Every Last Promise

by Kristin Halbrook

  “Like they were before,” I whisper instead. “You have no idea.”

  And I almost tell him everything, but I don’t. Maybe because I’m scared he’ll hate me if he knows the truth.

  Instead I say, “Remember when we were little and your family came over sometimes for barbecues?”

  “I didn’t think you remembered that.”

  I run the hem of my shirt between my fingers. I remember everything. Some things I don’t want him to know about. Others mark us, make old friends of us. Connect me to him in a way I only just started wanting.

  He keeps playing.

  “Sometimes we’d have them in the late autumn,” I say.

  “More time to hang out after the harvest is finished.”

  “It got dark earlier. You always stayed long enough to watch the stars with me.”

  Noah doesn’t say anything for a minute. The silence feels long. Old memories feel good.

  “I named a star after you,” he says.

  My back straightens. “Which one?”

  His chest shudders under a soft chuckle. “How would I remember which one? It was a long time ago. Stars were different then.”

  “Everything was different then.” I tip my chin back and stare at the night sky through the ceiling hole, searching for the winking spot he would have given my name.

  None of them looks right. That childhood moment of naming the particles of the universe feels too far away, and even if I reach my arm for thousands of miles, I know I can’t touch the children we once were. “The stars were different once upon a time. Brighter. Now they’ve lost their luster.”

  “You haven’t,” he says, and strums again.

  SPRING

  I STOPPED BY MY house to grab my new top before heading over to Jen’s the Friday after school let out. I passed by Caleb’s room as I walked down a hallway that was covered with photos of the two of us, in varying thicknesses of brown wood frames. Caleb’s legs stuck out from under his bed. Dad sat opposite in the chair at his desk, wrapping computer cords into neat bundles.

  I paused with my shoulder against the frame of his door, remembering how Mom’s been wanting to paint the trim white for ages. Farmers don’t have a lot of time.

  “Hey, Dad. Caleb, you’re coming tonight, right?”

  “To Jen’s?” His reply was muffled by his mattress.

  “To Jen’s.”

  “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trying to clean up the last of this. Get packed. Leave Monday.”

  “Can’t you do all that tomorrow?”

  “Nah.”

  “Come on. You should come over for the last time. A bunch of people will be there. Say your good-byes and all that.”

  “You should go,” Dad added. “There’s not much here to finish up.”

  Caleb’s palms reached back and he slid himself out into the middle of the room. A dust bunny clung to the edge of his hair.

  “I’m just not in the mood, you know?”

  I took a long look at my brother. The kind I hadn’t for a while. Maybe never had. There was something new around his eyes. A seriousness I hadn’t noticed before. Caleb was always the energized, goofy big brother who made everyone laugh. But now he looked older. He looked like an outsider.

  “If you change your mind,” I said. “You know where to find me.”

  He nodded.

  FALL

  I STAND IN THE entrance to first period math and scan the faces inside. Pete. T. J. No Noah yet.

  Selena comes up behind me. “What are you doing?”

  I clutch my books to my chest and turn to her.

  “I’m tired.” I press the corner of my math textbook into my palm to keep emotions at bay.

  But Selena sees everything. “Come on.”

  We tiptoe out of the school and head for the girls’ bathroom out by the fields, where no one bothers to go except when there’s an evening game on. The mirrors are old and scratched out here but clear enough for me to stare listlessly at myself: round eyes, snub nose, long blond bangs. I stare so long that I cease making sense—the outline of my head, my body blurring into the fluorescent lights above me.

  “Can’t sleep?” Selena pulls lip balm from her bag and sweeps her lips with it, ending with a pucker and a popping noise at her reflection.

