Promise Me Something

by Sara Kocek

  But there was no answer. I couldn’t hear anything coming from inside the shed—not even a cricket. A desperate, terrible hope was pulsing in the back of my head, almost too awful to bear. Let it be Grace, I thought. Let it be her they found. I remembered her empty eyes from the Valentine’s party, and the way she stared at me like she wanted to hate me but couldn’t even find the energy. Maybe Olive was already at the police station, identifying the body, filing a report for the weird homeless girl she met online.

  I ran back to the porch, grabbed the house key from the grill, and brought it over to the shed. My fingers were numb from the cold rain, but I managed to jam the key into the slot on the door handle. I thought at first that I was in luck. Pressing my weight into the door, I twisted the handle to the left, but nothing happened. Then I twisted it to the right. It still wouldn’t budge. The key fit roughly inside the slot, but not enough to unlock the bolt.

  Worried that someone would see me wrestling with the door, I returned the key to its hiding spot and ran back to Lucy’s car, drenched to the bone, my hair as wet as if I’d just come out of the shower. Ducking into the passenger seat, I caught my breath as Lucy watched me, waiting for my verdict.

  “Drive,” I said. “She’s not here.”

  “Reyna?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sure Olive is fine.” She meant it to be reassuring, but I could’ve screamed, it was so much the opposite. “I’m sure it was someone else.”

  “How can you be sure?” I snapped. “Did you see her just now?”

  Lucy glanced sideways at me and said something so quickly I couldn’t understand it. Something like “Safari.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m sorry I’m not your mom.”

  For a second, I had no idea what she was talking about. All I could think of was Olive, and whether I was ever going to get a chance to put things right between us.

  But then Lucy went on, “You probably think if your mom were here, she’d know what to say. Well, I’m not her, but I’m trying the best I can.”

  Now? She wanted to have this conversation now?

  “I never asked you to be my mom,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “I know that,” said Lucy.

  “Please just drive me home.”

  But she didn’t budge. “I’m not driving anywhere until we talk.”

  “Fine!” I exploded. “About what?”

  “About us,” said Lucy, calm as ever. “And about your mom.”

  I could barely see straight through my rage. “You mean how you wish she never existed in the first place?”

  Lucy looked stunned. “Of course I don’t wish that—”

  “Well, I do,” I said. “Then I wouldn’t have to sit around watching you treat my family like an Etch A Sketch.”

  “I’m not trying to erase your mom, Reyna. Or you.”

  “Please! You’d love it if I disappeared,” I said. “You and Dad could go on your honeymoon without worrying about who’s going to stay at home with me—”

  “No.” She gripped the steering wheel tightly, even though the car was still in park. “I’m tired of being treated like this, Reyna. I don’t deserve it. In the ten months we’ve known each other, I’ve been nothing but a friend to you.”

  Olive’s voice came back to me, echoing through my head like a whisper in a microphone. I’ve been nothing but a friend to you…All you ever do is mope around wishing you went to Ridgeway…The memory of that sleepover—how she cried, how she showed me her dad’s office, how she trusted me—hit me so hard I almost reeled.

  She was right. They were both right. Olive and Lucy had only tried to be my friends. So why had I looked for every possible reason to hate them? I felt the familiar prickling sensation in my cheeks that always happens when I’m about to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. My voice came out as a squeak.

  Lucy let out the breath she had been holding. “It’s OK.”

  But it wasn’t OK. There were so many things wrong, I didn’t know where to start. “None of it matters,” I told her. “My dad’s not ready for someone else.”

  “He’s not ready, or you’re not ready?”

  “Neither of us,” I said.

  “Well, I’m here to stay,” Lucy repeated. “And I want you to know that you can turn to me whenever you need help.” She turned the ignition and we rode silently back to our house, my hair still dripping wet from the rain. When we pulled into our driveway and unbuckled our seat belts, she reached over and touched me on the arm.

