Every Last Promise

by Kristin Halbrook

  Sure, in that moment, someone was going to get hurt. Maybe die. Maybe me.

  Jay sees it.

  What I was about to do. The person I thought I was strong enough to be.

  Don’t they say that, in moments of desperation, we become stronger than we’ve ever been before? Strong enough to lift cars off bodies, to carry people to safety? To make a promise to save someone? To tell the truth when it’s all over?

  Eventually, though, that power fades, and we become mortal again.

  The boat I spent all these months getting ready for the water is beautiful, a deep red. When I was in Kansas City over the summer, I looked forward to finishing the project. To having another thing to tie me to this town. This thing Jen and I found. This thing my dad and I built together. And now . . . being tied to this place is too dangerous.

  I go to my room and grab a paper bag. Go to the garage for supplies. The boat is heavy, but I manage to drag it all the way onto the back of Dad’s tractor, and I manage to drag it from the tractor to the river. The music of the water is lush, thick with humidity and the splash of leaping fish. It hasn’t gotten cold yet. The boat slides in smoothly. I brace myself against the skiff with my palms while the fishermen watch me, puzzled.

  I climb into the boat and set us off downstream, letting my hand drag off the side, in the water, wishing I could really forget. Wishing I never knew. Wishing there was nothing to know.

  I press my nose into my shoulder, my breath gathering around my face gently. The hairs on the back of my neck stand upright.

  When I can no longer see a fishing line, I dump out the contents of the bag from my closet into the boat and overturn the can of gasoline I’d brought. Slick, oily purple sequins.

  Then I light a match and dive out of the boat before the flames can engulf me, and I swim for the shore.

  When I get back home, Mom tells me the sheriff came by while I was gone, wanting to ask questions about that night last May. Someone . . . someone said I would know something.

  “You smell like gas,” she says, and there’s a strange quality to her voice and I wonder if she’s imagining Bean’s barn burning down. My mom, who, if she knew the truth, would cast me back to Kansas City, if not farther away than that. There are limits, I think, to even how much a mother can love her daughter.

  “Fumes from the boat.” It’s a lie and the truth at the same time.

  “Do you want me to talk to the sheriff? Tell him you need some time? I know this is hard for you. She’s one of your friends. I could take you over to see her—”

  “No,” I blurt out, without knowing why I’m refusing.

  “Bean really needs a friend right now. To know people still love her. And I want you to hear something.” Her eyes, soft brown, pierce into me and I wonder if mothers are all-knowing. “There are people here who love you, too. And who will keep loving you. No matter what.”

  I guess I wasn’t who people thought I was, I want to say.

  But the truth is, I do want to be that person. The good one. The friend.

  I take a shower to get that gasoline smell off.

  And when the fog clears from the mirror I can’t look at myself.

  SPRING

  ON THAT NIGHT IN May, I drove the car into the ditch on purpose.

  Because I wanted to save someone.

  Not myself.

  Not only myself.

  FALL

  I SIP AT ORANGE soda and watch the road until I see Noah’s truck kicking up mud in the fading light of dusk.

  He climbs the porch steps slowly, having seen my bike lying in the grass next to the driveway. His face as he peers around the column is guarded. “Are you okay?” he says.

  “Things are going to change,” I say.

  “They will.”

  I wonder why I tried so hard the past few months to maintain something that was always going to slip through my fingers.

  “It’s a nice evening.”

  “Yeah,” he says. Small-town weather talk.

  “Will you take a hike with me?”

  “A hike? Right now?”

  “To Point Fellows.”

  “I’ve never been up there.” He glances up, as though his reply is written in the cloudless sky. Then, “Okay.”

  I give Noah directions to Point Fellows over the music playing from his iPod and the wind rushing past the windows.

  At the trailhead, I pause for a few moments, pretending to tie my shoelaces, looking around. This is the last time I’ll be here, I know, for a long time. I memorize the colors of the leaves, the jutting of the rocks, the smell of the soil steeped in autumn’s dampness.

  I walk just ahead of Noah, squinting into the dying rays of the sun. My fingers curl, desperate to scratch the sweat that threatens to roll down the middle of my back. Or maybe there is no sweat. Maybe I just want to scratch this skin away in the hopes a different Kayla is underneath.

  The landscape has changed since the last time I was here with Caleb. It’s both drier and lusher at the same time. The trails are damper, but the river is skinnier.

  It’s something I love about home. That it is so many things at once. Others might see it as a fly-over state, but I know its charms.

  I know what my home is.

  What it was. Who my friends were. Who I loved and who loved me back.

  At the top of the bluff, I sit and let my legs hang over the edge. Noah stands back a little, and I wonder if he’s afraid of heights. But thoughts of him—of almost anything—fade when I pull the phone from my pocket.

  It’s not like I don’t know. All I did in Kansas City last summer was read about rape statistics and wait for Bean to say something. I wanted her to say something. When she didn’t, I started letting myself believe, sometimes, that I was wrong. That she might’ve been there because she’d wanted to be there. She told Steven sure, he could film it.

  But I know the statistics. I know what “unreported” means.

