Promise Me Something

by Sara Kocek

  “We’re having our own funeral on Saturday, just for family.” Mrs. Barton grabbed hold of the porch railing and raised herself to her unsteady feet. “Thanks for stopping by though. Now that you feel better about yourself, you can go home.”

  I felt shame swallow me whole. It was exactly the kind of thing Olive would have said—caustic, bitter, absolutely true. I didn’t say anything as I turned to leave. I just glanced once more at the tool shed and hoped Grace was listening.

  Hello?

  Hi.

  Is this Tim?

  Who is this?

  You might not know me.

  Try me.

  It’s Reyna.

  From History?

  Yeah.

  Of course I know you.

  Sorry to bother you out of the blue.

  What’s up?

  Can I ask you something?

  Go right ahead.

  Do you like Mr. Murphy?

  Thursday

  Tim showed up by my locker after homeroom wearing a pale pink T-shirt that belonged to his sister. Across the chest was a white unicorn with sparkly hooves, and underneath the hooves it said, My other horse is a unicorn. The T-shirt was part of our plan, but that was about as far as we’d gotten. That, and the digital voice recorder in my pocket.

  Tim followed me wordlessly up the stairs toward the second floor, where we were planning to cut first period. Other than the girl’s bathroom, the band room was the only hideout I knew, so that was where I led him—praying the entire time that nobody held practice there first period on Thursdays. The minute we stepped in and shut the door behind us, I felt my stomach unclench. The room was empty. A jumble of music stands and plastic chairs crowded each other at the center of the room as though in a football huddle.

  “Now what?” asked Tim, dumping his backpack on the floor and looking around expectantly. Through the threadbare cotton of his T-shirt, I could see all the bones of his rib cage.

  “Now we plot,” I said, taking out the recorder I’d borrowed from Dad. He hadn’t even asked me why I needed it—that’s how nice he’d been to me ever since he got off the phone with Mr. Barton on Sunday night. Learning that Olive was really dead had pretty much stunned him into letting me off the hook all week. Even when Lucy told him at dinner how times the attendance office had called to report my absences, he just told her to “let it be” for a few more days.

  “Murphy’s not just going to call me a faggot out of nowhere,” said Tim, tapping his foot against the floor as though an invisible band were playing all around us. “Not unless I seriously get under his skin.”

  “That’s why we’re here.” I said. “To think of something.”

  I was glad that Tim had agreed to help—I knew Olive would have approved—but I wondered if he was just looking for an excuse to pull another stunt like he had on Valentine’s Day. As though reading my mind, he added, “It’s going to be hard to top the tutu shtick.”

  “Why don’t we start by bringing up politics?” I suggested. “I could raise my hand and ask some kind of question about liberal people in ancient Rome.”

  Tim shook his head. “Better yet—gay people in ancient Rome. Have you seen the frescos of nude men feeding each other grapes? They’re all over our textbook.”

  I smiled. “True.”

  “Only it would sound weird coming from you. Out of character, you know?”

  I knew what he meant—it would sound out of character for me to raise my hand and ask anything. I looked around the band room, trying to visualize each of the faces in our class. I knew someone who would be perfect for the job, but I’d been avoiding him all week.

  “Why don’t I just do it myself?” suggested Tim. “I’ll ask about all the frescos.”

  “No,” I said. “It can’t be you.” In order to catch Mr. Murphy with his guard down, the argument needed to unfold organically. It needed to seem, as much as possible, like a normal class discussion. If it looked like a deliberate provocation, he’d never fall for it.

  “We should get Levi,” I said, reaching a conclusion I already half-regretted. “He would do it if we asked him.”

  “Levi Siegel?” Tim yanked on the bottom of his too-short T-shirt. “Why him?”

  “He would be good at it,” I said. “Plus, Murphy likes him. So he wouldn’t realize he was being set up.”

  “Fine by me,” said Tim. “You want to go pull him out of class?”

  It dawned on me only then that I was volunteering to talk to Levi for the first time in days. Suddenly I felt jittery.

  “I have a signed hall pass,” said Tim. “We can pretend it’s from the guidance office.”

  There was no denying the fact that three people were better equipped to hijack a class discussion than two. “I guess,” I said. “If you think it would work.”

  “It will.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a crisp yellow hall pass, the date and time filled in with pencil. “Here.”

  “But it’s signed with your own name,” I said, glancing down at the signature.

  Tim grinned. “They always think I’m some new teacher they’ve never met.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  He just laughed.

  Levi sat in the fourth row of his health ed class behind a girl with a long, braided ponytail. When I stepped through the door of the classroom, her head snapped up and the ponytail grazed the top of his homework. “Hi,” I croaked, acutely aware of all the eyes on me.

  “May I help you?” asked Mr. Hugo, the health ed teacher. He looked surprisingly glad to see me. Only when I stepped forward, clutching my fake hall pass, did I realize he was smiling sarcastically, with an undercurrent of deep annoyance.

  “I’m supposed to bring Levi Siegel to the guidance office,” I said, glancing down at the pass as though reading his name off the paper for the first time.

