“I needed to file a report, but how could I? Jen didn’t believe me. If she didn’t, who would?” She blinked. Her dark mascara made her green eyes pop. “You, of course. But then I learned you couldn’t remember what happened. I was so worried about you. When I heard about the crash. After.”
“Nothing to worry about,” I mumble, because I never wanted her to waste her worry on me. I’d never deserved it.
She gives me a tiny smile. “When you came home, I thought it was because you’d remembered. I was hopeful for the first time in months. But even when you said you didn’t remember . . . I knew the memories were there, in your head, somewhere. That’s why I left that note in your locker the first week of school. I thought maybe it would trigger you or something.”
“You didn’t need me to remember,” I say. “Your word—”
“What Jay did to Hailey . . . she left town earlier than she’d planned to. To stay safe. Because she knew if she stayed . . . if she told anyone . . .” Bean straightens up, lifts her chin to look at the sky. Her voice goes up a measure with incredulity, with impatience, with the unfairness of everything girls go through. “That’s how it always goes, right? ‘She shouldn’t have been at that party. Shouldn’t have been drinking. Shouldn’t have worn a dress. He was her boyfriend, so of course it was a misunderstanding.’” She shakes her head and makes a low noise. “And it’s Jay Brewster, so.”
I know what she means. The Brewsters’ house is new. Doesn’t really belong here. But the family does. Erica’s influence as county prosecutor is nothing compared to Jen’s uncle in the state senate.
But all that? Pales in comparison to the backing of a town that loves its golden boy.
“I didn’t even know about what had happened between Hailey and Jay until days later. She could tell something was wrong, so I told her. She warned me. Don’t tell anyone, she said. They will destroy us.”
“Oh, Bean,” I whisper.
Her eyes flick to me. “Yes, you understand that. The danger of telling. Hailey didn’t tell because she was worried they would take it out on the rest of our family. They did anyway.” Her laugh comes out as a strangled sob. “I don’t even think it was ever about me. As a person. I think . . . I was just a part of this crazy power struggle with my sister. Because Hailey broke up with him.”
I bury my face in my hands. Bean’s probably right. How dare Hailey leave him? Boys like him think they’re entitled to everything they want.
Bean sighs. “Hailey hates herself for that. But at least she’s gone. And I had to stay here and look at him. I sit as far from him in classes as I can. I walk the other way when I see him in the hallways. But still, he’s there.” She slams her hand into the ground. “Every.” Slam. “Day.” Slam. “Knowing he would bury me if I told. Knowing I’d waited too long for . . . the evidence. To be able to go to a doctor and say, ‘Look at my body. Look what they did to it.’”
I brush the back of my wrist under my nose. Tamp down a shudder.
“It will kill my parents to know, Kayla,” she says. “But this is destroying me. What they did. That he could do it again.”
I clear my throat but my voice is still husky. I need to cough or scream or something loud, too loud. “I’m so sorry about Hailey.”
“I know. I am, too. I’m sorry it happened and I’m sorry she couldn’t tell. Me, at least. So I’d have been warned.” She kicks a row of gravel and crouches in front of me. Tears stream down her face. “But I know how dangerous it is to let someone like him off the hook. And now you know. Now there’s a witness and they’re going to pay for what they did. It won’t ever. Happen. Again.”
“I didn’t see everything,” I repeat feebly, because my head is filled with buzzing and I can’t think of what else to say. How to agree with her but . . . how to explain why I came home, after all. How telling the truth destroys everything that I’ve been working for and how I can’t, not yet, think about losing my home forever.
How I really wish that accident had stolen the memory of that night from me. I’d give anything not to have to choose.
“That’s okay,” she whispers. “You know, anyway. You won’t let them get away with it. Especially with the way they’d grabbed you. I remember that. The things they must have said to you . . . You won’t let them get away with that. I know you won’t. Because you drove the car into the ditch. On purpose. That means something. And once you tell Jen . . . she’ll have to do the right thing, too. She’ll believe you, even if she didn’t believe me.”
