Promise Me Something

by Sara Kocek

  “Go ahead, doll,” said Lucy. And that was exactly what I felt like—a floppy doll with button eyes that couldn’t cry. As politely as possible, I left the kitchen.

  I didn’t call anyone. I sent Abby three texts in a row, each more desperate than the last. Can you come over today? I wrote, nearly chewing off my lower lip. Then, Where are you??? And finally, If you’re at another basketball game, I think I’m going to hate basketball forever.

  As it turned out, Abby was grocery shopping with her mom. By the time she called back, I must have sounded so lonely and borderline insane that her mom agreed to drop her off at my house as soon as they found some rutabagas and spiced peach jam. The whole time I waited, I stared at Mom’s bookshelf and asked God to please, for the love of cinnamon buns and peppermint soap and all things holy, give me something to think about other than Dad and Lucy getting married in five months.

  And it worked. When Abby arrived, the first thing she said was, “So, Olive’s gay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, forgetting momentarily about the engagement. She must have heard me on the phone after all. Diving into the story of the sleepover, I told her about the queen bed and the weird homeless girl, Grace.

  Abby wasn’t surprised about Olive being gay, but she was weirded out by Grace. “Isn’t anyone in her family looking for her?” she asked. “And how is she not starving to death?”

  “Olive brings her food,” I said. “She’s connected to their Wi-Fi and everything.”

  “Crazy.” Abby grabbed my hacky sack off the windowsill and sat down on my bed. “So they’re lesbians together?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  Her face broke out in a grin. “I bet that’s who she had online sex with. Remember?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Abby’s smile was infectious, and I felt giddy having her all to myself for once. I didn’t want to share her ever again—not with Madison or Leah, and especially not with her boyfriend. That reminded me of Dad, though. My stomach sank.

  “I have more news,” I said. Then I let it all roll out—the story of Dad proposing in Times Square, the gold ring, the Ben & Jerry’s for breakfast.

  “Oh wow,” Abby said when I was finished. She tossed the hacky sack up with one hand and caught it with the other. “Are you even a little happy?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You know how I feel about Lucy.”

  “You still blame her for causing the accident?”

  “Of course,” I answered. “She ran the stop sign.”

  “Reyna, this is obviously not about the stop sign.” Abby put on her best therapy face. “Blame the accident if you want, but it’s not the real reason you don’t like Lucy—”

  “Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I said. “Please.”

  “Then don’t freak out.” She tossed me the hacky sack. “Just wait until winter break. We’ll hang out every day and you can forget all about your dad and Lucy.”

  I caught it and kneaded it between my knuckles. “But don’t you think she’s taking advantage of him?”

  Abby cocked an eyebrow at me. “If you say sexually, I’m going to laugh.”

  “Not sexually!” I threw the hacky sack back at her with a little force. It thumped her on the leg. “He’s a doormat,” I explained. “He lets her step all over him. She even rearranged all our furniture. It’s a disaster match.”

  Abby arched an eyebrow at me. “Sounds like you and Olive.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I said. But some nervous, squirming part of me wondered if she was right. All week long, Olive had been creeping from thought to thought in the back of my mind like a masked assassin, moving steadily closer. Every now and then she poked her head out and fixed me with a withering stare. You’re better than this, she whispered. And every time I looked away.

  “Maybe you should join a club,” suggested Abby. “Like gymnastics or something.”

  “What good would that do?” I opened my hand and gestured for her to throw the hacky sack back in my direction. I needed something to grind in my fist.

  “For one thing, it would distract you from Lucy.” Abby tossed the sack and I caught it in my palm. “For another, you need to make some new friends besides Olive. Isn’t there anybody else who likes you?”

  “Maybe.” I told her about Gretchen Palmer’s notes to me during Math. “But she might just be picking on me. I can’t tell. She’s always quizzing me.”

  Abby looked thoughtful. “She probably sees potential in you. If you dressed a little better and had more confidence, you could have a lot of friends.”

