Promise Me Something

by Sara Kocek

  She flopped over on the carpet and stared at me.

  “What?” I blinked. “Why are you looking at me?”

  “Promise me something,” said Olive.

  “What?” I sat up a little. Her cheek was pressed against the floor.

  “Promise me something, and I’ll promise the same to you.”

  “What?” I said again.

  “Never lie to me.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m not lying!”

  “Suuuuure.” Olive reached again for the coconut rum, only, this time she didn’t sip from it; she put the bottle to her lips and chugged. There wasn’t much left in the first place, but what was left, she gulped down—probably an inch or two of liquid. And then, as she let the empty bottle roll off her fingertips onto the carpet, she began to cry.

  “Uh-oh.” I sat up on the floor. “What’s wrong?” She looked blurry just a few feet away from me, but rubbing my eyes only made them itch.

  “Sometimes I just feel like you don’t like me!” she burst out. “You spend all this time with me, but I get the feeling you secretly hate me.”

  I felt my mouth open. The edges of my lips felt crusty, but no words came out.

  “Are we friends?” She stared at me. “Because I’ve been nothing but a friend to you, and all you ever do is mope around wishing you went to Ridgeway.”

  “What about the time you threw a rock at my head?”

  “What?” Olive’s eyes widened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I didn’t tell her it had been on the day we met, or that it had been a pebble, not a rock. All I managed to say was, “We’re friends, OK? I’ve never told anyone else about my dad destroying the kitchen—”

  “We’re not friends,” she said, wiping her eyes. “We’re not, because if you really knew me, you would hate me. And you already hate me, so you would really hate me if you knew.”

  “Knew what?” My stomach was folding unpleasantly. I hoped I wasn’t going to throw up.

  “Nothing.” She gulped a big breath of air. “I’m just drowning in secrets, that’s all.”

  I had no idea what I was supposed to say. My tongue felt heavy, and I concentrated on not getting sick all over the carpet.

  “Or maybe it’s just my parents.” She swiped at her cheeks. “Maybe that’s why everything is the way it is. Do you think it’s wrong of me to hate my mom?”

  “Hate’s a strong word,” I managed to say. My speech came out slurred.

  “But I do hate her.” Olive was staring past me into the darkness. “I hate the way she can’t control herself. The way she can’t love me like she’s supposed to.”

  The room seemed to slide in and out of focus before my eyes, and I could tell that I was either going to throw up or fall asleep on the floor, but I wasn’t sure which. “I’m not in a position to judge you,” I said at last.

  “Of course you are,” Olive sighed, turning away from me. “Everybody judges everybody else automatically. That’s the whole fucking problem with the world.”

  It was late—or technically early—when we finally climbed back into bed. We both fell asleep on her carpet for a while, but by two a.m., we woke up and realized we were cold.

  Stumbling up from the floor and onto the bed, I told Olive that my head was pounding. The room still seemed to rock slightly, as though we were sitting in a big cradle.

  “You need some water,” she mumbled, but neither of us stood up to get some. Instead we just wedged our feet under the covers and pulled the blankets up to our chins.

  “I feel guilty,” I told her. My mouth was dry and the words came out sounding scratchy.

  “So?” said Olive.

  I shrugged. “I shouldn’t have drank anything. Dranken. Drunk?”

  “Drunk.”

  “Leah got wasted with her older sister one time.” It popped out of my mouth out of nowhere, and I began to suspect I was still drunk. “She threw up and it was gross.”

  “Leah…” Olive frowned. “Was she the one with the pink bra?”

  “Yeah, the slutty one.” I felt my hand fly to my mouth.

  Olive started giggling.

  “I didn’t mean to say that,” I said. “I have a headache.”

  But Olive was grinning now. “Doesn’t she remind you of a dog that humps everything in sight? Like she really needs to be neutered or something—”

  I laughed so suddenly and unexpectedly that I actually snorted. Then Olive did too. “Shut up!” I squealed. “You’re making me say bad things about my friends!” I rubbed my temples, where the headache was blaring like bad music.

  “Oh—how about that hickey she had!” Olive touched her own neck. “It was like the size of a vacuum cleaner. Couldn’t you see her making out with an inanimate object?”

  “Not Leah, but maybe Madison,” I said. “Because she’s such a prude, it would be the only way she’d ever—” I could barely finish my sentence. Olive was clapping with glee.

  “You’re so mean!” She was wiggling her feet under the covers. “Are you really Reyna? Reyna doesn’t say mean things. Ever.”

  “It’s your fault for getting me drunk,” I said.

  “More, more!” She pounded her fist against the mattress. “Tell me how great I am and how everyone else sucks.”

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “I’m growing apart from my friends.”

  “You don’t need them.” She rolled over onto her back and stretched out her arms until her knuckles grazed my pajamas.

  “When we were ten, Abby touched her dog’s penis,” I said. Something about the buzz in my brain made the words slip out without their usual censor. “She wanted to know what it felt like.”

