The Promise Girls

by Marie Bostwick

  A wasted week. A wasted month. Just a waste.

  Who could count the hours he’d spent in the years since he’d talked to Joanie in the green room at the talk show—or tried to talk to her. At the time he was a seventeen-year-old boy, which by definition made him an idiot. His cause wasn’t helped by the fact that he’d spent most of those seventeen years eschewing humans for the company of numbers—thinking, dreaming, and doing nothing but math.

  He’d been a full-blown, scientific calculator-carrying math nerd and totally fine with it. In fact, he’d been proud of it. He tacked pictures of famous mathematicians on the walls of his bedroom—Albert Einstein, Emmy Noether, John Nash—the way other kids put up posters of their favorite rocks bands. Most people didn’t understand how beautiful math can be. And how comforting.

  Equations couldn’t lie. They never pretended to be something they weren’t. And they didn’t change—ever. The solution today was the solution tomorrow. Equations were dependable that way. And the most complicated ones could be so elegant, so sublimely beautiful, that unlocking the secret to the solution will make you feel like the King of the Universe, a god among the lesser mortals.

  But by the same token, the solution that evades you, that refuses to be unlocked no matter how many hours, days, or months you spend fumbling for the answer, can make you feel like a rejected lover, a failure, a total loser. If you give yourself up to it, math can make you crazy. Literally crazy.

  He didn’t know that when he was seventeen. Back then, math was still his only love. But when he saw Joanie Promise standing next to a table in the green room, pouring apple juice for her little sister, Avery, a strange, wholly unfamiliar sensation came over him. It was impossible for him to say why, then or now. It may have been something about the way she behaved with her baby sister, so kind and patient, her eyes shining when she looked at her. But maybe not.

  She was pretty, but there are plenty of pretty girls in the world. And she was smart, naturally, or she wouldn’t have been there. But he doubted she was the smartest person he’d ever met, probably not even the smartest person in that room—yes, he’d been that arrogant back then—but still, he wanted to know her. He wanted to talk to her, this girl his own age, a thing he’d never done before.

  He’d strolled over to the table, stood next to her, poured a glass of juice, trying to give himself time to think of something that would impress her.

  “Do you know about the Euler line?”

  She turned toward him. “Excuse me?”

  “The Euler line.”

  He started to explain, trying to keep his tone deliberately casual, but before long he was talking faster and gesturing excitedly with his hands. He couldn’t help it.

  “Start with a triangle. Any triangle. Draw the smallest circle that contains that triangle and find the center. Then find the center of mass of the triangle—the point where the triangle, if cut out of a piece of paper, would balance on a pin. Draw the three altitudes of the triangle and find the point where they all meet. All three of the points you just found will always lie on a single straight line, the Euler line. Always. Isn’t that awesome!”

  By the time he finished, her eyes were wide, but with something closer to confusion than amazement. She opened her mouth to say something and—

  “Joanie! What are you doing over here?”

  Minerva pushed her way between them, becoming a human barrier. She plucked the juice cup from Joanie’s hand.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking this stuff. Too much sugar. It’ll flood your bloodstream and make you nervous, ruin your timing. Plus, it’s fattening. No wonder the waistband on your skirt is so tight. Come sit down with me and your sisters. You should be concentrating on your performance, not flirting with some boy.”

  He never got a chance to hear what she was going to say to him. But it probably would have been pretty similar to what she’d said today—something brief and dismissive and firm, making her lack of interest crystal clear.

  What an idiot. What a waste of time.

  Hal sat at the bar and asked the bartender for a plate of wings with Death Sauce and an Elysian Loser Pale Ale. It seemed like an apt order. Then he called Lynn.

  “How’s it going?” she asked. “Have you worn her down yet?”

  “Nope, she’s worn me down. I’m flying home tomorrow. Can you pick me up?”

  “Sure,” she replied slowly, her voice revealing a note of disbelief. “But . . . you’re really giving up? Abandoning the project?”

  “Afraid so.”

  The bartender put the wings down in front of him. Hal jutted his chin out a bit, signaling his thanks.

  “Wow. That’s a first. I can’t remember a time when—”

  “Yeah. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sorry,” Lynn countered. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You’re usually so good at getting around people’s objections.”

  “That’s because most people don’t usually have objections to letting somebody make a movie about them. They might want to be coaxed a little bit or courted, especially after they realize that you don’t get paid for being the subject of a documentary, but they cave in the end. It’s just a matter of figuring out what they want—attention, approval, fame, self-justification—and then convincing them that the movie will give it to them. But Joanie Promise is not most people.”

  “Meaning you weren’t able to figure out what she wanted?”

  “No. She was very clear about that, right from the first.”

  “So? What does she want?”

  “To protect her family and be left alone,” Hal said. “That’s it. I didn’t believe her at first, but today, when I was over at her house, I saw a look in her eyes. . . .” He shrugged, picked up his glass. “Anyway, she’s not the kind of lady who plays hard to get. She tells you what she thinks and that is that. And that is all. You can’t get around it. Well . . . I couldn’t anyway. I shouldn’t speak for all mankind.”