“She will?”
“Keeping quiet was wrong. But I knew I couldn’t accuse them alone. Now it won’t be just my word against theirs. It’ll be yours, too. We have proof, right here.” She points at the phone, then nods in the direction of my bike. “Do you want a ride home? We can figure out what to do next. Who to talk to.”
I shake my head and stand, sliding the phone into my back pocket. She could ask for it and I would give it to her. The proof.
Why doesn’t she ask for it? Take it. Make the choice for me.
“It won’t fit . . . probably . . . in your trunk.”
Each slow step I take away from Bean feels impossibly heavy. When I finally reach my bike and get on, it creaks. Like it always does.
“Okay,” she says. “Probably not. But I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll talk. Until then . . . get home safe.”
“I will,” I say, already pushing off on my pedal. “Night, Bean.”
When I pass Jen’s house again, I don’t get off my bike. I don’t look at the house.
I just ride away as fast as I can, knowing why Bean didn’t ask me for the phone.
She thinks I’ll do the right thing.
SPRING
THE HOUSE OVERFLOWED. PEOPLE sat on the counters in the kitchen. Danced in the family room and spilled out onto the deck. Lined up for beer on the grass and milled anywhere they could find space.
My phone buzzed nonstop as people posted and tagged photos of me and Jen and Selena and Bean, me and them, online. I held a red cup half full of water because as long as it looked like I was drinking no one gave me a hard time about it. Like Steven, who had just asked if the beer had finally loosened me up. I’d responded with a silent glare.
Even though I wasn’t drinking, my limbs naturally began to feel like a paper Halloween skeleton, joints held together with brass fasteners, flinging this way and that. My laughter came quicker as the night wore on. It was hard not to get caught up in everyone’s good mood: summer freedom was here. For some, it was the end of their years in this town, the first of the last parties before college. For others, it was a respite before the hard farm labor that would fill their summers.
Bean had stripped to her swimsuit and was laughing at someone’s joke in the hot tub.
“Come in with us,” Jen called across the lawn to me from just inside the back door as she headed in to change into her own bikini.
I shrugged and turned back to Bean. Someone splashed her playfully and she slapped a wave of water back then held up her hands to shield herself. She giggled herself into hiccups. The bottom of her hair was curling from dampness.
“Later,” I told Jen.
She was at my elbow. Someone bumped my back as they stumbled across the deck, pushing me into Jen. It was hard to hear Jen with all the shouting and laughing around us. “No,” she said. “Now. Come on. There won’t be a lot of laters with you in a year, remember?”
“Like you said at the river party, we have a whole year.”
“A whole nothing if you would just stop being such a baby and come to college with me.”
“I’m the baby? You’re the one who’s scared to go alone.”
We watched Bean climb out of the hot tub and slip into her dress and flip-flops.
Jen elbowed me in the ribs. “Don’t be a jerk. You could at least apply to a few schools. Just in case you come to your senses.”
“And waste my time and application fees? I know I’m staying here. What’s the point?”
/>
“The point is what if you change your mind?” Jen’s voice was rising. Her cheeks splotched pink. This wasn’t her talking; it was everything she’d had to drink. Or else this was her, and the alcohol was finally letting her say it. “The point is you’re being stupid and throwing your whole life away on this town when there’s a whole world out there.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.” My voice rose, too. I paused. Took in the flush on her neck. Then softer, “I’m sorry, Jen.”
“Sure you are.” She yelled the last of it. “You don’t get it. No one requires anything from you! You can stay . . . go . . . who cares? But with me . . . everything I do is measured. Against—” Jen pressed her lips together. Both our glances shifted to where her brother stood.
I didn’t say anything for a second. “Then it’ll be good for you to get out,” I whispered.
Her eyes met mine. Glassy with the things she didn’t admit to anyone very often. “Whatever, Kayla.” She turned back to the house, gathering her hair in a ponytail as she walked.
