Every Last Promise

by Kristin Halbrook

  “You’re one of the few people around here who thinks that.”

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? With the way some folks get so caught up in that team. But this is a whole town of people and we’re not all the same. I know that. That’s why I made sure you went to Bea’s.”

  I dig the splinter under my fingernail, wincing at the sharp stab of pain. “Because of how people treated you after that night. Because of what I did. Who I hurt. I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “It was never about me. I should have told you right off the bat why I wanted you to go to your Aunt Bea’s. I’m the one who’s sorry. For not making that clear.”

  For the first time since I’ve been home, I look my dad in the eye. The truth of what he’s saying is written there. And the realization that I needed his explanation and apology all along is written in my heart. “Thank you. For wanting to protect me.”

  He laughs a little and I duck my head, realizing how my words sound. Like I doubted him. But he lets it go. “Coming in for dinner?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I just want to finish getting the oarlocks off. I only have one more to go.”

  Dad nods and I pick up the drill again, pressing the trigger over and over again until I’ve drowned out the sound of that night.

  SPRING

  CALEB FOUND ME DURING my free period on Thursday, sitting on the hill and doodling in an old notebook.

  “What are you doing here?” I said to him. Yesterday was the last day for seniors, and the way he’d been dismantling everything in his bedroom and talking nonstop about the summer camp counselor job he’d scored made it clear to our entire family that he couldn’t wait to get out of town.

  “You should ditch the last couple of periods and hike Point Fellows with me,” Caleb said. He motioned to my sneakers. “You look ready to go.”

  “There’s a party in my French class next period,” I said. “Madame Lechat said she was bringing cheese and pastries.”

  “So? I’m leaving soon. You would turn down time spent with your favorite brother for cheese? I’m hurt.”

  “You’re my only brother,” I said.

  But I squinted in the general direction of Point Fellows. The air had that soft spring afternoon quality to it, when the rays of the sun were blurred into a watercolor painting by dust and dampness. The sunset, when it came, would be layer upon layer of lavender and pink and orange. Caleb headed out in a week. Our moments together were limited.

  I closed my notebook and stood. “Okay.”

  I followed Caleb to his truck, tossing my backpack in before climbing up. He’d scrubbed the truck spotless a few days ago and it smelled almost sickly sweet inside; a purple deodorizer hung from the rearview mirror. A swift pain struck my chest. Caleb was a notorious slob. Cleaning his truck was a statement of change.

  I watched Caleb as we sat behind a tractor that had backed up cars five deep on the road to Point Fellows. It looked like he’d gone several days without handling a razor and months since getting a haircut. Still, his jaw looked sharper, and he’d taken to wrinkling his forehead so that a couple of lines emerged across it. Looking at my brother ready to head off into the world made me feel oddly young.

  The tractor finally pulled to the shoulder of the road and all the cars behind it zoomed by. We raced down a road that hardly saw any other traffic, and when we pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead, knew we would have time to kill before sunset. I ambled behind Caleb for the first few hundred yards, kicking pebbles at the heels of his shoes, then we slowed as the incline grew steeper.

  At the clearing at the end of the trail, I picked the first opened dandelions of the season and sat next to Caleb on the edge of the bluff, our feet dangling over, and blew the wispy seeds out over the river and valley below.

  He took several long, deep breaths like he was filtering all of home through his lungs, holding on to what he loved and letting go of what he couldn’t keep, and said, “I’m going to miss you, Kayla Koala.” I smiled briefly at the nickname only he called me. A reference to the mangled-by-love koala stuffed animal Caleb had given me when I was a toddler. “I’m going to miss a lot about this place.” He jingled his keys in his left palm. I relieved another dandelion of its seeds. “There are some things I won’t miss.” And I thought about how far we were from major airports and our lack of dance clubs and how there were only so many girls in town. All the things I was sure Caleb wouldn’t miss. “Small towns are funny places,” he went on. “Filled with people who know everyone. No places to hide.”

  I gave him a look. “What have you been reading lately?”

  “We’re the same.” He went on as though I hadn’t said anything. “We love this place so hard. Our lungs are as full of the dirt of this place as they are the air.” He looked at me, his eyebrows narrowing as he considered what to say next. The dancing smile I always associated with Caleb was missing. “But I’m glad to be leaving.”

  This intense side of Caleb gave me chills. I crushed the dandelion stems between my fingers and the bluff’s dry dirt. It was hard to tell if he was telling me how happy he was to leave because he wanted to make his leaving, his changing our family dynamic, easier on me and Mom and Dad, or because he needed to make it easier on himself. Put distance between himself and a place he loved as much as I did. Make leaving bearable.

  He unclenched his jaw and softened his hand enough that his keys fell out and onto the ground. An old Caleb smile fought its way through. “New adventures, right? I’ll miss you, Kayla Koala,” he repeated. “You’ve always kept me good. When I think about doing something, I ask myself, what would my little sister think of me if I do this? What kind of example am I setting?”

  I smiled. “That’s shocking because you’ve done some stupid things.”

  “Just think of the stupid things I haven’t done!”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t want to sully your pristine memory of me by telling.”