  “Maybe.” I could feel Olive moving around in the back of my mind, lurking. Do me a favor, she whispered. Follow your better nature.

  “Not maybe.” Abby gave me a long, hard stare. “Definitely.”

  In Math on Monday, Gretchen passed me another note. It said, Boxers or Briefs? Just like last time, it was sealed with a scented sticker—this time banana—only unlike last time, she didn’t mention knocking Olive on the head with a hockey puck in Gym.

  I wrote back Briefs.

  We were learning how to calculate the volume of a circular cone, and I kept imagining party hats filled with beer. It was one of those random images—like a kangaroo wearing a condom—that once it pops into your mind sticks there. So when Gretchen passed me the boxers-or-briefs note again—this time with the question, Love or Marriage?—I circled Love and drew three upside-down party hats with pom-poms. Then I made an arrow next to them and wrote, The amount of beer you have to drink to understand this math equals the volume of these three cones. It was stupid, but I passed it to her anyway.

  You’re hilarious!!! she wrote back a moment later, seconds before the bell. And it was only then, when I folded the note and put it my pocket, that I realized Abby was right. I had potential. A lot of potential.

  By Friday, the last day of school before winter break, I’d passed fourteen notes with Gretchen. She ran out of scented stickers on Thursday and started folding the notes into intricate patterns that were difficult for me to unfold under my desk without catching the attention of Mr. Beyner, our math teacher. Karma came back to us on Friday morning in the form of a pop quiz that I almost failed. We graded it together as a class—a boy named Donald, who sat to my right, had the job of marking twelve incorrect answers on my paper—and when I saw my grade, I almost crumpled the quiz in my fist.

  But I didn’t. Instead I stuck it like a bookmark between the pages of my math book and took it out between every period that morning, trying to relearn the material that I’d missed over the course of the week. And that was how Olive found me during lunch, waiting in line in the cafeteria, looking over each incorrect answer.

  “Sixty-two?”

  I jumped. She was peering over my shoulder, just like on the day we met. At the front of the line, the lunch ladies were serving nachos, watery salsa, and cornbread.

  “Geometry isn’t my strong suit,” I said, folding the quiz in half and shoving it into my backpack. It was the first time we’d spoken since our sleepover more than a week ago, and I felt suddenly nervous, like my fingers were made of rubber. An apology for bolting out of her room was lodged somewhere deep in my throat, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up—not in front of all these people.

  “Our class took the same quiz,” she said pointedly. “I got an A.”

  Anger swelled in me, crowding out the impulse to apologize.

  Olive rolled her eyes. “It was on circles. What’s not to understand?”

  “Shut up,” I said and got out of the line. I had four dollar bills in my pocket, but I didn’t even use them to buy junk from the vending machines. Instead I let my stomach growl while I wandered around the periphery of the cafeteria, scanning the room for a table where I could sit without being noticed.

  That was when I heard someone calling my name. I looked around and saw Gretchen Palmer sitting at her usual table with the rest of the Slutty Nurses. They weren’t actually slutty nurses, of course—I just reme
mbered them that way from the Halloween parade. In reality, they were preppy girls who lived in North Springdale and brought fresh, organic bag lunches every day. None of them was quite prom queen material, but they would probably go on to run the student council and choose the prom queen. They had a comfortable place in the social hierarchy, and I decided that was reason enough to sit with them. Well, that and because Olive was still watching me with narrow eyes from the lunch line.

  As I chose a seat and dropped my backpack down on the table, every one of Gretchen’s friends acted as though they’d never cornered Olive and me during a parade and called us farm girls. “What’s up?” said the one to my left—I was pretty sure her name was Emma.

  “Not much,” I answered.

  “Reyna is a briefs girl,” Gretchen announced. “Most of us are boxers, but now Lennie has someone to relate to.”