I turned away and looked for Bean again.
She was far enough across the lawn that I couldn’t see her any longer. Or else she’d turned the corner at the stables. It was where I wanted to be, I realized. With my gentle horse. Away from all the noise here. The night had grown, suddenly, too stressful. Too full of movement. Too claustrophobic.
The sounds of the party faded steadily as I picked my way across the grass. One heel in front of the other, balancing on the front of my shoes so the backs didn’t sink into the soil. The sequins that had been so pretty on the hanger scratched painfully at the delicate, inside skin of my upper arms. A spring wind plucked hair in groups of three and four strands from my updo and whipped them across my face; a few stuck in the gloss over my lips.
A horse snorted. It didn’t sound like Caramel Star, but I wasn’t sure which one it was. I could barely hear anyone from the party anymore, as though my ears had been submerged in water. My chest was hot from my argument with Jen; I sucked in breath after cool breath, willing my muscles to relax. The tall, dark outline of the barn loomed above me. I heard someone laughing.
“Bean?” I called.
Sitting with Bean, letting her calmness wash over me. That was what I needed.
But there was something else in the air. It was nothing I could point to: the smell of the horses was right, the stars overhead were right, the rising chorus of night insects the farther I moved from the party. Everything was right.
But when I walked into the barn, I heard other sounds. Muffled laughter again.
Muffled . . . something else. Not laughter. Something desperate.
I reached the corner of the barn where I knew, if I turned, I’d find the source. Dragged my fingertips across the weathered wood, catching my pinkie on a tiny splinter. There was a glow around the bend. Just the hint of light. Voices. Boys.
I rounded the corner, Bean’s name soft on my lips.
FALL
IT FEELS LIKE PINS pricking my skin, waiting for Bean to call. I wander the house like a ghost, pouring then slowly slurping at a bowl of cereal. Washing my hands in the bathroom too long, the warm water running over and over my fingers. Drying them and the skin feeling uncomfortably tight. Hanging in my closet the dress I’d tossed on the floor last night, then changing my mind and stuffing it in the garbage.
My head pounds.
When will she call? I ask the Kayla in the mirror as I swallow aspirin and a glass of orange juice.
Turn off your phone, I tell the Kayla who sits on the edge of her bed in a daze, instead of finishing the homework due on Monday.
I don’t turn off my phone. I stop waiting and call Bean. Her phone rings, but she never answers. Where is she?
What is she doing?
Leave the house, says the Kayla who doesn’t answer when her brother, sitting beside her on the couch and staring at the TV, asks a question. Run.
Caleb nudges me in the arm. Ella opens one lazy dog eye to watch us.
“What?”
“Dude, wake up. You’re like a zombie. I was asking what time we should go over. I don’t want crappy seats.”
“Soon,” I say. I reach over and let one of Ella’s smooth ears slip through my fingers. My body feels like an anthill, millions of little bugs scurrying inside. “Now.”
He raises an eyebrow. It’s still two hours until the homecoming game starts. Steven’s phone is upstairs and I swear I can hear the video playing through the floorboard above my head. The telltale . . . something.
I stand and reach for my shoes in the entryway. Force my voice not to shake. “We’ll join some tailgaters. Get your jacket. Let’s go.”
The parking lot for the community center across the street from the high school is half full when we arrive. Smoke rises from the grills. The sound of sizzling sausages and smell of barbecue sauce fill the air. Caleb’s feet have barely hit the ground before he’s grabbed by former classmates with cans of cheap beer. I follow him to a corner of trucks, where a portable radio is broadcasting the local college game and a table is set with chips and Jell-O shots in our school colors of red and gold. I toss one back when no one is looking.
