Every Last Promise

by Kristin Halbrook

  DEDICATION

  To heroes and friends.

  The real ones.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Homecoming

  Chapter Two: Spring

  Chapter Three: Fall

  Chapter Four: Spring

  Chapter Five: Fall

  Chapter Six: Spring

  Chapter Seven: Fall

  Chapter Eight: Spring

  Chapter Nine: Fall

  Chapter Ten: Spring

  Chapter Eleven: Fall

  Chapter Twelve: Spring

  Chapter Thirteen: Fall

  Chapter Fourteen: Spring

  Chapter Fifteen: Fall

  Chapter Sixteen: Spring

  Chapter Seventeen: Fall

  Chapter Eighteen: Spring

  Chapter Nineteen: Fall

  Chapter Twenty: Spring

  Chapter Twenty-One: Fall

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Spring

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Fall

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Spring

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Fall

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Spring

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Fall

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Spring

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fall

  Chapter Thirty: Spring

  Chapter Thirty-One: Fall

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Spring

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Fall

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Kristin Halbrook

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  HOMECOMING

  THIS IS A STORY about heroes.

  I am not one of them.

  SPRING

  WE CAME BACK FROM spring break in Florida—me and Jen and Selena and Bean—with tans. Dark for Selena, whose skin deepened at the first sign of sun, and just a kiss of golden cream for strawberry-haired Bean. It had been, for all of us, our first trip without our parents. Earned by virtue of being four good girls with good grades and histories of good behavior.

  In Florida, Jen and Selena flirted with boys whose names they hadn’t bothered asking. Bean and I kept an eye on their drinks to make sure no one spiked them. We all drank tequila straight from a bottle that Selena had convinced some college guy to buy for us. Lounged on sandy beaches for hours until the hangovers passed. And then came home to lounge on the banks of a river that hadn’t quite yet shed winter.

  It was Saturday night. Our flight had gotten in that morning, and after a long drive to our little town hidden away like a pretty passage in the middle of a mediocre book, we were feeling lazy. But we wouldn’t miss a river party.

  Around us, about half of the high school, plus a few younger kids and recent graduates, had congregated. Earlier, the sun had warmed our skin, but as it set behind the hills in the distance, cold rose from the surface of the water. Selena shivered.

  “I miss warmth,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle.

  “Then you shouldn’t have gone strapless.” Jen raised a beer bottle to her lips and took a sip. She didn’t shudder like I did.

  “I have a sweater in my car,” Bean said as the wind picked up. She bit into a grape, caught some of her own hair with it, and sputtered, picking the red strands from her teeth. “Bleh. Anyway, it’s my gray Paris one.”

  We all knew Bean would offer, just as we all knew Selena was going to shake her head no. Selena liked to show skin.

  “But yeah,” Jen said. “I would go back to Panama Beach in a hot second.”

  A river breeze blew her long hair over her shoulder. I squinted. The party had grown, spread to the south and north of the little bank we’d settled on. Music from cars behind us competed for dancers. There were coolers of beer and Smirnoff Ice and a keg set up in the back of Steven McInnis’s beater Ford hatchback. Nicole Wasserman and a few other cheerleaders waved at us as they tiptoed past on their way to their own sandbank, their sandals in one hand and their drinks in the other. A group of guys to our left erupted in laughter and high fives over I don’t know what. It made me smile. All of it.

  “Florida was nice, but this is home,” I said.

  “Oh God, don’t start,” Selena said.

  “Our little Kayla, champion of Winbrooke, Missouri,” Jen added, rolling her eyes.

  “Um, we all know that title belongs to your brother.” I laughed, nodding my chin at a group by the cars, where her twin, Jay, the star quarterback of our school’s football team, watched his girlfriend slam beer from a plastic cup.

  But I knew I was doing that crinkled-eye, sparkly-smile thing that Jen loved to make fun of whenever I started waxing poetic about this town. About long, humid summer days on the back of my horse, Caramel Star, and long, frigid winters when Conner’s Pond froze over and the ice glittered like a sugar cookie as we skated over it. It was a place where heroes were real and living under the same roof as you. Superstar siblings and parents who were trusted and counted on by an entire community for their good deeds.

  It was home.