  “Oh my God!” Olive nearly snorted. “That’s probably illegal in some states.”

  I laughed along, feeling spacey and drunk and thirsty at the same time. I also felt weirdly peaceful, as though Olive’s room was exactly where I needed to be. Like all along I’d been faking our friendship, and then suddenly, to my surprise, I wasn’t.

  Remember that time we…online…?

  That’s a little vague, Olive.

  You know…together…?

  Refresh my memory.

  Pretended to be a cop and a swimsuit model?

  Oh. That.

  Did you like it?

  Sure. I guess.

  It was a little weird, though, right?

  A little.

  Would you maybe want to do it again?

  I don’t know…

  We could be something other than a cop and a model.

  No, it’s not that.

  You pick this time—whatever you want.

  I don’t think so…

  Why not?

  I don’t have room in my life right now for anything more than friendship.

  Oh.

  Are you OK?

  I guess.

  I’m just too messed up right now.

  6.

  Thanksgiving dinner had—according to Dad—exceeded Lucy’s expectations. Apparently, when they were halfway done cooking the turkey, he’d hobbled out of the dining room on his crutches and come back carrying a little blue box, which Lucy snotted all over. Inside was a diamond necklace, and once she stopped sobbing about how she was “just so happy to finally be happy,” she let Dad put it around her neck like a medal of honor. She’d been flouncing around the house in her pajamas ever since then, talking about plans for a “family” vacation and collective “household” goals.

  When I told Abby about it a couple days after Thanksgiving, she said exactly what I was afraid of: “Maybe it’s a good thing. Your dad seems happy.”

  My response was, “Who ever heard of wearing a diamond necklace with pajamas?”

  It was just the two of us alone in her room for once. Leah and Madison were busy with after school clubs, and even though Abby and I had different homework to do, I liked being in the same room together doing it. I missed that about middle school.

  “Guess what?” she said as
I flipped a page in my math book, trying to figure out how to calculate the arc-length of a partial circle.

  “Let’s see…” I looked up from my book. “You’re transferring to Belltown because you can’t live without me?”

  “You wish.” She laughed. “Actually, I started going out with someone.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah…” She was watching my face to see my reaction.

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know him.” She closed her math book. “But his name is Jeremy, and we have the same taste in music. It’s actually kind of creepy. Our iPods are almost identical.”

  “Wow.” My stomach flipped over like I’d swallowed something gross.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  I stared at a random equation in my book. “Of course.”

  “Do you feel like you’re being replaced? Madison said you might feel that way.”

  “You talked about this with Madison?” I knew I should be happy for Abby, but instead I felt like I was being left on a desert island and she was my boat, speeding away.

  “The important thing is, you’re still one of my best friends,” she said.

  Really? It didn’t feel that way. This stung worse than Dad giving Lucy the diamond necklace. “Stop acting like a psychologist,” I said after a moment, staring down at my math book. I refused to cry over something so stupid.

  “I’m not acting like anything,” she said. “I’m just trying to be sensitive to your situation.”

  “What situation? Not having a boyfriend?”

  “No, going to Belltown with what’s-her-name.”

  “Her name is Olive,” I said with a stab of anger. “And she thinks you guys hate her.”

  “We don’t hate her.” Abby sighed. “She’s just not our type.”

  Our type? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Abby noticed the look on my face and rephrased herself. “I mean, she just seems too serious. You said it yourself when you first met her.”

  “Well, she’s my friend now.” The force in my voice surprised me. “And you’re right that she’s serious—that’s what I like about her.” I looked down at my half-finished sheet of homework and sighed. “Anyway, I have to finish this problem set. I should go home.”

  “Reyna, come on.” She leaned over and hugged my shoulders. “Why are you being so touchy? Do you have your period?”

  I almost rolled my eyes like Olive.

  “Are you upset that I’m going out with someone?”

  “Not at all,” I lied. “I’m happy for you and Jordan.”

  “It’s Jeremy.”

  “Right,” I said. “You and Jeremy.”

  When I got home, I looked up Levi Siegel’s name online and clicked on the first twenty-seven hits. Most of them were about a plastic surgeon in San Francisco, but I found a local newspaper article with a picture of Levi holding up a tennis trophy when he was nine or ten. He looked pretty much the same, only chubbier. I also found his name in a list of honor roll students at his old middle school and on the Temple Beth Shalom of Connecticut’s website.

  I didn’t look up his screen name or send him a friend request. I wouldn’t have known what to say. Instead I signed online and listened to Madison complain about Abby’s boyfriend. She wasn’t happy for them either but for a different reason than mine. She didn’t like watching them make out every morning on the bus. We signed off after that—or rather, we both turned our statuses to invisible and sat there watching to see who else would come online—and I tried to determine whether I felt good or bad about my prospects.

  This morning?

  Yeah.

  Without a word to anyone?

  Sort of.

  You just got up and walked away?

  I left a suicide note.