In the next hour, the lot fills to capacity and soon after overflows down the road. Selena joins me first, then Jen. But I can’t stop looking around for Bean because she has to be somewhere, doing something, and I need to know what. How much time before Jen and Selena find out what I know? How long before the false safety I’ve built around myself crumbles? People start putting away their grills and Bean’s entire family still isn’t here. It could be that they just decided not to come to the game this year. Or there’s something else keeping them home. A sick cow. Family movie night.
“I know you never drink, but you should try one of these before they all get packed up,” Selena says, holding yet another Jell-O shot toward me. “They’re good. Plus school spirit and all that.”
I nod dazedly at Serena’s mischievous smile, squeeze the little plastic cup into my mouth and swallow. She laughs, surprised. “That’s a first.”
My feet are starting to feel light.
I’ve stopped caring about Bean.
The first row of seats is reserved for Jay’s family. As Selena and I sit behind them, I crane my neck around to look for my parents and almost lose my balance. I see Caleb about a dozen rows back with some of his friends, but my mom and dad aren’t here. I check my phone for a text, but there’s nothing telling me the rest of my family is running late.
I look up because the crowd begins to get antsy, like a tiny electric current is traveling the length of the bleachers. With a blast that vibrates in my ears, the marching band announces its presence. As the uniformed musicians take the field, we rise to our feet and roar. I clutch Selena’s sleeve to remain steady.
The biggest game of the year is about to begin.
Just before halftime, we are ahead by one touchdown with Highland Hills High at our fifteen yard line. Their quarterback has been giving Jay a run for his money, but confidence in our star player hasn’t waned. On the next play, Highland Hills throws an interception and our fans go wild. Grant High’s defensive team jogs off the field, to be replaced by our offense. They form a circle, waiting for Jay to join them and give directions. We have less than a minute to create a bigger lead going into the second half of the game. Momentum is key.
Jay’s taking a really long time to get on the field.
“Geez, Jay, can’t it wait?” Selena mutters.
I follow her gaze, tilting my head to see around the slew of coaches and players on the sideline. I’d watched the first quarter of the game as a blur, but as the shots wore off, the players became clearer.
Jay’s on his cell phone. He turns his back to the field, realizes there are hundreds of people in that direction, too, and positions himself parallel to the field, holding his hand over his mouth and phone so whoever he’s talking to can hear him. The sun glints off the Roman warrior emblazoned on the he
lmet sitting on the bench beside him.
Suddenly, he shoves his phone into his bag and grabs the strap with a strong fist, knocking over his helmet as he stumbles on a patch of grass, and by the time he’s stood up again, there are two police officers at the sidelines. I pull my arms close to my body as all my muscles tense.
Jen, turning around to say something to us, notices what we’re looking at. Her mouth hangs open silently for a second before she says, “Probably here for the halftime show.”
I nod but I know better.
They’re here, and Bean isn’t.
I check my phone again. Nothing.
The officers spot Jay and walk over to him before he can get onto the field.
It’s taken a very long time from interception to this point. Days, it feels like. My blood is thickening like fudge. I hold my breath. The field spins as though I had twice as many Jell-O shots. Beside me, Selena sniffs. A shiver runs up my spine.
And then one cop moves behind Jay and tilts her head down close to his. Says something. Puts two fingers on his elbow, just barely, and tries to move him along. As though she doesn’t want to cause a scene. As though thousands of people aren’t watching. But the coaches run toward them, mouths open, screaming. One coach throws his clipboard on the ground and flings a finger in the cop’s face. Players on the field come rushing back to the sidelines. Two more officers approach and I can’t see Jay for the shoulders and shouts and rushing family members obscuring him from view.
I am suddenly alone in my section. The field is a riot. Another cop pulls out handcuffs and tries to hurry Jay out of there. I get a two-second peek of Jay, his arms behind his back, his face expressionless.
There is panic among the coaches. People trying to shut them up, hold them back. A wall of football fans forms across the exit, arguing with the officers trying to get through with Grant High’s star player. The officers patiently wave their arms, there is shoving, there is shouting, there is a call for backup.
Every Last Promise Page 16