  I snorted. “I have a few choice words to describe you if you’d like to hear—”

  “Hey, now,” he interrupted. He nudged my shoulder with his and I had to throw my arm out to keep my balance. I pushed back, but he just bit off a laugh and scratched at his cheek stubble. “I wouldn’t believe what you’d say anyway. I know how awesome you really think I am.”

  I gave him a soft smile. He was leaving soon. “What makes you think my descriptions wouldn’t have been awesome?”

  “Aw, Koala.” A flush ran up his neck. For a quiet moment, we watched the sky change. Caleb broke the moment when he took a long breath and I looked at him. His shoulders were tense, but he dropped his chin and his whole body slumped with it. “I’m not always awesome, though.”

  The tone of his voice kept me from cracking another joke. Instead, I waited.

  He raised his head again. A light flickered in his eyes. The same hazel mishmash of green and gray and yellow as mine. We could see a long way from the top of Point Fellows, but he seemed to be looking even farther than was possible. Into another place. Another time. “Have you ever been in a situation when you weren’t sure you did the right thing?”

  I shrugged. Pushed a strand of hair out of my mouth. Tasted the bitterness of dandelion stem on my lip. “I guess.”

  He shook his head. “No, I mean . . . a time when maybe it was easier to believe you weren’t supposed to do something even though you probably should have? And you convinced yourself inaction was the same as not doing harm when really . . .” His fingers fidgeted along the seams of his jeans, but my body was still. There was more he wanted to say, something important he needed to relieve himself of, maybe. But the funny thing was that, just like he said, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it, even though I probably should want to. It was the way his secret, if that’s even what it was, felt so heavy.

  “Are Mom and Dad okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said quickly. “They’re fine.” He shook his head, swung his legs back onto solid ground, and held a hand out to help me to my feet.
“It’s nothing. What I’m trying to say is . . . keep cool while I’m gone, okay?”

  I stared at Caleb’s hand for a beat before taking it. There was something new about Caleb. Something damaged. I flipped through the events of the past few months, trying to think of when the change began but couldn’t pinpoint a specific moment.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep being the superhero,” I said. “Fighting for what’s right and good.”

  “Koala suit and cape and trusty steed and all?”

  I laughed, but Caleb didn’t join in. “Something like that. But yeah, you can count on me to be the good one.”

  The good one.

  FALL

  I HELP MOM CLEAR off the dinner table and then head over to Toffey’s to meet up with Jen and Selena.

  Tuesday is open mike night at Toffey’s and the pace is brisk. I grab a tiny table in the corner. Bean’s here, with a few other girls, including the curly-haired one from my first day back at school. I chew the inside of my cheeks as Jen slides into the chair next to me. She frowns when she sees me looking at Bean’s table. Selena catches Jen’s eye and just as quickly looks away and I feel a stab of annoyance. Have I not proven myself enough?

  “I’ll grab us something,” Selena says. “What do you want?”

  “Mocha. Tell them not to be stingy with the whipped cream,” Jen says.

  They both look at me. But over Selena’s shoulder I see Bean fiddling with the watch around her left wrist and working her jaw, her gaze moving from me to Jen and back.

  I hate that I don’t know what she’s thinking. That I don’t know so much of what she’s been thinking. Months’ worth of thoughts. A hummingbird hovers in my chest. I didn’t expect to see Bean here. As though normal, everyday life couldn’t, shouldn’t go on after that night. As though going for coffee, laughing with a friend, being out, is only for people without secrets weighing them down.

  I stand. “Actually, I need to go.”

  “But we just got here.” Jen gapes at me.

  “Yeah, so just tell me what you want before the line gets longer,” Selena says.

  “I’m not thirsty anymore.”

  As if anyone gets coffee because they’re thirsty. My knuckles knock against the table. One finger hits a dried-out piece of gum.

  “I forgot that . . . at home I have to . . .” But I can’t think of an excuse that would get me out of here. The idea that I want to run away from the things I’ve sacrificed so much to get back in my life tears at me.

  “I want you to stay.” Jen’s voice is soft but I can count the layers of meaning in it.

  Stay because I want to hang out with you.

  Stay because you owe me.

  Stay because there are still things to prove to me, to all of us.

  “I’ll just get you a mocha, too, okay, Kayla?” Selena says. She pauses for a beat before turning away without waiting for my answer.

  I watch her retreat and notice the taut shoulder muscles revealed by her tank top.

  My eyes drift from Selena back to Bean.

  Bean doesn’t know. Can’t know. But in her expression I see it all: that she knows I saw, that there is still space to make things right.

  If I were only willing to give up my home.

  I hold my breath until the room spins. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. What happened that night was supposed to stay in the past. I thought that was what everyone wanted. Once I make up with my friends, we are supposed to stay made up. Things go back to normal, to the way they were.

  “Are you going to sit down?” Jen says. She looks at me, picks up her phone to check her messages.

  The coffee shop goes quiet but only for me.

  Terry Brady still reads a poem. The espresso machine grinds and churns. Other kids in our class get up and down from their seats. It feels like there are too many people, too many eyes watching me.

