The Vow

by Jessica Martinez

  I lie back down. If I wasn’t such a coward I’d be having a summer fling of my own. Why aren’t I at least trying with Maya? I’ve been given time. A chance. She might not flat-out reject me. She can’t possibly be happy with Chase, and what’s the worst thing that could happen? I mull the idea over as I glide closer to sleep, my thoughts becoming weirder and weirder until I’m not lying in bed. I’m with Maya, and we’re standing at the airport security line, and it doesn’t matter that I know I’m dreaming, because I’m holding her hand, trying to convince her to come back to Jordan with me, but I’m distracted because her entire face and body are hidden beneath a burqa, which even in my dream, is a tragedy, and then it’s all a dense, dreamless nothing.

  Until the world explodes.

  I sit up, gasping for breath, squirming under assaulting sunlight. The curtain. Why is it open? The explosion happens again. But it’s not an explosion; it’s a fist pounding on my brain. No, my desk.

  “Mo. Wake up.” Dad’s voice is incredibly loud, but otherwise the usual audio equivalent of gravy—heavy, humorless. He rips open the other curtain.

  “I’m awake,” I mutter, jamming my palms into my eye sockets.

  “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Uh, work?” I force my eyes open again, just long enough for sunshine to burn my retinas. In that second, his figure registers. He’s at the foot of my bed, already dressed in the usual Don’t screw with me, I’m smarter than you outfit he’s chosen as his life’s uniform: short-sleeved dress shirt, navy pants, and pocket protector. Never without the pocket protector.

  Arms folded and every muscle in his body pulled tauter than a guitar string, he’s bigger than the sum of his parts. He’s not a tank like Annie’s dad, and I’m two inches taller than him, but he’s got something inside him that trumps height and heft. Intensity, I guess. It’s scary, and kind of awesome.

  “It’s seven thirty,” he says.

  “I’m up.”

  “You’re lying in bed with your eyes closed.”

  I pull myself out and force myself to look through the streaming light, directly at him. He looks off. Yellowish bags have formed under his eyes, and the pocket protector is suspiciously crooked. And he’s not, I realize now, talking all that loudly. It just felt that way at first. “Sorry, what am I supposed to be doing?”

  “Helping me take the extra furniture in the guest room out to the shed before the real-estate agent gets here. Packed boxes have to go out too.”

  I rub my eyes.

  “For the showing.”

  “Right,” I say, like this isn’t the first I’ve heard of a showing. I didn’t even realize they had a real-estate agent, though I guess that makes sense. The only thing on my radar for the morning was sneaking off to get married. “How long will it take? I thought you were going into Louisville.”

  “I am, assuming you can make time in your busy schedule to help with the furniture. Or do you have something more important happening this morning you’d like to tell me about?”

  My head snaps up. The grogginess is gone, and I’m more awake than I’ve been in days. “No, sir.”

  He waits. He knows. Mom broke. She chickened out and told him, and now all hell’s about to break loose.

  “Get up and help me then.” He leaves without another word.

  I throw on shorts and a T-shirt, slightly encouraged. Maybe I’m not screwed after all. Except there was an emotional current beneath the words, and that’s not normal. He’s too logical to get emotional. Maybe he doesn’t know, but he’s obviously bugged.

  It only takes an hour to haul a couch, a desk, and fourteen boxes down the stairs and through the backyard, and we spend most of that time cramming them into the shed. When we’re done he gives a satisfied nod and lets me go with instructions to make my room spotless.

  Once it’s clean I call Annie. She picks up on the fourth ring.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Oh wait, I think I’m getting married this morning. But besides that, nothing.”

  “You sound oddly with-it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. You just sounded less with-it last night when I talked to you. You do remember us talking, right? And the part where you said you’d call me back, you remember that too?”

  “Oh, sorry. I fell asleep.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hey, what am I supposed to wear?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “What should I wear today?”

  “Why . . . I don’t understand. Why would I care what you’re wearing?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought—”

  “Wait,” I say. “You’ve never cared what I thought about your clothes before.”

