thickly but doesn’t break, bouncing to land right-side up. I mutter a swear word and bend to retrieve it. When I stand again, Jay’s still waiting there with that grin and it feels, impossibly, like everything is going to be okay.

  But then, why wouldn’t it be? I’ve been back for weeks and I haven’t said a thing. It’s enough time, apparently, for him to feel confident that I never will tell.

  I smile slowly. “Maybe coming home agrees with me.”

  It’s the first thing I can think to say. Something old Kayla would have said. A friendly parry. It feels both natural and completely out of place. Like me in this town.

  T. J. nods over Jay’s head. “What’s up, Kayla?”

  My brain filters through every possible response.

  Jay must see it: the confusion, the hope. The way his words have nearly knocked me on the floor the way T. J. did the other day in the hall.

  Jay chuckles. “Haven’t talked for a long time, have we? Not since just after the accident.” He shakes his head, looks down, and flips a few pancakes. “What a . . . crazy time that was.”

  “Yeah.” I swallow. “I’m so . . .” Sorry seems such an inadequate thing to say for a life lost, even for a boy who deserved some kind of justice. But not the kind of justice he got.

  I know it now. But that night. That night dying meant something different. I even thought, in the wildness of that panic, that Jay and Steven would have killed me to ensure I kept quiet.

  “It’s a tragedy,” Jay fills in for me. “The same age as us. Too young.”

  “I’m sorry,” I finally manage, quietly.

  “I know. His family knows. It was an accident.” He turns slightly. “Jeremy, get Kayla something to drink.”

  I watch Jeremy pick a clean glass from a stack, lift the lever on the jug next to him, and pass it to me. We all watch. Me and Jay and T. J. and those other boys from the team. From school. And everyone in the diner. From my life before.

  “Thanks,” I tell Jeremy.

  I look back at Jay. He called it an accident. He’s smiling at me. Sliding pancakes from the griddle to my plate with a right arm that led our team to the championship last year.

  “Jay . . .”

  He shakes his head. “It was a long time ago. We need to move on. We can’t stop living, you know. People have been incredible. Look around.”

  I don’t look around, but I know the diner’s so full people are sitting in chairs against the wall with their plates in their laps. The biggest turnout for the homecoming pancake breakfast fundraiser I’ve ever seen.

  Jay points his spatula into the crowd. “I wouldn’t be doing their kindness justice if I stayed angry at you, would I? And my dad’s said it a hundred times: forgiveness. So Kayla, I forgive you. I mean, you said before you can’t even remember that night. You’ll never get that back. That’s worse than what I’ve had to deal with. A hole like that in your memory.”

  My eyes slide over to Jen. She’s waiting, looking at me blankly.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I say.

  “Say those are the best pancakes you’ve ever had and . . .” He shrugs. “We’ll call it even.”

  I look back down the line. The Thompsons, behind me, wait patiently, smiling. The whole diner waits, like they’ve been waiting their whole lives to hear Jay Brewster confer his grace upon Kayla Martin.

  “They look really good.” I feel brave enough to give him a tiny laugh.

  As I pass near the bake sale table on my way to join my parents, Jen catches my eye.

  “Hey, Kayla.” She pauses, looking around the diner, reading an invisible script made of smiles, gestures, ebbing tension in the air. “We already sold your pie.”

  I look at the table, and sure enough, the lemon meringue pie is gone.

  The breeze feels like a baptism.

  “It’s been so hot,” Jen complains, coming up beside me on Spark, one of the new horses at her family’s therapy facility. She pulls off her hoodie and throws it on the ground.

  Just when we thought autumn had sunk its claws in com
pletely, summer swooped in for one last, desperate week.

  “Stop complaining. It’ll be freezing again too soon. Ugh. Do not want.” I shield my eyes with my hand and look at my best friend.

  My best friend.

  I’ve repeated the phrase in my head a million times since the pancake breakfast. Since the few moments before the first bell rang at school the next Monday, when Jen came up to me, gathered me in a hug in front of everyone and said, “I’m so glad you’re back.” When Selena followed, knowing a hug would erase the cruel things she said to me, the way she pushed me at Toffey’s and at the powder-puff game. We all knew I wanted my old life back badly enough to forget everything.