  Mr. Hugo crossed the front of the room and took the slip out of my hand, glancing down at it before he thrust it back at me. “Tell Mr. Ferguson that if my students come crying to me with questions about material they missed in class, I’m going to send them his way for answers.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I lied.

  Levi stood up and grabbed his backpack off the floor. He looked glad to see me—or maybe just relieved to get out of class—but he didn’t meet my eye until both of us were safely out the door of the classroom, standing in the hallway next to a water fountain jammed with gum. Then he touched me on the arm and said, “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I answered. “I just want to talk to you about something.” Only I couldn’t look at his face without thinking about the texture of his lips and the screech of the train.

  “About what?” He frowned. “Did I mess something up?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.”

  “You’ve been avoiding me all week.”

  It was so ironic. Now that we were finally together, I couldn’t bear to look at him because he reminded me of Olive. Instead of answering his question, I walked in the direction of the band room, hoping Tim would be able to explain some of the thoughts that were lodged in my throat. Levi followed, taking one long stride for every two steps of mine.

  “It’s about Olive, isn’t it?” he asked. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

  “A lot,” I whispered.

  He looked taken aback. “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you in a few minutes.”

  “Hey.” He slowed his pace. “I know what you’re thinking, but just because we went to a movie on the same night doesn’t make it our fault. We couldn’t possibly have known.”

  My throat swelled again. He couldn’t possibly have known.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  I blinked a few times, wondering if I was going to cry. In a way, I wanted to. It would have shown us both that my heart wasn’t made of stone. But I couldn’t. As we reached the band room and I opened the door, my fingers looked pale and bloodless against the brass knob. I felt cold to th
e core. Tim was inside, drumming out a rhythm onto an empty plastic chair.

  “Come inside,” I told Levi. “I’ll try to explain.”

  Three periods later, as we filed into History, Mr. Murphy stood at the front of the classroom with his hands on his hips like an army lieutenant. His face, as always, was as tan and smooth as a slab of wax.

  On the blackboard was a page number: 206. I flipped there as soon as I sat down, sliding my left hand into my pocket to turn on Dad’s recorder. As I flipped from 205 to 206, I saw it. On the lower left-hand corner of the page was a reproduced fresco of a Roman orgy, complete with half a dozen naked men and two bare-breasted women lounging among platters of grapes. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect page if we’d hunted through the book ourselves.

  I glanced over to meet Levi’s eye, but he and Tim were already looking at each other like Christmas had come early. As the second bell rang, they yanked their eyes away and turned to the front of the room, where Mr. Murphy was announcing that we needed to skip backward to ancient Rome to review the chapter about oligarchy versus aristocracy, since it was obvious from the homework last week that nobody understood the distinction. It was then that Levi raised his hand.

  Mr. Murphy looked annoyed. “Questions already?”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Levi. “It’s just the painting in our book.” A few people in the class glanced down at page 206 and laughed.

  Mr. Murphy squared his shoulders. “Think you’re funny, Siegel?”

  “No, sir,” said Levi, “But the painting is.”

  More laughter. I felt my own cheeks stretch in a smile.

  “I’m serious.” Levi was trying hard to keep a straight face. “What exactly are they doing?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” hooted John Quincy from the far side of the room.

  “No, really. Was this considered mainstream?” Levi leaned forward in his chair. “Naked guys feeding each other grapes?”

  As Mr. Murphy let out a long sigh, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the recorder halfway to catch it.

  “I’m serious,” Levi repeated. It was, more or less, the same conversation we’d rehearsed in the band room. “Did they have a word for gay back then? Or was this normal?”

  Mr. Murphy was clearly not in the mood to entertain a question that was meant to amuse the class. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to realize Levi was trying to provoke him.

  “Don’t even get me started, Siegel,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “But it’s a valid question.” Levi glanced again at the painting in the book. “Is this a depiction of a fringe community, or were these people rich and powerful?”

  Mr. Murphy shoved his hands in his pockets. “What do you think?”

  “Rich,” said Levi.

  “Why?”

  “Their house is swank.”

  The class laughed, and Mr. Murphy rose to the bait. “Nobody’s questioning their interior decorating skills.”

  “So they were?” asked Levi.

  “What?”

  “Rich.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  The class erupted again, but Levi didn’t blink. “I don’t understand how they could be a fringe community if they were also rich and powerful.”

  The corner of Mr. Murphy’s mouth twitched. “Just look at Hollywood.”

  On cue, Tim spoke up from the second row. “Are you saying gay people in this country are rich and powerful?” he asked, “Because I’m gay, and I have no power whatsoever.”

  “Give me a break, sweetheart.” Mr. Murphy’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’re fourteen years old. You don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  The class laughed again—not with menace, but with expectancy. They had no allegiances to Tim or anyone else; they simply wanted to be entertained.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” Mr. Murphy added, shooting him a pointed look. “You don’t become rich and powerful wearing a shirt like that.”

  I was impressed by the red splotches that appeared on Tim’s cheeks. If they were part of his act, they were pretty convincing. “I like this shirt,” he said.