  A tall Asian girl smiled at me, and I recognized her right away from Mr. Murphy’s class. “Thank God,” she said. “I thought I was the only one.”

  I tried to act like this meant we had something in common, but the truth was I’d chosen briefs randomly. “So what middle school did you go to?” I asked.

  “Glenbrook,” Lennie said. “All of us did.”

  “We’ve known each other since second grade,” added the girl whose name I thought was Emma. “We went to elementary school with Olive Garden too. I mean—Olive Barton.”

  She giggled while I looked down at my backpack, wishing I had something to eat to distract me from their scrutiny.

  “We actually used to be friends with her,” Lennie said. “From second to fourth grade. But she’s so weird, you know? We had to break it off. Just like you did.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “The point is, we’re here to rescue you.” Gretchen was wearing a fuzzy lavender sweater with two pom-poms hanging off each wrist, and she flicked one of them absently as she spoke. “We’re not mean people, you know. We weren’t trying to get you in trouble on Halloween. We just had a bone to pick to with Olive Garden.”

  “Whatever,” I said, ignoring the nickname. “I don’t care anymore.”

  “We’re glad.”

  There it was again: the plural pronoun. Eating lunch with the Slutty Nurses—I couldn’t stop thinking of them that way—was like eating lunch in a beehive. There was no I. There was only we.

  “Anyway, it’s not your fault you got roped in with the wrong people,” Gretchen said, as though Olive were some kind of drug dealer. Everyone else at the table nodded; Gretchen was obviously the queen bee. “What are you doing for winter break?”

  “Not much,” I said, unsure how else to respond. I felt like I was at a job interview. Even my posture was straighter than normal.

  “You can come to my family’s New Year’s party if you want,” said Gretchen. “We’re all going to be there.”

  “Sure,” I said, mainly to be nice. I was planning to spend New Year’s with Abby, but the Slutty Nurses didn’t need to know that. They were being polite to me, so I would be polite to them. That was the way the world worked unless your name was Olive Barton.

  “Do you want some of my Sun Chips?” Lennie asked, looking over at the empty spot on the table in front of me. “You haven’t eaten a thing.”

  “Sure,” I said and opened my palm. “Thanks.”

  It’s time to play Asshole of the Day.

  Again, Olive?

  I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Reyna this time.

  Gretchen the Wretched?

  That was yesterday. Pay attention.

  I give up.

  You’re no fun. It’s Mr. Murphy.

  Who’s that again?

  My history teacher.

  Oh, right. The homophobe.

  You know what he said this time?

  Enlighten me.

  Fudge packer.

  To the same guy he called limp-wristed?

  Yeah, Tim Ferguson.

  I used to have a teacher like that too.

  Did you ever say anything to him?

  Her. No, I didn’t.

  Why not?

  I was too busy with other things. For example, trying to off myself with sleeping pills.

  Jesus, Grace.

  It was the year I came out.

  That sucks.

  She had no idea how close I came to succeeding.

  She should have been fired.

  So should your teacher. Maybe you should write a letter to the principal or something. Do what I should have done.

  And out myself in the process? No thanks.

  He deserves it, though.

  That’s true.

  The very worst.

  I know.

  9.

  I was putting on my boots to bike to Abby’s house when the phone rang.

  “Don’t come,” she said. “I’m not there.”

  I let go of my shoelace and watched it drop to the floor. Not there? As we spoke, Dad was in the shower singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” at the top of his lungs while Lucy made him breakfast. Literally the only thing stopping me from marching over and slamming his door was the fact that I was in a hurry to leave for Abby’s house. We were planning to kick off winter break with an all-day ’90s movie marathon.

  But not anymore apparently. “I’m on my way to the airport,” Abby said over the sound of traffic. “Dad surprised us last night with tickets to Puerto Rico. Awesome, right?”

  Awesome? I felt my stomach drop. “You’re leaving the country?”