  I’ve repeated it out loud, too. When I can hardly believe in the truth of it. My best friend.

  “You don’t know how sorry I am,” I’d said to her that Monday, still enfolded in her embrace.

  “I think I do. It was hard having you gone. But now you’re here and everything will go back to normal. I’ll save you a seat in Schroeder’s class,” she’d promised before we parted.

  And she had. So had Selena. In the classes we shared, at our old lunch table, with my old friends back on my side again, in her car when she gave me rides home from school. I could pretend no time had passed for us.

  I do pretend that.

  And it makes me happier than I’ve been in a long time.

  This morning, one week after the breakfast, she got me on my horse again.

  “I know you think you’ll never ride like you used to, but you still belong up here.”

  I greeted Caramel Star with a heavy heart, but her deep, dark eyes seemed to see through me, understanding that even though our old life of competitions and trophies was over, I still needed her to feel free, to feel home. We soared across Jen’s back fields and my heart soared, because I felt like my life was finally getting back to normal again.

  Now, Jen and I work together breaking in the new horse while we wait for Selena to call so we can go dress shopping for the homecoming dance next weekend.

  I lead the sweet bay around the pen while Jen sits in the saddle. She looks beautiful up there. An equestrian goddess, even though she’s in ragged jeans and a T-shirt, not her competition blazer and smart black helmet.

  My best friend.

  “If the heat holds, maybe we can get strapless dresses,” she says, letting the reins dangle over her thighs.

  I laugh and kick up some dust. “Like we weren’t going to anyway.”

  When Jen smiles, a deep dimple pokes her right cheek. Her eyes sparkle. Her hair glows. That might just be the way the sun backlights her head, but it might also be the way I view her now. As something precious I almost lost forever.

  I lead the horse out of the enclosure and lean against the white board fence while Jen puts her away. It’s warm enough for short sleeves during the day, but still cool once night falls. I grip my upper arms. The grasses sprawling out behind the barns are dotted with late-season dandelions. Squirrels zip from tree to tree in preparation for a long winter.

  The air smells fresh. Light. The back of my neck warms. Contentment is almost thorough.

  Then a door slams. Jay stands on the back deck, squinting in our direction. His shirt is gray, almost matching the color of the house, with its charcoal siding and white trim. Jay’s been . . . cool with me since the pancake breakfast.

  “Jen,” he calls. “Phone.”

  Jen appears next to me, drying her hands on the front of her jeans. “That’ll be Selena.”

  After dress shopping, we plan on settling in for a sleepover, like we always used to. Before I left, it would be four of us snuggling under layers of blankets. Now, as we walk back to the house to talk to Selena on the phone, I want to hear Jen’s side of the story. How four became three. “What changed with us, Jen?”

  She pulls her hair out of the ponytail and runs her fingers through to loosen it while she thinks.

  “You and me?” she says, and I want to correct her. No, me and you and Selena and Bean, but she rushes on before I can say anything, as though her feelings are a river undammed. “The worst part of what you did was leaving, you know. I mean, what happened to Steven was horrible. But it was an accident. Leaving made you seem . . . guilty. Like you did something wrong. On purpose. Or there was some secret you were running from. Or even like . . . you didn’t trust me.” Her chin quivers, and when she turns to me, I see her eyes swimming with hurt. Betrayal. “That’s the first time I’ve said that. Like, realized that’s what really hurt. You didn’t have enough faith in me that I would be here for you. After everything we’ve been through. How could you think I would turn my back on you like that?”

  I blink rapidly. “I just thought you’d be angry. Jay’s your brother. And your mom . . .”

  “I am not my mother.” She bites her lip, her eyes flickering to the windows at the back of her house.

  I know Jen and the tangle of decisions she has to make: what to do to gain favor with her parents, what to do to pull away and show them she doesn’t care what they think. It makes me wonder, even more, what she knows.

  “You and me, we’re basically sisters. Or something better. And yeah, he’s my brother, but he walked away that night, you know? You wouldn’t think it, the way he’s been babied. His oh-so-precious arm is fine after all that physical therapy.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who thinks that.”

