Promise Me Something

by Sara Kocek

  “So are you telling me we came here today to finish some homeless girl’s job?” Levi asked, rounding the corner as we reached the school’s lobby. Stopping suddenly, he looked from side to side as though expecting to see Grace standing by the front door.

  “I don’t think she’s here,” I said. “If she found a way inside, she would have put up fliers everywhere, not just on the front door.”

  “I’m not looking for her. I’m looking for the lights.”

  “Over here.” Tim flicked a switch, and bright florescent lights popped on one by one, illuminating the lobby. I could see the banner saying Welcome, Belltown! and the lame student mural over the stairs and an entire case of trophies from the National Merit Scholarship.

  “Let’s go.” Tim pulled three rolls of tape from his pocket and stuck his fist through one of them like a bracelet. “First the foyer, then the hallways, then the cafeteria.”

  “I’ll put some in the principal’s office,” I said.

  “Divide and conquer?” Levi was looking back and forth between us, waiting for direction and his own roll of tape.

  Tim nodded, tossing him one. “See you guys in twenty minutes.”

  We split up and I made my way to the principal’s office, taping up a dozen letters on the way. Mr. Mancuzzi’s door was locked, but the lobby with the faculty mailboxes was open, so I slid a copy of Olive’s letter into a few choice boxes, including Mr. Murphy’s. Then I got out my cell phone and dialed Abby’s house.

  It wasn’t Abby I wanted to speak to, but her father. He exercised every morning before his commute to work, and with any luck, I’d catch him just before his morning run. But, of course, Abby answered on the third ring, a little groggy. “Hello? Reyna?”

  I knew what I wanted to say: “Is your dad home?” But panic seized me. “Um, sorry,” I said. “I must have dialed the wrong number.”

  “Fine.” I could tell she was about to hang up. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Wait.” The word lurched itself out of my mouth.

  “What is it?”

  “Abby, I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever.” She probably thought I meant dialing the wrong number.

  “No.” I swallowed, working up the courage to say what I should have said on the night of the Valentine’s party. “I mean I’m sorry that I told Olive about you and Gizmo. I never thought she would repeat it. I never thought she would even remember it.”

  “Now you want to talk, Reyna? I just woke up.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Listen—”

  “My alarm clock hasn’t even gone off yet.”

  “You know Olive is dead, right?”

  There was a crackling silence.

  “Abby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you hear how?”

  When she finally answered, it came out like a croak. “Yeah.”

  “I need—” A sob rose up into my throat. I tried to swallow it down but it wouldn’t budge. “I need you guys—”

  “Well, we wanted to call you.” I heard a chair scrape against the floor on the other end of the line and wondered whether Abby was sitting down. “Or Leah and I did anyway as soon as we heard the news. But Madison said we should wait for you to apologize first, for the Gizmo thing.”

  “I’m apologizing now.” I slid to the floor and sat there with my back against the wall of mailboxes. The guilt I felt on the night of the party—the guilt I’d felt every day since then—welled up inside me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “I am too.”

  “I never should have said those things—”

  “Shut up. I forgive you.”

  I let out an animal sound that embarrassed me. Crying on the phone was awful.

  “I guess I should get out of bed now.”

  “Sorry.” My voice broke again. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “It’s OK.” She shifted her phone from one ear to the other so it made a swishing noise. “Why’d you call my house anyway? Why not my cell? I know it wasn’t a wrong number.”

  Suddenly I remembered the roll of tape in my hand and the stack of papers on the floor next to me. A sense of purpose filled me, and I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “I was calling to talk to your dad,” I said. “Did he leave yet for his morning run?”

  “My dad?”

  “I have a tip for Channel Four.”

  “That’s nice of you, Reyna, but I don’t think—”

  “Trust me,” I said. “It’s a good story.”

  She paused, the silence in the phone full of crackly static, and in that space there was so much uncertainty between us, I could hardly stand it. Then she said, “He probably hasn’t left yet. I’ll put him on,” and I knew we’d be OK.

  Friday, 11:15 a.m.