  “Something like that.” I sigh. It’s not something I’ve told Aunt Bea or my parents because I don’t want them to think I’m regressing after having settled into a better sleep pattern once again in Kansas City, but it has been hard to sleep since I got home. I lie awake at night and hear things out my window, under my bed, in my mind. When I close my eyes, I see things like twin flashes of light and ragged-edged glass. I play over and over again what Noah said about my luster and how I haven’t lost it and decide I can’t believe that to be true. There is too much darkness for me to shine anymore. No matter what Noah says. No matter how I feel when I’m with him. Because of this feeling I’m having right now, when I’m with Selena or when I’m with Jen or around Jay or my parents or, most of all, when I feel Bean is watching me.

  I scratch my elbow. “I just think about how much has changed between us. I changed things when I left.”

  Selena leans against the sink and snaps her bag shut. “Yeah, but . . . things were going to change anyway, right? I mean, we’re all going to different colleges and after that . . .” She shrugs. “I never really saw me or Jen coming back here for good, you know? Not like you. The way you love this place. Everyone else will be heading off to other things. New things.”

  I place a hand on my shoulder and rub my thumb along my collarbone. “I hate thinking about everyone leaving.”

  I hate thinking about what it takes to stay.

  “It’s gonna happen. Lots will change.” Her eyes flick to me then away. “Lots changed that night.”

  Her voice sounds so far away that I start. Study her face. She looks away to play with the keychain dangling from her bag strap. It’s a Shrinky Dink turtle she made years ago. She used to have one half of a silver BFF heart on the ring, too. It’s gone now and the bag doesn’t look right without it. She doesn’t look right, never walking with Bean. Laughing with her.

  Every time I see a person, a part of this town I used to know, something doesn’t look right.

  I wanted to ask Selena about Bean the last time the two of us stayed over at Jen’s house. Selena brought a bottle of vodka and some juice and she and Jen had a few drinks. I sipped at one the whole night, too afraid of what someone might say or think if they walked in. If Jay walked in. If his mom did.

  We didn’t say much to each other when I was over at the Brewsters’, me and Jen’s mom.

  But Selena got tipsy enough to want to dance around in her bra and underwear. To spill at length about this college guy she saw on the weekends sometimes.

  I wanted her to tell me more. Not about the college guy, but about what happened with her and Bean.

  Something held me back. The way Jen and Selena both always tensed up when Bean was around. The way they’d laid the blame at Bean’s feet when, really, ditching people was not the way Bean ever operated.

  Now, though, being alone with Selena gives me an opening.

  “What happened with you and Bean?” I ask.

  “Me and Bean,” Selena repeats. She rummages through her bag again, this time bringing out a handful of Starburst. She tosses an orange one and a pink one to me.

  We unwrap and chew them. Mine stick in my teeth. I’m glad for something to do. I don’t entirely want to hear what she has to say. What she knows.

  Finally, she says, “Bean had some stuff to say about that night.”

  I dig a piece of candy from my molar with my fingernail. She doesn’t seem to notice the way my back has stiffened. “Like what? What could Bean say that would change the two of you?”

  “You say that like it’s impossible for best friends to change.” She tips her chin at me. The example in front of her. “Anyway, I can’t say. C
an’t speak for Bean. You’ll have to talk to her about it. Just . . . don’t tell Jen you’re snooping around.”

  It’s as though Selena wants me to talk to Bean. To discover something.

  Selena tosses her candy wrappers on the concrete ground and fixes her bangs in the mirror.

  I lean back against a stall and read the writing engraved on it.

  Tory Worth is a ho.

  Kat and Lance 4eva.

  P.M., T.F., I.Y. Class of ’06 BFFs

  When I look up again, Selena’s finger has paused on the center of her forehead and she’s looking at me through the mirror with narrowed eyes.

  I open another candy and stuff it in my mouth, startling when I accidentally bite the side of my tongue.

  “Careful, Kayla,” she says, picking her bag off the ground and reaching for the door.

  When Selena decides to head back to the main building, I tell her I’m going to stay out here a little longer. She enfolds me in a tight, quick hug and says she’ll take notes for me in our next class.

  I stand at the entrance to the bathrooms and watch her stride across the baseball field. She’s shorter than me or Jen, but she walks faster than either of us.