  “Yeah, but that’s because I generally know what to wear, and you have no sense of style.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But to the courthouse, I mean.”

  “Are you asking me if you’re supposed to wear a white dress?” It comes out a little more incredulous, more mocking, than I intended. But seriously.

  “No, I just . . . maybe. I mean, is it supposed to look like we’re really getting married? I’ve never been to a courthouse wedding before.”

  “The people who work at the courthouse don’t give a crap what you’re wearing. You don’t have to convince them of anything. I’m wearing cargo shorts and that Cap’n Crunch T-shirt.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  I can tell she wants to say more, so I wait, but she doesn’t. Her weirdness is starting to freak me out, and I’m almost convinced the next words out of her mouth will be weepy apologies for not being able to do it, followed by guilty whimpering.

  “My car or your mom’s?” she asks calmly.

  And this is why I love her.

  “I don’t mind driving,” she continues, “but I’ll need to stop for gas.”

  I picture my mom as I last saw her: still in her pajamas, clutching her teacup, giving Dad the death glare as the two of us traipsed back and forth with boxes. “Yours. My mom’s a little keyed up this morning.”

  “But she’s still on board?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “I’ll swing by in a half hour.”

  I glance out the window and see my dad’s car backing out. “Perfect. Wait, is that enough time for you to squeeze into your Barbie Princess gown?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Bye.”

  The knock at my door comes almost immediately. I open it to find Mom, fully dressed and made-up, gripping her purse in one hand and her keys in the other. The death glare from earlier has been replaced with something scarier, something frantic. It might be glee.

  I step back so she can come in, but she stays in the hall.

  “Ready?” she asks.

  “Annie’s picking us up in a half hour.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Her eyes travel from my freshly made bed to the desk. “Your room looks good.”

  “Dad told me it had to be spotless for the showing.”

  She narrows her eyes and presses her fingertips to her lips like she can hide what she’s thinking if the words don’t come out. Like it’s not obvious. She’s on the cusp of a tirade against Dad, and I should want to hear it—I should want to go on my own crazy rant—but already this us-against-him doesn’t feel right. Dad and I have always been on the same team.

  She’s watching me. She knows what I’m thinking. “I’ll be downstairs,” she says finally, leaving me to wonder what the hell I’m doing to my family.

  * * *

  Our drive to Taylorsville is disconcertingly pleasant. Or it is for Mom and Annie. They chitchat about Annie’s mom’s garden, the humidity, Annie’s sundress, their favorite Mr. Twister flavors—like they’re friends (which they’re not), and like we’re doing lunch and not a secret teenage wedding. Like we aren’t lying to Dad and Annie’s parents and the whole world.

  The conversation is too mind-numbin
g, so I devote my attention to fiddling with the fancy backseat temperature controls instead. There’s only so much I can do with those, though, so I move on to messing with the windows, which are much more entertaining. I’m trying to get both right and left sides to stop exactly halfway at exactly the same time, the right coming from the top and the left coming from the bottom, when Annie tells me to knock it off and presses the child lock button.

  I spend the rest of the drive staring out the window. This does nothing for the anxiety vibrating from my bones outward, and by the time we roll into Taylorsville I’m about to explode. Maybe it’s stupid to be so nervous for something that isn’t even real, but the lies will be real. They already are. There’s a hint of a smile on Mom’s face even though Annie isn’t saying anything funny, and I see now I was wrong about her seeming happy. She seems satisfied. Like she’s gloating. Because of me.

  Taylorsville is an armpit—significantly smaller than E-town and smellier too, thanks to the slaughterhouse. It isn’t hard to find the courthouse.

  “Mom, do you mind if I just talk with Annie for a minute?” I ask as Annie pulls into a parking spot.

  “Not at all.” She turns and stares hard at me, her eyes saying unequivocally that I am not to screw this up by talking Annie out of it. Accidentally or on purpose. “I’ll be inside.”