  “I mean it,” she said. “I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

  I didn’t answer. Half of me wanted to shout at her again, and the other half wanted to reach over and hug her—to ask for her forgiveness. I did neither. I let her reach over and squeeze me around the shoulder.

  Inside the house, a message was waiting for me on a purple sticky note by the kitchen phone. Dad had written: Gretchen saw “interesting” news blurb. Call her cell. I crushed the note in my fist and dropped it in the garbage on the way to my room. I had only one plan for the day, and that plan was to memorize the four stages of mitosis for a biology test on Monday. The test would be there whether Olive was or not, and I needed the distraction more than I needed a phone call with Gretchen. While Lucy told Dad about Olive, I shut myself in my room, lay down on the floor, opened my textbook against the carpet, and repeated the words prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase over and over like lyrics to a beautiful song. It blasted everything else out of my head.

  Midway through the afternoon, when it became clear that I had no interest in talking to Dad no matter how many times he knocked on my door, Lucy called me into the kitchen and practically force fed me salad and leftover pizza. The whole time I ate, I could hear the newscaster’s voice on the TV in the living room saying something soft and murmury about infant car seats and the price of gas, but nothing about the incident at Talmadge Hill. Halfway through my bowl of wilted lettuce, I got up, cleared my plate, excused myself, and wandered back to my room, which smelled stuffy, like stale perfume.

  I tried praying for a few minutes with Mom’s rosary, but it felt strange, like something an old woman would do. Out in the living room, I could hear Dad and Lucy making inquiry calls to the Springdale police department. But if they learned anything, they didn’t come into my room to tell me. For the rest of the day, I resigned myself to counting the cracks on my ceiling, thinking about cell cleavage, and wondering if there was such a thing as bird heaven or not.

  Sunday

  When I woke up, my mind was warm with a dream I couldn’t remember. The light falling through the window slats was butterscotch, and in the hazy space between opening my eyes and gaining consciousness, I remembered nothing of Abby’s text yesterday morning, nothing of the story on the news, and nothing of Olive’s empty house. I remembered only the soft, papery texture of Levi’s lips on Friday night, and my toes, curled and freezing in the movie theater.

  I sat up slowly. Something was buzzing at the edge of my consciousness, a brief blip every few seconds that shook me out of sleep. It was my phone, vibrating intermittently from across the room, deep in the pocket of my crumpled jeans. That was when I remembered how yesterday had started, and everything that came after Abby’s text. I stumbled to my feet, crossed the room, and crouched by my jeans to pull out the phone. There was another text waiting for me, this time from an unfamiliar number. Go to the tool shed.

  I didn’t panic. That was what the yesterday me would have done. The today me slid calmly into my jeans and put on my shoes, taking care to double-knot the laces. Then I grabbed my winter jacket off the back of my desk chair and slipped it on over the men’s extra-large T-shirt I’d worn to bed. My eyes were still crusty with sleep, but I crept down the hallway and into the garage, where I pulled open the door and stepped outside. The driveway was still damp and full of puddles from yesterday’s storm, but it wasn’t raining anymore. Wheeling my bik
e out of a cobwebbed corner, Grace’s name throbbed in my head.

  The ride to Cedar Street took twenty minutes by bike—maybe longer, since the muscles in my legs took a while to wake up. When I reached Olive’s house, I dropped my bike on the grass and headed straight for the tool shed, knocking quickly on the wooden door. I felt different than yesterday—calmer, but also foggier, like I was one layer deeper in a dream. No one answered, even when I knocked so hard my knuckles hurt. Yet I had the eerie sensation of being watched, as though Grace were lurking around the corner in the woods. Or maybe she was inside the house, peering out a window. I abandoned my knocking and tried twisting on the doorknob, just like yesterday.