  “Jay wasn’t a perfect QB before the accident. People love to forget that. Remember . . .” Her voice falters. She starts to say something but pauses again and shakes her head, as though she’s thinking of one memory, but changes to something different at the last second. “Remember when he got sacked twenty yards back from the line of scrimmage last year? What a mess. I guess . . . now they have someone other than him to blame when he screws up. Easier to get pissed at you than at their god. But that will go away.”

  Jen shrugs, but the gesture can’t erase the responsibility the town has put on my shoulders. And it wasn’t just Jay. A boy died in that accident. That lingers, even if he wasn’t the star of the team. Even if he wasn’t from a wealthy, influential family like the Brewsters.

  “Okay, but . . .” I turn the conversation to what happened with Bean when I was gone. “What’s going on with Bean?”

  Jen’s fingers freeze and fall to rest on the back of her neck. She breathes through her nose. After a long exhale, she slowly unfolds her hands. “Bean . . . changed over the summer. Found new friends and ditched us,” she says carefully.

  “Weird,” I say, and there are a million reasons why it’s weird and almost as many reasons why it’s not.

  “It all started the night of the party, really.”

  “It did?”

  Jen looks at me, considering.

  I let my eyes widen slightly, just enough to be curious but not guilty of knowing more than I should. They don’t convey the way my blood vessels are shrinking, tightening and depriving my brain of oxygen in anticipation of her next words. Of learning what Jen knows about that night.

  “I almost forgot. You don’t remember.” She says that last bit forcefully, as though commanding something I’ve already proven I’m willing to give.

  I swallow and look at the ground. Here, the dirt of the ring and broken growth around the barns gives way to the lush, thick grass of the Brewsters’ yard.

  “Right,” I say.

  Dad’s driving in on his tractor, heading to the house for dinner. I finish pulling out one of the rusted screws holding in the old oarlocks and turn off the drill.

  “How’s repairs?” he asks as he shuts off the engine and climbs down.

  “Really good. The new oarlocks just came in and I finished the exterior sanding this morning.” I tick off my accomplishments on my fingers. “I have to finish the interior sanding, but all the seats and skeleton make it take longer.”

  “I’d help more if I wasn’t so busy.”

  If he wasn’t trying to avoid me. “It’s all r
ight. I got this.”

  He surprises me when he says, “How about we do that sanding this weekend?”

  “I think I’d like that.” I clear my throat. “But . . . probably not? I have a lot going on this weekend. Don’t think there’ll be time.”

  “That’s right. Last homecoming game of high school for you. It’s a big night.” Dad picks up a dirty rag from the seat of the tractor then wipes the back of his arm across his forehead. “Kayla,” he says. “Can I ask you something?”

  I look up at Dad, at his serious face. I don’t really want to answer questions from him. Maybe because I can’t predict what they’ll be. Or maybe because what I need from him isn’t questions but an explanation. Did he really send me away because he was scared for me or because he was ashamed of me? I sigh. “I’m not sure I’ll know the answer.”

  “Well, that’s fair warning. But I’m going to ask anyway.” He pauses. “How did you end up in a car with Jay Brewster and Steven McInnis?”

  I frown and twist a piece of hair around my finger. I stuff my hands in my back pockets and squint. “Jen and I had a fight that night. About where she’s going to college. And how I don’t want to go with her.” I pause, but Dad keeps folding his rag into fourths like I haven’t said anything at all. A lone hawk circling overhead shrieks at us. “After that I walked away to get some space.”

  “So you went for a drive.” In someone else’s car, he doesn’t say.

  “I don’t . . .” I swallow and Dad picks up on my hesitation, eager to close a little bit more the gap that grew between us after that night.

  “Must feel pretty bad not remembering.”

  I let him believe that’s the reason I didn’t finish my sentence. I want that gap closed, too.

  “Maybe I don’t . . . want to,” I hedge.

  Dad looks down at the rag. “What I really mean . . . what I really want to know . . . is if you’re okay. Just . . . Steven wasn’t always the finest character, from what I’d always understood.” I follow Dad to the shed, where he tosses the rag atop a pile of dirty ones. “And Jay Brewster likes to test what he can get away with sometimes. A boy like that will.”

  I stiffen. Pull a splinter of loose wood from the corner of Dad’s workbench.