  We are taught fear, we girls.

  But right now, I choose to push that fear away from me. I choose to own my actions and I choose to give up the place I love so much, for the promise that I will be able to love and live without fear one day.

  I tighten my fingers around the phone and stare at the landscape, my home, until it blurs into one shade of gray.

  God.

  Why.

  Why can’t this town be the place I always wanted it to be?

  All I wanted was to come home, to be a part of this town again. But I’m going to do the right thing. I’m going to be the friend to Bean I should have been all along.

  Noah squats and watches me. Probably wondering about the phone I’m holding that isn’t mine. His hand reaches out hesitantly, his fingers curling around mine.

  I lean to the side and, without letting thoughts or nerves get in the way, brush my lips across his. My body sings with want and hunger for his mouth and his hands and his husky voice and the music he pulls from a few strings, but I pull away and my insides feel stone-thick and heavy.

  “That’s why you talked to me the first day of school,” I say. My fingers play with his. Pressing their pads on his knuckles. Rubbing across his palm. “To figure out what I knew.”

  He takes a slow breath. “Yes,” he says. “Bean was always so nice to me. I wanted to make things better for her.”

  “The nicest girl ever,” I say weakly.

  “Kayla.” He takes charge of our hands and threads his fingers through mine. “It’s different now. I care about you. I learned that you don’t remember, and I . . . really like being with you. I want to be with you.”

  “Noah.” I swallow his name. Memorize his face, too. His kiss, his voice, his kindness, and patience. “No, you don’t. I want to tell you something. Lots of things. But first, I want you to know that I didn’t mean to kill Steven McInnis.”

  And I didn’t. I wanted to stop him. Stop both of them. But not like that.

  “I know you didn’t,” Noah says.

  I press the b
ack of his hand to my lips. “There’s more.”

  And I tell him everything.

  His fingers leave mine before I’m even done. He stands up when I’m almost finished. When I get to the part where Jay has his fingers around my arm and I think he’ll separate the muscle from the bone, Noah’s features pull with conflict, and the tiniest light of hope opens in my heart. But just as quickly he looks back down at the ground with what looks like disgust.

  I pause because I’m crying too hard to continue and he must think I’ve said everything I’m going to say, because he walks far enough ahead of me back down the trail that he can’t hear me talk or walk.

  We climb into his truck and pull away. I squish myself against the passenger side door and roll down the window so that he doesn’t have to breathe the same air as me.

  I never get to tell him how I was trying to do the right thing that night. How I know, how I always knew, that I ended up doing all the wrong things anyway.

  I can’t tell him how much it meant that he spoke to me that first day of school. How much I liked having him in my life. How much I miss him already.

  When I get back to my house, I slip the phone in an envelope, look up the new prosecutor’s name and office phone number on my laptop, call, and leave a message. He must forward his calls to his personal line because he gets back to me in fifteen minutes. We arrange to meet the next morning at eight o’clock. He tells me I’m brave for coming forward. As if he understands more about our small town than we usually give outsiders credit for.

  I feel, more than ever before, like a coward.

  Bean came forward, against the advice of her family, of her best friend.

  The way I should have months ago.

  I stop in at Toffey’s Coffees before I leave. It’s empty on a Monday midmorning. People are at work. People are at school. Bean finally texted me to tell me she’s leaving for California tomorrow.

  There is safety in distance.

  Noah Michaelson isn’t behind the counter anymore. He told the prosecutor that he was the one who drove Bean home last May. That he saw how upset Bean was. How messed up. She hadn’t told him, that night, what had happened, but he wondered and he worried. He knew for sure when Bean finally spoke up. When he talked to me.

  Toffey’s says he was let go for getting a customer’s order wrong.

  The new guy is toying with the strings of the small apron around his waist.

  “Do you know how to make a Mayan Revenge?” I ask.

  He pulls a face. “A what?”

  I shake my head. “Never mind. I’ll just have a vanilla latte.”

  He clicks the bean grinder and slams the espresso holder against the side of the counter. This may very well be the noisiest cup of coffee ever.

  When he sets the finished product in front of me, there’s a unicorn head outlined in my foam.

  “Nice,” I say dully, passing a bill to him.

  He smiles, pleased, and punches a hole in a frequent buyer’s card even though I haven’t asked for one. “I’ve been practicing.”

  I tuck a dollar of my change into the tip jar and take my to-go cup, clutching hard to the painful burn against my palm.

  My things are already packed in the car. I never did fully unpack from my last stay in Kansas City.

  Dad drives and I think my last thoughts about home: the golden brown of spent cornfields, the earthy smell of hay, the slow turn of the river, Jen’s dimple and sparkling eyes, the sun baking the gravel between Noah’s house and mine, the gold of his skin and curve of his smile.

  It’s strange. When I left this town last May, it cut at me every day I was away. Now, though, I feel those wounds finally beginning to change. Still open but clean and maybe even on the path to healing.

  When we get out of the car at my aunt’s house, I hug my dad.

  It’s not stiff between us anymore, not since I came forward.

  I hold my mom for a long time. I know that she loves me, that she’ll be quick to forgive me, even if I don’t know how long it will be before I can forgive myself.