  We watch her walk up the sidewalk and disappear into the orange brick building before either of us says a word.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  “I think so. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  The courthouse looks like it’s burning under the morning sun. The flame-orange shimmer of hot brick forces me to look away. “Why are you still going through with this?”

  She’s silent, and I contemplate punching myself in the face. If she backs out now I’m going to…I don’t even know what. Slash Chase Dunkirk’s tires. Set fire to the school. Kick a hole in every wall in my house on my way out.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she says, opens her door, and climbs out.

  “Seriously. Why?”

  “Because I can’t let bad things happen to you, Mo. Now quit being such a pantywaist and marry me.”

  She opens my door, and I look down in time to see her rolling her eyes. I’m so relieved. She isn’t cowering. She won’t break.

  “Pantywaist?” I ask. “What are you, seventy?”

  “Stop stalling.”

  “I feel like I might throw up,” I say as I get out.

  “Would this be a good time to tell you I’m not a virgin?”

  “Would this be a good time to tell you I’m in love with Maya?”

  “Finally!” she says, and grabs my arm, pulling me toward the building. “Only took you four years to admit it. So prewedding confessions are out of the way. Let’s do this.”

  “I really think I might be getting the stomach flu.”

  She ignores me. “This is weird, but right at this second, I feel . . .” She pauses, squinting at me through the blinding sun. “I feel like this is right. You know?”

  “No. Not at all. I’m about to piss my pants. I believe you remember the last time that happened, and they may or may not have black sweatpants in my size at the lost and found here.”

  We’re almost there. Mom’s holding the door open for us, and Annie still has her arm linked through mine. At the last second I feel her fingers tighten around my biceps, like she’s finally afraid of whatever we’re getting ourselves into. Or maybe she’s just excited. Maybe both.

  Chapter 15

  Annie

  Neither,” I say.

  The registrar gives me a pained look, probably the seventh since we walked in the door. “Sugar, are you sure? You don’t want your mother or your father here?”

  “We’re not close,” I say. “And I’m eighteen.”

  “So I see.” She pulls my birth certificate toward her and inspects the date again.

  I take advantage of the moment to turn to Mo and mutter, “Stop fidgeting.”

  It takes him a second to respond. His legs are bouncing up and down the same way they do before a math test, and he’s staring at the dust-ball-filled crack where the linoleum meets the wall like it might hold the secret to the meaning of life. “I’m not fidgeting,” he says finally, blinking a few too many times to look normal.

  “Here,” I say, passing him my phone. Games calm him down, but his phone is old school.

  I turn to where Mrs. Hussein is standing staring out the window. She won’t know. She’s already signed the consent forms for Mo and the witness line on our wedding certificate.

  I turn back to the registrar.

  She’s staring at me, concern wrinkling her face. “But are you sure?” she whispers. She reaches a freckled hand across the counter and puts it over mine. Her eyes trace a line back and forth between Mrs. Hussein and Mo. I glance at Mo. He’s engrossed in the game and looks far less queasy, but then out of the blue he growls, “Aaaccck,” shakes the phone, swears, then keeps on playing.

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “I’m sure.”

  I hold her gaze through the awkwardness. And there is awkwardness. Her eyes are so watery they’re one tear from spilling murky eye-fluid down her cheeks. Her hand is still pressing down on mine.

  “All right, then,” she says with a somber nod and leans back in her chair. She goes back to filling out her forms, while I ignore the whole-body sighs of her disapproval. I pull my hands into my lap and stare at them.

  “We’re pretty much done,” she says.

  “Really?” Mo puts my phone down and looks around, dazed, like he just walked out of a movie theater into bright sunlight. “That only took, like, twenty minutes.”

  “Do you have rings to exchange?” the registrar asks.

  Rings. It didn’t even occur to me. I look at Mo. He furrows his brow, and the scar that cuts his left one in half dips down crookedly.

  “Is it a problem if we don’t?” I ask.

  She blinks, but the milky eye-juice doesn’t clear. “Well, no.” Another soul-searching look is flung at me, and I look away. She has to think I’m pregnant or brainwashed or on drugs or maybe all of the above, and that if she can just look at me like that enough times she’ll be able to save me from these bad bad people.