  I wait for the next PE class to come out, but it’s freshmen and they stop at the running track to time their miles, and I’m still alone. A bunch of birds are picking at the days-old remains of chili fries hidden under the bleachers. They scatter when I sit on the ground with my back to the bleachers but approach again cautiously when I don’t make any sudden movements.

  Selena’s words echo in my head, and I can’t decide if they were meant as a suggestion or as a warning. Because they sounded like a warning, with the way she bit them off and looked at me hard as she spoke. But if they were, then that means there’s something some people know and that some people don’t.

  Or shouldn’t.

  And I really don’t want there to be.

  I finally feel like I’ve come home. Jen and Selena are on my side. Jay doesn’t hesitate to join our group as we walk down the school halls. I feel the protective embrace of being near my mom again. And although the newness of being here again stings now, there’s a part of me that can see beyond today to a time that will feel better and completely normal again.

  At this moment, however, I ache. For the divide between us, for Selena’s having to use the word “snooping.”

  I knew it would be hard to come home. Hard.

  Hard doesn’t begin to describe it. When I decided to come home, I thought finding my place again would be like a steady, dependable climb up a slowly rising mountain path—but the reality is that the journey home has been full of peaks and low valleys. Reconciliations and retrogrades. Inconsistencies and changes that leave me brittle like glass. Too easy to shatter.

  I should have known it would be like this. Even if I am eventually successful in ignoring it. The way I’ve chosen to ignore the way I think Bean looks at me, like she hopes I’ll admit I remember and say something. The certainty that, were I in her position, I’d have dumped my old friends, too. The knowledge that this town, this place, can never be for me what it once was, because I’ve seen a dark side of it I hadn’t known existed before that party. I’m fighting against a current and it’s only a matter of time before I tire out and let it pull me under.

  I know this. I know it. And I keep swimming. What is wrong with me?

  I pick a few dandelions from a patch struggling through the ground next to me. Their yellow blossoms are cheerful. Over the summer, there were enough in our yard for Mom to fill our pantry with dandelion syrup and dandelion jam. This morning, the floral syrup was on my pancakes.

  The third period bell rings, and I stand and brush off the back of my jeans. I walk over to the football stadium.

  It’s a special place, this stretch of bleachers, emerald-green grass, and recycled-rubber running track. Students and alumni squish into the seats until people are half dangling off the edges then continue spreading out on the ground from there with blankets and picnics and toddlers digging for bugs. People have first kisses under the bleachers, share nachos with plastic-cheese sauce with their best friends, listen to the band play big, brassy songs.

  I climb the bleachers halfway and sit, staring out at the field as though there’s a game on now.

  Our high school crest is freshly painted at the fifty yard line in preparation for the homecoming game. Two years ago, Jay Brewster threw a sailing, forty-yard pass from there, right into the hands of his receiver, and brought glory to this town. He took the team all the way to the state championships with a golden arm that obeyed his every command. And then he did it again last year. He expected one more repeat before heading to one of the colleges clamoring for his presence.

  All that and he keeps up a solid GPA, has a strong jawline to offset his bright blue eyes, and volunteers at the elementary school. A college team’s dream. A true golden boy.

  Everyone knows he’ll go all the way. Be a small-town kid hitting it big in the pros. We’ll all have something to tell our grandkids about when we visit his display at the Hall of Fame someday. He is everything a nice boy in a nice town in the Midwest should be. Can be. In every way.

  I stamp my feet. A metallic sound rings out, fading somewhere in the hills.

  “I’m sorry, Jay,” I tell a thin cloud over my head. “I’m sorry for what I did. But mostly, I’m sorry for what you did. You destroyed everything I believed in.”

  I clomp down the bleachers, kick at the white line at the edge of the field. Chew on a strand of hair and stare at the sky for a while, thinking about what I still believe. But I can’t come up with anything. Then I walk home.