  “I’m sorry, Hal. I know how much you wanted this one.”

  “Yep.”

  He picked up one of the wings and tore the meat off the bones with his teeth. His eyes started to water. They weren’t kidding about the Death Sauce. It was lethal.

  “So, what do we do now?” Lynn asked. “You want me to pull out the research files on Jeremy Lao? Put in a call to his parents?”

  With his mouth practically on fire, Hal coughed, blinked a couple of times, and tried to speak. “Uh-uh,” he rasped. “I want to take—”

  “What? I can’t understand what you’re saying, Hal. You okay?”

  He took several big gulps, trying to put out the flames on his tongue.

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice still raspy but audible. “Hot sauce.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Let’s hold off on the Lao kid for a little while. I’m going to go to the beach for a few days, work on my tan, and lick my wounds.”

  “Okay. But just for a few days, right? We need to pull something together pretty soon. I was going over the books last week . . .”

  “How bad are they?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Probably not. Listen, I’ll be back soon. I just need some time to recalibrate my brain. You’re right. We should probably start working on the Lao kid project. It’ll be easy to find backing for it.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely,” Hal assured her. “Because it’s almost exactly like the last two projects we did—both of which were profitable. We’ll contact the kid, pull together a pitch, take a few meetings. People will be falling all over themselves to fund it. You know why? Because it’s been done before and there’s no real risk involved. Hollywood can’t resist that combination. Which is exactly why I couldn’t care less about it,” he said morosely, and tossed back another swig of Loser ale. “But . . . we’ve got bills to pay, right?”

  “So, I’ll pick you up tomorrow. Twelve thirty-five?”

  “See you then
.”

  Hal ended the call and waved to the bartender.

  “Can I get another Loser down here?” he asked. And then he laughed.

  Chapter 12

  Meg was asleep when Avery returned from lunch in the hospital cafeteria,

  Moving quietly, Avery picked up a pad of drawing paper she’d left on the nightstand and sat down near the window. She’d slipped the pad and a box of watercolor brush tip markers in her bag that morning, thinking it would be a good way to pass the time, and a good distraction from her worries.

  She was worried about Meg, of course, and frustrated that the doctors hadn’t been able to come up with a means to restore her sister’s lost memories. Also, she was increasingly concerned about the dwindling stash of cash in the purple starfish.

  Plus, she was confused about this . . . whatever-it-was she had going with Owen Lassiter. Friendship? Relationship? Test-drive? Mission of mercy? It was hard to tell.

  Owen dropped by Meg’s room every day to say hello. He spent as much time talking to her sister as to her, so it was hard to know which of them he was coming to see, her or Meg. Probably the latter. But Owen was a nice guy. She could tell by the way he talked about his patients, especially Lilly Margolis, the little girl who had been paralyzed in the car accident. He really worried about her.

  Avery flipped through the pages on her drawing pad, assessing her work. She had always doodled a bit and thought of herself as artistic, but not really an artist. She loved perusing the crafty mommy blogs. Recently she had begun watching online tutorials on using brush markers to make greeting cards and so, after an orderly wheeled Meg off to one of the labs, Avery broke out her art supplies and began reproducing the flowers, vines, honeybees, and heart motifs she’d learned online.

  She was definitely improving. The hydrangea had turned out especially well. Thinking it might be good enough to mount and frame as a Christmas present for Joanie, Avery carefully tore it from the pad. But instead of finding a blank piece of paper underneath the hydrangea, she discovered something finer than anything she could ever dream of drawing.

  It was a picture of a mermaid swimming through a magical underwater landscape with banks of pink and orange corals, schools of tiny silver and yellow fish, and a huge olive- and sage-colored sea turtle who looked very old and wise.

  It was more a painting than a drawing, with colors blending one into another, creating subtle shading that added depth and life to the scene. Each animal and element was skillfully drawn, but the thing that most caught Avery’s attention was the sense of movement within the entire scene.

  The silvery yellow fish darted and flashed through the water, the sea turtle lumbered along at his own pace, and the mermaid undulated sensuously among them all, coppery tresses floating above and around her head.

  Avery moved her head slowly from side to side, amazed by what she saw. “How did you do this?” she whispered, her voice hushed with awe.

  “Q-tips.”

  Avery jumped.

  “Sorry,” Meg said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Avery took in a quick breath. “It’s okay. Did you say Q-tips?”

  “Uh-huh. I drew the outlines with the markers and then took a wet Q-tip to move the color around the paper and blend everything in. A paintbrush would have been better.” She yawned. “But I think it turned out all right.”

  “More than all right. Meg, this is amazing.”

  “I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed your markers. There was some scheduling mix-up in the lab so they brought me back to the room early. I was thinking about your story, the one you told me yesterday, about the sea turtle and the mermaid. I decided to draw it.”

  “It’s beautiful, Meg.”

  “I drew it for you.”

  “Really? Thanks.”

  Meg yawned again and shifted her body downward in the hospital bed so her head was resting against the pillow.