  “Technically Puerto Rico is part of—”

  “Whatever!” I said. “You’re leaving? Just like that?”

  Abby didn’t sound even remotely guilty. “It was a Hanukkah present,” she said. “Mostly for Mom, since she’s been so stressed lately with work—”

  “You can’t leave!” I burst out. “This was our week to spend together.” I felt like a baby, but it was true. Leah was going to Disney World with her gymnastics team. Madison’s family was on their annual ski trip in Colorado. Abby and I were supposed to be stuck in Springdale together just like last year. It was the natural order of the universe.

  “Rey, I have to go. I have to call Jeremy and the others. I called you first, of course.”

  Probably only because I was on my way to her house. A hard knot was forming at the base of my throat. “Didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “This was supposed to be our week together.”

  “Actually, the reception is kind of bad right now.” Abby’s voice came through my phone garbled. “We’re halfway through a tunnel.”

  Anger and disappointment swirled through me like a dust storm. “I never get to see you anymore,” I said, my voice dangerously wobbly.

  “Hello? Did you say something?”

  “I never get to see you,” I repeated. “We’re practically just acquaintances now.” Then I hung up before she could tell I was on the verge of crying. It was going to be a long week.

  Instead of riding my bike to Abby’s house, I rode to the most depressing place I could think of—the mall. I spent four hours there, wandering from booth to booth, letting pushy salespeople sell me a pair of fingerless mittens, polarized sunglasses, and exfoliating skin lotion from the Dead Sea. On Sunday I went to Mass. On Monday, I finished all my homework for the entire vacation. On Tuesday—the day before Christmas—Dad finally agreed to watch some ’90s movies with me, but he fell asleep on the couch twenty minutes into Dumb and Dumber. I watched the entire thing, not laughing even once, and then channel-surfed for a good hour before Lucy came home from her Pilates class and flopped down on the loveseat.

  “Anything good on TV?” she asked.

  “Nope,” I said, handing her the remote. There were still six hours left before dinner, and if I checked Facebook one more time, I thought I might puke. So I followed Dad’s example and snuggled into the couch, burrowing my feet under the fuzzy throw blanket I got him for Christmas in fourth grade. Then I closed my eyes and tried with all my might to sleep through the rest of vacati
on.

  When I got so bored I thought my skull might crack, I called Gretchen.

  A woman whose voice sounded like Martha Stewart answered the phone. “The Reyna Fey?” she asked when I said my name. “Gretchen’s told me all about you, sweetheart!”

  I tried not to feel creeped out as she re-invited me to the Palmer Family New Year’s party on Tuesday night and gave me directions, all before wishing me a Merry Christmas and passing the phone to her daughter. By the time Gretchen picked up, there wasn’t much left to say. “How’s your break going?” I asked.

  “Good—really good!” said Gretchen, clearly distracted. I heard laughter in the background and wondered if the Slutty Nurses were with her.

  “Mine too,” I lied. “I’m baking cookies with my friend Abby. Actually, I have frosting all over my hands right now—I should probably go.”

  “Me too!” said Gretchen. “Only, egg whites, not frosting. My mom and I are making eggnog.” She laughed again. “Mom, put that down!”

  So it wasn’t the Slutty Nurses she was hanging out with. It was worse. I felt an ache in the pit of my stomach, wishing I could frost Christmas cookies one last time with Mom.

  “Oh! I almost forgot!” said Gretchen. “You have to write a New Year’s resolution on a slip of paper and bring it with you to the party. Only don’t put your name on it, OK?”

  “OK—”

  “Ciao, Reyna!” The line went dead. As I stood there with the phone still held up to my ear, I pictured Gretchen and her mother sitting in Martha Stewart’s kitchen, clinking their glasses of eggnog together. It was enough to kill my appetite for the rest of the evening.

  I slept late on Christmas morning. I probably would have slept all day if Dad hadn’t knocked on my door and threatened to give my presents to charity.