  This time it was open. The door sprang forward eagerly, with a faint creak that sounded like a seagull. Inside I could barely see anything except for the rickety trundle bed and the unplugged space heater. The sheets and blankets were rumpled to one side as though Grace had decided to roll out of bed in the morning straight onto the floor.

  “Hello?” I stepped into the dark, musty space. “Is anybody here?”

  Silence.

  It didn’t surprise me. The shed wasn’t very big, and unless someone was hiding under the bed, there wasn’t room for another person. Just in case, I bent down and twiddled the switch of a lamp that was sitting on the floor next to the discarded blankets. Dim yellow light filled the shed, and that was when I noticed the envelope.

  It was small and white—not a normal business envelope, but the kind that usually holds a greeting card. It was sitting on the rumpled bed in the center, where the mattress sagged, and a neon-green sticky note was stuck to the top with three sentences scrawled in Olive’s handwriting. They made an upside-down pyramid.

  This time I decided not to change your name.

  Thought I’d give you fair warning.

  Do you miss me now?

  —Olive

  My fingers felt odd and weightless as I peeled off the sticky note and tore open the envelope, which held a single piece of paper folded over four times. It was typed.

  To Those Who Care:

  Did you know that some high school newspapers aren’t even allowed to mention suicide, just in case it would give students ideas? Shame, since the Beacon would have been a good place to publish this letter. How are you reporting my death anyway? Did you say it was an accident? It wasn’t. And while the blame falls on many of you, there is one in particular who deserves to know exactly how he killed me.

  Mr. Murphy, if you’re reading this, let me explain. I’m gay. I’m everything you hate. I’m a limp-wristed fudge-packing pansy and all those other words you used in class this year—or the female equivalent anyway. No doubt if you had known that one of my “kind” was lurking in your classroom, you would have tormented me as much as you tormented T.F. But I have news for you. You didn’t need to. It worked all the same.

  To Reyna: I want you to know I’m not ashamed of being gay. I don’t hate myself. I just can’t deal anymore. I’m so tired of your cowardice and your cruelty. So tired of the way you reflect the opinions of those around you, more or less blindly, with the illusion of thought. Do me a favor and learn something from this. That would almost make it worth it.

  Olive Barton

  I wish I could say I biked straight to the police when I read the letter. But I didn’t. That would have meant Olive was really dead. Instead I turned off the lamp, left the tool shed, and shut the door behind me, wondering why the world seemed so pixilated all of a sudden, like little pieces of my body were disassembling themselves and changing places with little pieces of the sky, the puddles, the pavement, the smell of the grass. I rode home with the wad of paper folded tightly in my fist, the streets empty and unfamiliar in the hazy morning light.

  Dad was scrambling eggs when I got home. The smell wafted through the front door as soon as I stepped inside, and I almost threw up on the spot. “I’m sick,” I announced before either of them could ask any questions. And then I bypassed the kitchen altogether and headed for the only place in the house where I could think.

  The attic was accessible by a pull-down staircase located in my closet. I kicked my shoes aside, yanked on the rope hanging from the ceiling, and leveraged my weight to lower the stairs to the ground. Then I grabbed my phone and climbed up the steps, ducking my head once I got to the top. The attic was only four feet high—not tall enough to stand—and dead bugs were in every corner along with boxes of old junk. I took Olive’s letter out of my pocket, stuffed it under a pile of books where nobody would ever find it, and lay down on my back to figure things out.

  The worst part wasn’t that Olive was dead. That part didn’t seem real to me yet. The worst part was the thought of Levi reading the letter and knowing the awful truth about me. He would look at me with those big, disappointed eyes, just like Dad. He would say, “This just doesn’t sound like you.”

  I stared at my phone for a long time, wondering whether to call my friends. But if I told them Olive was dead, I’d have to tell them how I found out, and that would mean revealing the letter. I scrolled through my address book so long that the light from the screen stuck in my vision even when I closed my eyes. I almost called Abby about five times. I almost called Levi about ten. I even almost called Gretchen. In the end, I didn’t call anyone. Dad found me.