  My brother’s truck is coming up the dirt road in the distance, flinging gravel off his back tires at the poor, straggling corn planted nearest the road. It’s Wednesday, and he probably has classes at Missouri State tomorrow and Friday, but a small-town homecoming is a big deal and he’s not going to miss it. The last time I saw Caleb was the day of Jen’s party. When I woke up in the hospital, he’d already left for his summer job in the Ozarks. I wonder if he’ll look different. I wonder if he’ll look at me differently.

  It will be a little while until his truck finishes navigating the bends in the road and pulls up by our house. Instead of rushing into the house to meet him, I climb into my boat, pull the air filter over my nose and mouth and my headphones over my ears, and start up the sander.

  Sanding the exterior was a quick project, my hands guiding the machine across the gently sloping surfaces easily. Inside, though, the skeleton of the boat is exposed and it takes patience to sand each piece protruding from the outer boards. How simple it would be to be a boat, with a strong, visible interior and an exterior that can be beautified with nothing more than a blast of rough paper.

  Music blares through my headphones, loud enough to be heard over the sander’s buzzing. There is noise and sawdust and there are muscles in achingly strange positions and there is the anticipation of seeing my brother. But through it all there is a small opening for those thoughts to break through. When I think about Bean, my wrist shakes the sander and there is a loud screech.

  I push up the protective goggles and aim a heavy blow of air and tears at the patch I just sanded, realizing with a start that I am done. This boat is ready for a first coat of primer. For a new life.

  I replace the sandpaper with a new piece, wrap the cord around the machine, and set it next to the boat.

  By the time I get back to the house, my brother’s voice has filled every corner of every room and our mom looks like she’s about to cry, holding tightly to her boy. He releases her and bounds through the kitchen when he hears the back screen door slam shut and, before I can shout a welcome, scoops me in his arms, lifts me off my feet, and hollers: “Kayla Koala!”

  I giggle despite myself at the old nickname. It’s such a reminder of who we used to be. It’s an assurance that, after everything, Caleb is here and he’s my brother and he’s on my side.
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  “Put me down,” I protest.

  His energy, like always, brightens the room.

  When Caleb drops me to my feet, we grin at each other, taking in how we both have changed since before the summer.

  His hair’s shorter than before, the waves that used to tickle the back of his neck neatly trimmed to above his ears, and his hazel eyes are clearer and brighter. Same old jeans and T-shirt, which reveals the half-sleeve tattoo that almost gave our parents dual heart attacks back in the day.

  A lump catches in my throat. He looks so happy.

  “You’re filthy,” he says.

  I laugh. “You’re ugly.”

  Caleb reaches for my head, but I duck under his arm while Mom stands and tells us to knock it off and get in the dining room. Dinner smells amazing. It’s Caleb’s favorite: pot roast, potatoes, and green beans. While we stuff our faces, Caleb tells us about school. I can tell he’s sugar-coating it for Mom and Dad, but I know I’ll get the details from him later.

  After we finish cleaning up dinner dishes, I decline dessert and escape out the front door, sitting on the porch steps, waiting for the sun to set. Dragonflies buzz around my head, their constant chatter lulling me into a half-nap.

  I press my hands gently over my face and close my eyes. Caleb’s energy has tired me out, but my thoughts stray away from his college exploits to everything else happening here.

  Steven’s mom closing the door on me. Selena telling me not to go snooping around. How Noah Michaelson keeps coming by. And why I don’t mind it so much.

  A few minutes later, the front screen door opens and Caleb strides out with Ella on his heels. The hound’s chocolate eyes light up when she sees me sprawled out on the steps and she immediately flops in my lap.

  “Everything okay? With you and Jen . . . and Jay and all that?” Caleb doesn’t beat around the bush.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think . . .” Caleb looks to the sky, searching for the right word. It’s not there, apparently, because he turns back to me and shrugs. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “I would if I knew.” Ella raises her head with a whimper. “At least you still love me,” I say pathetically, stroking her long, velvety ears.