  And that’s it. I won’t graduate with the friends I’d called “best” my whole life. I won’t have a bittersweet good-bye to say when we go our separate ways. I won’t have Caramel Star to help keep me grounded and strong.

  Everything feels light, like bubbling laughter.

  You were right to tell. The text comes while I’m still standing in the doorway, watching my parents drive away. To tell me. To tell everyone. I hate that you’re gone. That you had to leave for it.

  Me too, I text back to Noah Michaelson.

  Can I come see you over Thanksgiving break?

  I brush my thumb over my screen. Even softer than the way I’d kissed him that day, not so long ago.

  I know I’ll have to go back there. There are things I’ll have to say in front of people who won’t want me to say them. There are things I need to say to Bean, even though nothing I say can or should erase what I did to her.

  But I like the idea of seeing Noah outside that town, those people, and the events that have shaped our friendship so far.

  What we can be, if we are somewhere else.

  Okay.

  I think about heroes. About the people we lay that mantle on. Superstars like Jay. How we let them uphold something greater than what we believe we have in ourselves and how, when they fail us, we fight back, and choose not to believe the truth about them. Because their failures are a reflection on us. It doesn’t feel good, losing faith in someone.

  I text Noah: Who’s your hero?

  His answer doesn’t come for a while.

  Streetlamps come on, challenging twilight with their soft glow.

  Aunt Bea calls my name and I answer her with a mumbled, “Yeah?” but she doesn’t say anything else, as if she just needed to check to make sure I am still here.

  My mom, I guess. A pause. What about yours?

  Noah’s name comes to mind easily. So does Bean’s. It feels, somehow, too early to admit it’s them, though.

  So I text, Yeah. My mom, too.

  I stuff my phone in my pocket and think, as the door closes behind me, as I clutch the handle of my bag, walk down the hallway to my room, about being broken. Burning down.

  About how much I hate the people who took my home away from me.

  About how I hope, one day, to be able to hate myself a little less.

  Because home isn’t a sweeping view from a bluff, or the scent of cinnamon sugar in the air, or the crackling of a dry road under a horse’s hooves.

  Home is where you can live with yourself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’M SO GRATEFUL TO all the friends and heroes who helped make this book a reality.

  Thank you to my editor, Sarah Barley, who patiently steered this story from something that was more of a vague idea into what it is now. Her insights and patience are remarkable and I’m lucky to have her on my team. I’m grateful for designer Sarah Creech and art director Alison Donalty, who made this book look pretty; editorial director Erica Sussman, whose support of my work has been monumental; production editor Jon Howard, who catches my silly mistakes; and Heather Doss in sales, who is amazing at getting books into the world. Thank you to Jocelyn Davies, who stepped in to help put the final touches on this book. A huge thank-you to the rest of the team at HarperTeen who had a part in promoting this book and Nobody But Us. You are all awesome.

  My writing career would be a disaster without the generous talents of my agent, Suzie Townsend. I’m so grateful for her guidance in all stages of writing and publishing. Thank you to the entire, very talented New Leaf Literary team: Joanna Volpe, Pouya Shabizan, Kathleen Ortiz, Danielle Barthel, Jaida Temperly, and David Caccavo. I appreciate everything each of you does.

  To the YA writing community—aka the best writing community in the business—thank you for your support, your commiserations, your emails and tweets, your everything. In particular, love and gratitude go out to my dearest friends and YA Highway co
-bloggers: Kate Hart, Kirsten Hubbard, Amy Lukavics, Kaitlin Ward, Stephanie Kuehn, Sumayyah Daud, Veronica Roth, Sarah Enni, Lee Bross, Leila Austin, Debra Driza, Emilia Plater, and Kristin Otts. Alces Alces forever.

  And to all the readers and bloggers of YA: thank you for your passion.

  My family always comes last in my acknowledgments, but first in real life. My thanks and love to Paul and my pixies for sharing this road with me and making every day precious beyond words.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  EVERY LAST PROMISE IS a work of fiction in its entirety.

  But the story has been influenced by real-life events.

  I didn’t set out to write a book about rape. But as I read the news coverage of sexual assaults and their cover-ups in one small town—and then another and another—I kept wondering: What were these people thinking and feeling? How did those involved see themselves? And I really meant everyone. The perpetrators and the survivors, the friends, the families, the townspeople who supported one side or the other, the people who brought wrongdoings to light, and the ones who wanted it all to remain hidden.

  I wanted to explore some of these points of view in Every Last Promise, to dig deeper behind the motivations of the people who can become caricatures in the media—and to grow my own empathy and understanding. And I couldn’t stop thinking about those people who had seen or suspected something, but felt that they shouldn’t—or couldn’t—speak up.

  And so, Kayla was born.

  If you are or become the family or friend of a rape or sexual-assault victim, there are steps to take to be the best support possible. If someone tells you they’ve been raped, or if you know someone is a victim of sexual assault, follow these suggestions from RAINN and the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault:

  1. First and foremost, believe the survivor. You might be the first and only person to ever say, “I believe you.”