  “Reyna?” he asked from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you feeling OK?”

  “Fine,” I called, staring at a speck of dust on the roof that seemed to fade like a star whenever I looked at it.

  “Can I come up?”

  “You shouldn’t,” I said. “Your ankle’s still bad.”

  He took a few cautious steps up the rickety stairs and saw me lying on the floor of the attic, still wearing my winter jacket and pajamas. “Rey, what’s wrong?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I don’t feel well.”

  Dad took another step up the stairs and leaned against the attic entrance. “Then what are you doing up there?”

  “Trying to be alone.”

  Dad just stared at me hard. “Any news?”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Have you reached Olive?”

  “No.”

  “The police wouldn’t tell us anything when we called them yesterday. Has anybody tried calling her parents?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’d like to talk to them.” Dad shifted his weight, and the staircase creaked beneath him. “You don’t have to go through this alone, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Dad stared at me for a while longer; then he lowered himself through the door and down the stairs until I couldn’t see him anymore.

  “Thanks,” I said to the air.

  Monday

  Guess who?”

  A pair of warm, soft hands reached around to cover my eyes. I could smell Levi even before he touched me. He was sweaty, but in a good way.

  I cast around for a funny answer—something clever that wouldn’t give me away. He obviously hadn’t heard the news yet. It was only first period, and we’d just finished running a warm-up lap around the gym. “Duke Orsino,” is what popped out of my mouth.

  “What?” Levi took his hands away. “From Shakespeare?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “It’s you!”

  He laughed. “You’re weird sometimes.” I felt queasy with nerves, ready to tell him what had happened to Olive, but then he touched me on the small of my back and added, “In a good way,” and I felt the heat from his fingertips radiate outward.

  “How was the rest of your weekend?” I asked numbly.

  “Good,” he said. “How was yours?”

  I should have said, “Not good. Did you see the news?” But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t admit it was real. “My weekend was fine,” I lied. He probably thought I was blushing because of our kiss on Friday, but that seemed so long ago now, like something that had happened to someone else.

  “Want to go choose sticks?” asked Levi. It was hockey day in Gym, and we both knew that i
f we didn’t pick soon, we’d be left with the flimsy plastic sticks that bent whenever they came in contact with a solid object.

  “Sure,” I said, looking anywhere but at his face. We headed together toward the far side of the gym, Levi dribbling an orange puck between his sneakers like a soccer ball.

  “Oh yeah”—he kicked the puck and sent it gliding all the way to the edge of the room, where it bounced off the wall—“have you heard?”

  Relief and dread rushed through me at once. I opened my mouth to say, “You mean about Olive?” but he cut he me off.

  “Keat’s Concert Hall is giving discounts to students over Spring Break. You want to go?”

  I let out the breath I had been holding. “Sure,” I sad. “Levi—”

  But Mr. Charles chose that moment to blow his whistle. It was time to separate into hockey teams. And that was how I didn’t tell him first period. Or second. Or third. Or ever.

  Not too many people watched the news. That much was obvious. At first I was surprised, then relieved, then disturbed. Olive’s neon green sticky note kept flashing in my mind—thought I’d give you fair warning—and I spent most of the morning checking around corners for some terrible surprise. Each time I opened my locker, I expected copies of Olive’s letter to come fluttering out. I closed my eyes and saw myself bending down to pick them up, sweeping the pages into my arms, crumpling them into balls. But there were hundreds—too many to collect, and they floated through the corridors, people bending down to grab them off the floor or snatch them clear out of the air like feathers.

  Nothing like that happened, of course. The only copy of the letter as far as I knew was tucked safely away under a box in my attic. As for whether Mr. Murphy had a copy of his own, I wasn’t sure. All through fourth period, I stared at his face while he lectured on the rise of the Ottoman Empire. He looked like a computer graphic of himself, his cheeks broad and smooth.