  The janitors tore down every letter in the school by second period, but it didn’t matter. All morning long, I saw people passing around copies like some kind of cheat sheet for a test everyone was worried about. Mr. Murphy, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found. I heard a rumor he was in the principal’s office, fighting for his job.

  For the second time that week, nobody got any work done as talk of Olive Barton hijacked the school. English teachers repurposed essay prompts about bigotry; government teachers lectured on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; math teachers worried about falling behind in their material. As for me, I had other things on my mind. The closer we got to fourth period, the more I started worrying about Grace, and whether she was going to show up for Olive’s memorial service. The final phase of our plan involved Tim getting up on stage to give a eulogy, where he would invite people to visit his blog and download a memorial tribute to Olive. Really, it was our audio file that was available for download, and I wanted Grace to see it—to know we were trying our best to make things right.

  The brilliant thing, of course, was that nobody suspected me of plastering the hallways with copies of the letter. Why would they? It condemned me as much as Mr. Murphy. Sure, people gave me weird looks. They stared at me as though they couldn’t figure out whether to pity me or hate me. But they didn’t suspect me.

  By the time fourth period rolled around, I felt oddly close to Grace. It seemed like we were the two invisible heroes of the day, working behind the scenes to bring justice to Olive Barton, to make her death mean something. Of course, as soon as I thought of myself as a hero, I felt sick to my stomach. I had no business feeling proud of anything. Maybe Grace did, but not me.

  As the freshman class filed into the auditorium during fourth period, I saw that the stage had been decorated with a few flowers, and a big picture of Olive from the yearbook sat framed on the grand piano that was used during talent shows. I hadn’t submitted my name to the guidance office to give a eulogy, and I wondered with a jolt of panic whether anybody besides Tim had, or whether Olive’s memorial service would be as much of a travesty as her obituary.

  To my relief, Jamie Pollock, the chubby cello player, was standing to the side of the stage. As a handful of teachers corralled people into their seats, Vice Principal Duncan stood at the podium and announced that Jamie would give the first eulogy.

  But when she took the microphone, I saw that she looked pale and nervous. “I didn’t really know Olive all that well,” was the first thing she said. “Not as well as I would have liked.” I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved by her honesty or ashamed by the fact that she was speaking instead of me. Naturally I didn’t want to speak in front of the entire school. I would have rather put a spider in my mouth. But I also knew it was the right thing to do. If I didn’t speak, I was a coward, plain and simple.

  And a coward I was. I sat frozen in my seat as Jamie finished her brief eulogy and invited Lizelle Bluth onto the stage to speak next, followed by Tim Ferguson, John Quincy, and Gretchen Palmer. These were the people who had submitted their names to the guidance office ahead of time: those who barely knew her and those who felt guiltiest about her death—minus me. I sunk low into my seat as Li
zelle took the podium and began reciting a terrible poem about the one time Olive drew her portrait in the seventh grade. I couldn’t stand it.

  Levi, who was seated at the front of the auditorium, kept glancing around to find my face in the crowd, as though he wanted to give me a hand squeeze. I appreciated it, but it didn’t do much to help. The more I thought about getting up and speaking, the more I dreaded his face in the audience, staring back at me.

  On the stage, Lizelle was finishing her awful singsong poem. “She was good at piano and English and Art. We’ll miss her so much, now that we’re apart…”

  Suddenly a scream pierced the room.

  I couldn’t tell at first where it had come from. Like everyone else, I whipped around in both directions, but nobody seemed to know where to look. Half the audience was glancing over at the teachers; the rest craned their necks around, lost. Finally, the girl sitting in front of me gestured at the stage and I saw Gretchen Palmer pointing toward the emergency exit, her face colorless. “Ghost!” she shrieked. “Ghost!” I followed her pointer finger toward a narrow shaft of daylight falling through the door, and that was when I saw a silhouette—skinny, medium height, shoulders stooped. As my eyes adjusted, I recognized the halo of stringy blond hair.