  “I’m not much for jewelry, ma’am,” I try. But then I realize I’m wearing the silver bangles. “I mean rings. They bug me.”

  She clicks her mouse a few times. Maybe I’ve convinced her I’m an idiot, and that’s good enough to absolve her of whatever guilt she’s feeling for having performed this marriage. “Well. I guess by the power invested in me by the state of Kentucky, I now pronounce you man and wife. Sit tight while I go grab that last form out of the printer.”

  She wanders off, and I turn to Mo. The phone is balanced on his leg, and he’s staring at me. I guess her words brought him back out. Man and wife. For one second, all the smirk and sass that hold Mo together are gone. His eyes are wide with naked gratitude. Nobody else looks at me that way.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “Here we go,” the registrar says, taking her seat across from us again and handing me the paperwork. I give it to Mo so I don’t lose it. “You’re legally married,” she says in the same kind of voice you might say The eggplant is on sale, then adds, “Congratulations,” and rubs her nose. She doesn’t add Good riddance to Mo, or I’ll pray for you, child to me, but it’s there anyway. She gives me one last woeful glance and refuses to look at Mo at all.

  He doesn’t seem to notice. He’s staring at the stack of papers, gripping it in two tense hands like he’s afraid someone will rip it away if he relaxes a single cell. Together we follow Mrs. Hussein out the door.

  “The sun,” I say as we walk into the blinding light. Twenty minutes inside the courthouse, the morning has thickened from warm to blazing.

  “Brace for the sneeze,” Mo says.

  “I’m—” A wave of color pulses through me and I sneeze.

  “Bless you. I think it’s a g
ood omen.”

  “If I didn’t do it every time I walk outside, then yeah, I’d agree with you.”

  Mrs. Hussein gets in the car, but Mo and I hesitate outside our doors.

  “We did it,” Mo says softly. He’s not quite smiling, but staring at me with this dazed-but-hopeful look on his face. Whatever nervous tizzy he was in is over.

  “We did do it.” I grin and punch him in the shoulder as hard as I can.

  He doesn’t flinch. “Is that seriously the best you can do?”

  “That killed my hand.”

  “We’ve got to work on that, Annie. An eighty-year-old woman could punch harder.”

  “You insult your bride like that?”

  “Only when she physically abuses me. Hey, what was your deal last night, anyway?”

  Last night. Reed. My spine tingles at just the thought of his name, and I can suddenly almost feel his lips on mine and the pressure and warmth of his hands on my hips. “Nothing.”

  Mo snorts. “You’re such a liar. You were totally—”

  He’s interrupted by the window rolling down, followed by Mrs. Hussein’s voice. “Mo, I have a hair appointment, and Annie has to work, right?”

  Mo smirks at me and gets into the car.

  I breathe a sigh of relief and climb in too.

  I’m going to be late. I get home exactly sixteen minutes before my shift starts, which only gives me six minutes to get it together and get out the door. By get it together I mean calm the freak down, because I’m jittery and spastic and acting, as Mo would say, like a squirrel on crack.

  No time for food, but I’m suddenly so famished I feel like I might faint before I even get to work, so I grab a few random lunch-type items from the kitchen—a pear, a bag of walnuts, a sourdough roll—throw them all in a plastic bag, then run to the laundry room, strip out of my sundress, and dig through the warm clothes in the dryer for something to wear.

  A weird, sour excitement gnaws at my insides and makes me nervous and happy and almost sick. I’m afraid to really think about it. I pull a white T-shirt over my head, inhaling that artificial wildflower scent of fabric softener. No. I’m not thinking about how I feel, or about why I’m smiling like an idiot. I pull on a denim skirt. Because if I think about it, if I let my mind wade through the euphoria that feels like the color gold and smells like oranges and rainwater, I’ll have to admit to myself that I don’t know who the thrill is for. If it’s what I’m coming from or what I’m going to.