  Wow.

  A decoy.

  WOW.

  I needed to buy myself time to think.

  Where are you now?

  A public library in Bridgeport.

  What are you going to do?

  I’m headed to New York City.

  To do what?

  Be free, I guess.

  Wow.

  I might need a place to stay for a while.

  In Connecticut?

  I’m sorry to ask you.

  Don’t be.

  I know we’re basically strangers.

  We’re not strangers, Grace.

  Yeah, I guess.

  Not anymore.

  December

  7.

  There was no question when Mr. Murphy assigned a group project on ancient Greece that Olive and I would work together. I could recall dimly the period in October when I looked forward to never working with her again, but now everything before Thanksgiving felt like a different era. Thanksgiving—or rather, drinking together—had been the line of demarcation in our friendship: the point at which BC had turned into AD. I didn’t even consider asking Levi to join our group because I knew Olive would hate it. Everything was finally comfortable between us, and I didn’t see any point in shaking things up.

  We decided to film a fake documentary about the Peloponnesian War. It was my idea this time, not hers, and our main challenge was figuring out how to produce footage of a battle between two armies when we had only two actors. In the end, we decided to use life-size cardboard cutouts and do the filming in Olive’s backyard.

  We met at her house on a crisp afternoon in early December to shoot the footage. We’d already written the script and decorated the cardboard soldiers in the art wing at school; now the task was to film the whole project without letting it slip into a farce. It could be funny, but not too funny—silly, but still factual.

  We set up the tripod on her back porch, overlooking the yard, a small storage shed, and the train tracks off in the distance, barely visible through the trees. Olive used a rusty trowel to dig holes, and I planted the base of a cardboard cutout in each one. We arranged them in rows across the lawn to create the illusion of a crowd.

  The only problem was our lack of soldiers on horseback. The cardboard slabs we took from the art wing were only two feet wide—not big enough for horses. I knew it was a corny idea, but I asked Olive whether she had any stuffed animals or My Little Ponies. “We can always zoom in on them,” I told her. “You know—to make them look big?”

  “As stupid as that sounds, it might actually work,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” Then she ran up the porch steps and disappeared through a sliding glass door into the kitchen, calling, “Mom? Where’s that big stuffed horse from when I was little?”

  A breeze blew through the yard, and I tightened my jacket at the waist. It was windier out than I expected—windy enough to whip my hair into my eyes—and when I stopped blinking, I saw that one of the cardboard cutouts had blown over on the lawn. The base that was supposed to stay wedged in the ground had come loose, and the whole thing was scuttling along the grass in the wind. I ran over and grabbed it, trying to shove it back into the ground, but the bottom of the cardboard had become soggy, and the hole wasn’t deep enough. I put a rock on the soldier’s leg so he wouldn’t blow away and then stood up to look for Olive’s trowel.

  I couldn’t find it, but I did see that the door of the tool shed was slightly ajar, so I headed toward it. Even if I couldn’t find another trowel, I could I always use the pitchfork from our Halloween costume—Mr. Barton was bound to keep it in the tool shed. I stepped closer, tightening my jacket again around the waist, and pushed open the door.

  And then I jumped back.

  In fact, I almost screamed. On a foldable cot at the front of the shed was a teenage girl lying face-up with her eyes closed, creepily dead looking. At the sound of the door opening, her eyes flickered open and snapped toward mine. She wasn’t dead—just sleeping—and her face was so pale she looked like a corpse.

  I tried to back away from the door, but my feet were frozen. I might have been in shock. I barely noticed that the whole shed was set up like a bedroom. Next to the cot
, there was a nightstand with an old laptop resting on it, and the power cord was plugged into a surge protector in the wall. I felt my heartbeat thud in my ears. The girl had dirty-blond hair like Olive’s, and I wondered for a second if they were related.

  “Relax,” she said. Her voice was faint and cracked, as though she hadn’t used it in a couple of days. “Olive knows I’m here.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Relax,” she said again. “Are you Reyna? I’m Grace.”

  Something about her voice made her sound older than she looked—like a thirteen-year-old with a sixteen-year-old’s baggage. She sighed. “Look, Olive’s parents don’t know I’m here. I’m mooching off their wireless for a few weeks. And Olive loaned me this laptop; I didn’t steal it like I can tell you’re thinking. So if you could just close the door and forget about me—”

  “I—I need a tool,” I said.

  “Oh.” Her face relaxed a little. “Be my guest.”

  I stepped forward and reached for a trowel that was hanging off a hook on the wall. It was a different shape than the one Olive had been using before, but I took it anyway. “Thanks,” I said. “I won’t tell her parents.”

  “Bye.” She held up her hand with the palm facing me, and I saw a swollen, pink scar wrapped around her wrist.

  I didn’t say bye in return; I just stepped backward out the door and pulled it shut it with a click. Turning around to look for Olive, I saw that the sliding glass door leading into the kitchen was open a crack. Raised voices were coming from inside.