  With a loud clatter, Lizelle dropped the microphone onto the stage and utter pandemonium broke loose. The crowd erupted as people began screaming, pointing at Olive as though she were wielding a gun. Security guards clamored forward from every corner and surrounded her, fumbling with their walkie-talkies, shouting things I couldn’t hear.

  Mr. Duncan scrambled onto the stage and grabbed the microphone from where Lizelle had dropped it. “Settle down!” he shouted. “Ninth graders! Settle down!”

  I sat frozen and pinned to my seat as people all around me ignored him, jumping to their feet and shouting, blocking my view of Olive. I kept seeing little flashes of her in between all the bodies around me. Her face looked pale and sweaty, her hair a mess.

  “Obviously Ms. Barton is alive!” shouted Mr. Duncan over the roar. “We’ll be taking her into custody. Settle down!”

  Olive was struggling against the grip of a security guard, attempting to make her way toward the stage. “Let me speak,” she was saying. I could see her lips move.

  The tornado in the pit of my stomach gathered speed, swirling around like a perfect storm of confusion, anger, and relief. All I could think was, She lied to me? Olive never lied. There had to be a reason.

  “Let her speak,” I said in a hoarse whisper that no one around me noticed. So I turned to the girl next to me, someone I’d never met before. “They should let her speak,” I repeated, but she just looked at me like I was crazy. “Let her speak!” I said again, and this time she caught on. Both of us chanted the words at the same time, and then a few people around us picked it up. “Let her speak!” we shouted together in one booming voice until our whole row was doing it, and then our entire side of the auditorium. The security guard with a grip on Olive looked around at the teachers, waiting for direction.

  “Settle down!” shouted Mr. Duncan for the millionth time. “No one may speak!”

  Olive looked desperate. She was pushing hard against the security guard’s beefy arm, cursing at a teacher who was trying to calm her down.

  I stood up then and pushed my way out of my row, stepping on toes and knocking knees in the process. Dashing down the aisle toward the front of the auditorium, I felt a hundred eyes crawling over me like terrible, itching ants. But I kept running, bounding up the steps and onto the stage, headed for the podium. In the split second before I grabbed the microphone out of Mr. Duncan’s fist, I saw his eyes widen and the color drain from his face.

  “Let her speak,” I said breathlessly into the mic. I could hear my voice all around me, bouncing off the walls, echoing in my head. I needed to know what had happened.

  Olive was looking at me from halfway down the aisle, eyes wide and scared. “Let her speak,” I said again, louder. Words came into my head that I barely had time to consider. “Give her a second chance.”

  The crowd was uproarious. I couldn’t tell how many people were chanting for Olive to speak and how many were booing me, but it didn’t matter. Before anyone could make sense of the chaos, the auditorium doors burst open with a bang, and Mr. Murphy came bounding down the center aisle. “What the hell is going on here!” he shouted, his waxy face glistening with sweat. A hush fell over the auditorium. Only one sound could be heard, and it was Olive. She was crying.

  “Let her speak,” I said one last time into the microphone as Mr. Duncan grabbed it out of my fist. In the quiet room, my voice reverberated even louder than before. Tears were streaming down Olive’s face.

  With a nod from one of the teachers, the security guards released her and she burst forward, up the steps, onto the stage. “I’m sorry,” she cried, grabbing the mic from Mr. Duncan. But she wasn’t looking at him or even at the audience. She was looking at Mr. Murphy. “I’m sorry I lied about you killing me.”

  “Did you write this?” he demanded, holding up a photocopy of her letter.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you trying to get me fired?”

  She gave a small nod.

  “Then the charges against me are baseless!”

  “No.” She swiped at her cheek. “They’re not.”

  A vein bulged on the side of Mr. Murphy’s neck. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not dead,” said Olive lifting up her chin. “But you’re still a bigot.”

  The room erupted again.

  “Enough!” barked Mr. Duncan. He had a walkie-talkie pressed against his ear, and he was pointing madly with his other hand toward the door. “Mr. Mancuzzi’s office! Now!”