  “Avery, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Am I an artist? I mean, was I before I woke up?”

  Avery paused for a moment, not sure how to answer.

  She’d been so young when it all happened, she wasn’t quite sure where the line lay between what she knew and what she’d been told. To Avery, the facts surrounding Meg’s short-lived career as a painter were, like so much of her past, a story she’d been told, one that began the way all truly good stories did.

  Once upon a time, a few months before the publication of Minerva’s book, Meg’s canvases had been photographed, appraised, and insured for thousands of dollars. After the publisher pulled her book from the shelves, the paintings were sold to pay the bills, earning only fractions of those appraised figures. So, were they ever worth as much as the appraiser claimed? Or was that all part of the hype? If Joanie had played the Liebestraum perfectly that day, or if Minerva had been able to restrain herself, might those pictures have attained higher values? What would Meg’s paintings have been worth had they been judged simply as the work of a painter, not a prodigy?

  It was impossible to say. The pictures of those paintings, prints in a book that was no longer in print, were the only remaining evidence of her sister’s talent.

  Should she tell Meg that?

  “That’s right,” Avery said at last. “You are an artist, a great painter.”

  “Yes. Yes, I thought so,” Meg said in a drowsy voice, then closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  * * *

  When Owen dropped by for his daily visit, Avery tiptoed into the hallway and showed him Meg’s picture.

  “This is really good. She painted the whole thing while you were at lunch?”

  Avery nodded. “With brush markers and a wet Q-tip,” she said.

  “Wow. So she’s an artist?”

  “Was. She packed up her paintbrushes a few years ago.”

  “Huh. Maybe it’s like riding a bicycle,” he said, lowering his head to examine the picture more thoroughly. “One of those things you never really forget.”

  “But for Meg, it seems like forgetting is the thing that helped her remember. It’s kind of weird, don’t you think? Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “No, you should probably show this to her doctor.” He changed the subject, clearly not as fascinated by Meg’s painting as Avery was. “Hey, listen, I just came up here on my break and—”

  “Oh, right!” she said, quickly pulling the drawing back. “I didn’t mean to keep you. Sorry.”

  “You aren’t keeping me. I wanted to drop by to see if you had time to go with me and grab a snack. I mean, if you’re hungry. You said you already had lunch.”

  “No, no! That’d be great!” Hearing the sound of her own transparent enthusiasm, she felt her cheeks turn pink. “I mean . . . sounds good. Let me just peek in to make sure Meg is still asleep and grab my bag.”

  “You won’t need it. My treat.”

  “Yeah?”

  He grinned and pushed a hank of hair from his eyes.

  “Well . . . sort of.”

  * * *

  The pediatric department was having an un-birthday party, to honor all of the young patients who weren’t having birthdays that day, which turned out to be all of them. Volunteers from a children’s theater company attended, dressed as Alice, the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, and other characters from the Wonderland books.

  Keeping in character the whole time, the actors circulated through the playroom among the pint-sized patients, some in wheelchairs or on crutches, others wearing paper masks to ward off germs, and offered them slices of un-birthday cake and plastic teacups filled with lemonade. Most of the kids were laughing and interacting with the performers, but one little girl in a wheelchair, with sienna-colored skin and dark brown eyes, sat off by herself in a far corner of the room. When the White Rabbit hopped over and pulled an oversized watch from the pocket of his red-checkered waistcoat, then asked in a lisping voice if she knew the time because he was sure his watch was running slow, or fast, or per
haps not at all, she turned her face to the wall and wouldn’t speak to him.

  The rabbit pulled something else from another pocket, a miniature plush rabbit, about six inches long, and left it in her lap, wishing her a happy un-birthday before hopping away. The toy fell onto the floor. Avery walked to the corner to retrieve it, crouching down beside the wheelchair.

  “This is a nice bunny,” she said. “He’s got really soft fur. Do you want to hold on to him?”

  The little girl said nothing, her face still toward the wall.

  “I can give him to one of the other kids, I guess,” Avery said with a shrug. “But it might hurt his feelings. He might think you don’t like him.”

  Without moving her head, the child moved her arm to her lap and opened her hand. Avery laid the rabbit in her palm. Small fingers closed around one of the toy’s plush arms and then pulled the bunny closer to her body. She turned her head, enormous brown eyes taking in Avery’s hazel ones, looking at her unsmilingly for a moment before turning away once again.

  Avery crossed the room to stand next to Owen once again.

  “That’s Lilly?” she whispered. “The one you told me about?”

  He nodded. “She barely says a word to anybody, not even the other kids.”

  He took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “This isn’t always an easy job. Sometimes you see stuff, really hard stuff, and it makes you wonder about . . . well, a lot of things. How life can be so unfair to little kids who never did anything to hurt anybody? After a while, though, you learn to shake it off and box it up, do what you need to do. But this one . . . There’s just something about her. Even when I’m at home, I can’t keep myself from thinking about her.”

  Avery looked toward Lilly with her useless legs and sweet face, and two huge brown eyes that seemed to hold all the sadness in the entire sad world.