  No, just two eyes.

  Across the room, Bean is looking at me, still. Even from across the room, I can tell that her lips are pressed together so hard that they’re outlined by a little white line. Suddenly, I’m not sure about what I’ve done or who I am. An annoying trill begins in my ears. The chair nearly topples over when I push back. “No . . . I have to go.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  Jen sighs. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “I have my bike.”

  “Put it in the back of my car.”

  Jen knows. She has to know everything. Jen and Selena and Bean. Jay. My parents. Is there anyone who can’t see the truth in the terrible darting of my gaze, in the way my hands tremble?

  Jen reaches for me. Her look of concern is pure, a best friend’s. “You do look sick. Your face is splotchy. Let’s get you home.”

  Her touch is soft as petals. Her touch stings like wasp bites.

  I pull out my phone. “I’m calling my mom to get me. I don’t want you to get sick, too.” I hold up the phone to my ear and walk out to make a fake call.

  I dodge off the road and into dirt, drop my bike, and use my feet. The truth about cornfields is that they’re hard to run through. The corn’s planted tightly to maximize acreage and the stalks are mean and stubborn, unwilling to bend to a person’s will. The leaves are sharp. A slice from one feels like a paper cut times a million.

  Still, I push through and they crack and snap under the pressure of my shoes like tiny bones. Every time one breaks, a pain shoots into my ankle.

  The night air smells like this sweet, new corn so I breathe it in as I run, and it comforts me and fuels my anger at the same time.

  I wish I hated this smell.

  But I love it and I love this town and I want to love everyone the way I used to love them. I want for them to love me the same way, too.

  I just need to keep running.

  And I can’t wonder about whether or not people know I remember what happened at Jen’s party last spring. Because then I not only have to question the kind of person I am, but the kind of people Jen and Selena are. So many people in this town. I run fast and I run far to keep my mind away from those questions.

  I reach a dirt road and dart across it, belatedly hearing the honk. A truck slams on its brakes, raising a cloud of dust and rock. I am frozen in the road like a deer.

  The driver’s door opens and a worn pair of jeans and faded T-shirt appear through the cloud.

  “Why are you always in places?” I ask Noah, fighting back a swelling urge to run to him. “Places I am? You used to be invisible.”

  “I watched you leave Toffey’s.”

  “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Then I guess I still am invisible.”

  I swallow hard and walk to him, staying on the other side of his still-open door. My palms on the window frame steady me.

  Pieces of Noah’s dirty blond hair blow back from his face. Behind him, the sky has taken on the colors of fire.

  “I want to be invisible,” I whisper.

  “Then get in.”

  Noah moves aside so I can climb into his truck. I slide across the seat and watch as he gets in and settles himself behind the steering wheel.

  We don’t say anything. Not yet. We drive around, looking for a place we can both talk and feel safe. A fairy-tale land.

  We pull over at an abandoned house on the south side of town. The porch has half fallen off and there are old, yellowed curtains in the windows, drifting like ghosts, but I go in anyway. There are candle stubs and empty bottles in the corners of the front room. Overhead, a wide hole in the ceiling affords me a view of the darkening sky.

  Noah follows me, a guitar in his left hand. His keys in his right.

  “I thought you played the banjo,” I say.

  His lips turn up. “I can only play one instrument?”

  “Play whatever you want. Play all the instruments. Play me something.”

  “That’s why I brought it in.” I realize his voice is husky. Always? Or just at
night. Just when he’s about to play music. Just when he’s sheltered by invisibility.

  I pick a spot on the floor and lower myself, cross-legged.

  He sits across from me, just a few feet away, cradling the guitar across his lap. His fingers move like ghosts across the strings as he thinks about what to play. The silence between us is comfortable, but then he looks up and gives me a small smile and suddenly, out of nowhere and everywhere at once the silence is charged, trembling with possibility, with things I’ve seen and not seen, with the way he’s been near me lately and the way he’s granted me space and the way he’s been careful. Careful like he understands what it is to be delicate. A struggling thing just planted in its home.

  His ghost fingers finally make contact with the strings and he begins to play. Every strum, every chord change, every gritty slide across the guitar, amps up the electricity in the air until my breath slows and deepens. I breathe lower, from my belly, from my legs, and from my reconstructed ankle.

  While Noah plays, I study his profile. His neck is long, his jawline strong. Some of his features are his dad’s: clean-shaven Midwestern guy, while others must also belong to his dark-eyed mom. They blend in a uniquely beautiful way, so different from the typical boy from around here. I know it means something to him to be different, to look different, to do different things from everyone else.

  In an instant, I hate everyone who’s ever made life difficult for him, who’s teased him for creating music rather than being an athlete. Who’s called him a name behind his back while smiling to his face because his skin doesn’t go pale like everyone else’s in the winter.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say.

  His eyes flick up to meet mine.

  “Your playing.”

  “Thank you.” He strums a few more times then says, “Things will go back to normal, you know. It takes time, but it will be like before for you. If that’s what you want.”

  He clears his throat and loses the easy rhythm but catches it again quickly.

  I almost tell him I don’t know what I want. Not anymore.