  Olive protested, but her words were drowned out as two security guards approached her from behind, linked their arms through hers, and ushered her away. “Someone call this girl’s parents,” I heard Mr. Duncan mutter as she disappeared through the door. “Get them on the phone right away.”

  I was next. I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder and push me forward so quickly I almost tripped. Before I could turn around to see who the hand belonged to, two more security guards materialized, grabbed me by the elbows, and led me through he door after Olive.

  Alive, was all I could think. She’s alive. The words sounded like a foreign language in my head. I couldn’t see Olive’s face, but I could see the back of her hair, snarled and matted like it hadn’t been washed in a week. She was limping slightly, the tongue on her right sneaker pulled up a few inches, as though her foot was too swollen to fit inside.

  Giddy excitement and dread washed over me in waves as we made our way down a hallway behind the auditorium. Olive glanced over at me a few times from behind the gnarled curtain of her hair, but I couldn’t read her expression. It wasn’t until we got all the way to the principal’s wing that I realized my fingernails were digging into my palms. The security guards led us into an office with wood paneled walls, where Mr. Mancuzzi was leaning back in a chair that had little tufts of foam coming out of it.

  The guard with his hand on my shoulder lingered by the door, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with me. “Have her wait outside,” Mr. Mancuzzi told him, not even looking at me. I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out and the hand on my shoulder guided me toward the door.

  That was when Olive turned around for the first time. Her eyes were red and swollen. “Please don’t leave,” she whispered. I froze in my step.

  “Outside. Wait your turn—” Mr. Mancuzzi started to say, but I found my voice before he could finish.

  “No,” I said. “I’m staying with Olive.” I still didn’t know whether to be angry or not, but one thing was certain: I had another chance. I wasn’t about to blow it.

  Mr. Mancuzzi did a double take as though noticing me for the first time. “All right,” he said. “Sit down, then, and don’t be a nuisance.”

  Behind him, through a window, I could see a News Channel Fou
r van pulling into the parking lot. There were two police cars parked up front, and one cop was standing in front of both of them, speaking into a walkie-talkie.

  “Olive Barton,” said Mr. Mancuzzi, standing up and pacing by his desk. “An hour ago, everyone in this school thought you were dead.”

  Olive didn’t say anything.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  She pressed her lips tightly together.

  “Did you plan this?”

  I could tell she wanted to answer him but something was stopping her. Whether it was fear or rage, I couldn’t tell.

  He kept at it, pacing around with one hand on his walkie-talkie as though it were a holster. “Care to explain why you crashed your own memorial service?”

  “Not my service,” she said at last, looking down at her lap. “Grace’s.”

  “Who?”

  “My friend.” I could see the muscles in her jaw moving up and down as she swallowed. “She was the one who killed herself on Friday.”

  I felt something drop in my stomach. Grace. Gone.

  “A Belltown student?” asked Mr. Mancuzzi.

  “No,” answered Olive. “I met her online.”

  Mr. Mancuzzi looked confused. “And you mean to tell me you switched places with her?”

  “It’s what she wanted.” Olive closed her eyes. “At least, I think it was.”

  Mr. Mancuzzi was growing impatient. “You may as well start explaining yourself unless you want me to call in the police.”

  Her eyes flew open. “Police?”

  “Faking your own death is against the law.” He crossed his beefy arms across his chest. “Were you with this other girl when she stepped in front of the train?”

  Olive nodded, her face pale. “We were lying on the tracks together, reading with flashlights. It’s what we did for fun.”

  “Fun?”

  Olive began picking at a hangnail. “She kept saying she wasn’t going to get up when the train came. I thought she was joking. She told me she didn’t have a fight left in her, and I said she was just being dramatic. She told me I had to fight for her because she couldn’t fight for herself anymore. Then she said this weird thing. She said, ‘I’m doing this for you, Olive. If they think you’re dead, they’ll listen to you.’ That was when we heard the train, and I realized she was serious. I told her I wasn’t getting up unless she did. She gave in. We both got up. I started running. But when I turned back, she was still there. The light was coming. I couldn’t—” Olive’s voice broke as she peeled back the skin along her hangnail. “There wasn’t enough time—”