  “I wonder why,” deadpanned Mr. Murphy.

  Carefully, ready to bring phase three of our plan into effect, I raised my hand. I made it look tentative, as though I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be called on. Mr. Murphy must have forgotten my name, because he just looked at me blankly and said, “Yes, Miss…?”

  “Fey,” I answered in a small voice. It took all my courage just to look him in the eye. “I was wondering if it was normal for women to be with each other too. At these…” I trailed off. I couldn’t bring myself to say orgies.

  A few boys across the room wolf whistled at my question. Levi looked over at me admiringly, and I felt a stab of pride for the first time all week.

  “Lennie, let’s do our next project on that,” John called across the room. Lennie just tossed back her long hair and smiled serenely.

  “Enough!” barked Mr. Murphy. “Between you and Twinkle Toes over here, we’ll be at this all day.” Tim’s cheeks flushed again, whether from humiliation or satisfaction, I couldn’t tell.

  “Let’s get serious,” said Mr. Murphy. “Who would like to read aloud?”

  But “Twinkle Toes” wasn’t quite enough to get a teacher fired, so I pulled the recorder another inch out of my pocket and raised my hand again.

  “Thank you, Miss Fey.” He turned his attention to me. “Starting from the top of 206.”

  “No, I have another question,” I said, ignoring every instinct of self-preservation in my body. This tangent wasn’t even remotely part of our plan. “Did they have polygamy in ancient Rome?”

  “Polygamy?” Mr. Murphy’s eyes widened. “What kind of question is that?”

  “I was just wondering,” I said.

  “Look”—he ran a hand over his close-cropped hair—“I’m only going to say this once, and if you don’t like it, you can take it up with the author of a certain book.” He walked over to his desk, opened the top right drawer, and lifted a copy of the Bible. Then he cleared his throat. “A family starts with one man and one woman,” he said. “Not two men. Not two women. Not one man and three women. One man and one woman.”

  “My mom grew up in a polygamous family,” I lied. “She was Mormon.” A few people started whispering, and I had to look straight ahead so I wouldn’t lose my nerve.

  “I’m not insulting anyone’s religion,” said Mr. Murphy, though he was actually doing just that. “I’m telling you what I know to be true.”

  I didn’t let my gaze waver. “How can you know?”

  “The same way he knows he hates me,” spoke up Tim. “Categorically.”

  In an instant, Mr. Murphy grabbed the sissy hat off his desk, crossed the room, and leaned menacingly over Tim. “What’s that, Ferguson? You think I hate you?”

  Tim didn’t say anything.

  “Wear this.”

  “No way.” Tim swept the hat off his desk and onto the floor.

  Mr. Murphy’s face turned a deep shade of purple as he bent over and picked it up. Then he shoved it onto Tim’s head. “It was an order, not a request.”

  Tim pulled it off. “You can’t make me wear it just because you hate me.”

  “I’ve got news for you, Ferguson. I don’t hate faggots.”

  The class was so quiet I could hear the desk creak when Mr. Murphy leaned in farther, one of his big tanned wrists resting on the surface. “I hate it when they interrupt my class.”

  The room erupted in whispers as two splotches of deep, angry pink exploded onto Tim’s cheeks. I could feel the recorder hot in my hand, capturing every moment, but in place of the satisfaction I expected to feel was a sadness that flared suddenly like the tip of a match. For me, it was mission accomplished. For Tim, it was life.

  It didn’t take long—about half of lunch—to transfer the audio file onto my laptop and fix the volume levels. The hardest part w
as editing out the extraneous beginning so that the conversation started with Levi asking, “Did they have a word for gay back then?”

  Tim did most of the work, since he was the one who knew how to use the editing software that came with my computer. Levi and I just leaned over his shoulder and watched him click away, our elbows touching occasionally. We were in the no-talking corner of the library, but we whispered every so often about what to do next. Tim thought we should create a fake email account and send the file to everyone in the school. Levi wanted to send it exclusively to Mr. Murphy, to see if he would apologize first. I had a better idea, but I didn’t voice it right away. It was still taking shape in the back of my mind, mushrooming out like a nuclear blast, like the last split second of life as I knew it.

  I hadn’t told anyone yet about Olive’s letter. Even when I spilled my soul to Tim over g-chat, I’d omitted that part of the story. But the longer I kept it to myself, the more of a coward I knew I was. There was only one right thing to do, and it involved the stack of letters I’d found tossed near the dumpsters, where Grace had run after pulling the fire alarm. I was pretty sure she’d meant to plaster the row of bulletin boards outside the cafeteria—before she got caught anyway.

  “Are you guys worried about getting suspended?” I asked as Tim emailed each of us a copy of the file. It was the least of my concerns, but I needed to gauge how committed they were.

  “Come on,” said Levi. “Do you think Olive would have worried about that?”

  “Of course not,” I answered. “But are you worried?”

  “You can’t get suspended for sending an email unless it contains a virus.”

  “Or porn,” said Tim.

  “What if we’re not just going to send an email?” I pressed my hands against my lap. They were shaking. “What if we’re going to break into the school?”