  We looked at the boys doing cannonballs into the river from the swimming raft anchored down in the center. When the girls lounging on the edges of the wooden boards saw us watching, they waved in our direction. Jen ignored them, but I waved back. Enough to make up for Jen, putting on her best mean girl impression. Smoothing things over was something I did often enough for my best friend. I nudged her with my elbow. “Stop being bitchy.”

  Jen laughed and nuzzled her head into my shoulder. “Ugh. Eve wants me to say something nice about her to Jay. One, I am not her messenger. Nor am I his. Two, if he wanted Eve, he’d go get her. Girl can’t take a hint.”

  Beside me, Selena shifted her bare legs. Her dark hair was long enough to brush the tops of her thighs as she leaned forward. “Pretty ballsy, considering Jay’s dating Bean’s sister. Hell-o, like you’d do that to your friends.”

  I laughed. I shouldn’t have laughed. It wasn’t funny. It was such a little drama, but it was my drama. Familiar and fascinating and, in the long run, incidental. Like so much drama here.

  I dropped back, crushing a patch of spring grass under my shoulders, and turned my head to look up at my friends. I stuck out my lower lip.

  “Why so sad?” Jen said.

  “This will all end next year,” I said.

  “So then enjoy it while we’re all still here.” Jen lowered herself onto one elbow beside me, her eyes dancing teasingly and her dimple pressing into her cheek. “You have a cricket in your hair,” she said, gently plucking it out. The bug sat in her palm for a moment, then she raised her hand and it leaped to freedom.

  “Thanks,” I said. “What will I ever do without you?”

  “What is this ‘without you’ nonsense? We’re here now, aren’t we? For another whole year. And after that? We’ll probably apply to the same schools, be in all the same classes, ride in the same competitions together—”

  “Date the same guys,” Selena cut in. “Eat the same food, pee the same unicorns and rainbows—”

  I snorted as Jen yanked a handful of grass out of the ground and tossed it at Selena. Half of it fell over me. I sputtered at a piece at the corner of my mouth.

  “Oops, sorry,” Jen said, brushing away the grass that fell on my face. “Hey, remember that time we dared Jay to eat grass?”

  I remembered every prank we’d played on her brother. Every late-night brainstorming session under a blanket fort, with flashlights held under our chins to light up our faces eerily. We’d come up with some good stuff—duct-taping his toilet lid shut in the middle of the night, wrapping his car in foil before the first day of school last year—because when Jen and Jay got along,
they loved each other hard. But when they didn’t, they were bitter enemies. Caleb and I fought as often as siblings should, but it wasn’t intense like it was with the Brewster twins. There was always an unspoken score to settle between the two of them.

  “Oh my God,” I said, twirling between my thumb and forefinger a stem of grass Jen had missed. “That was ages ago. He was all, ‘Big deal,’ and ate this massive handful. Did we ever tell him that we’d just shoveled horse poop off it?”

  “I never did.”

  “He seriously earned those ten dollars.”

  “I’m going to puke,” Selena said, miming retching.

  “Will there ever again be someone we can mess with like that?” Jen said. “Kaaaylaaa. You’re never going to leave me, right?”

  I studied her pouting mouth and fluttering eyelashes. She played it off like she was joking, but Jen had been my best friend forever. The sister I would have chosen if given the chance. All our lives we’ve done practically everything together. I knew I wasn’t the only one whose chest ached at the thought of being separated for longer than a couple of weeks.

  “Of course not,” I said softly. “You’re the one who will be leaving me.”

  Jen made a tsk sound, but it was true. All I wanted was to stay here. All she wanted was to fly away forever. And I wasn’t going to change my mind before college applications were due, like Jen insisted I would.

  “Ladies,” Bean said in her soft voice. Sometimes it sounded like she was singing. “We still have a whole year. Stop being all droopy and sad. Too soon.”

  “Yeah. Knock it off.” Selena brushed off her tank top as a pack of guys watched. She had boobs to the moon and back. “Bean, what the hell is your sister letting Jay do to her?”

  We all followed Selena’s gaze to where Jay walked toward the river with his girlfriend, Hailey, flung over his shoulder. Her high-pitched scream rose above the other sounds. She pounded his back, but he laughed and tossed her into the river, diving in after her. When she broke the surface of the water again, she gasped for air and flung her hair away from her face. At first, she glared and raised a fist at her boyfriend, but when she looked around and realized how many people were watching her, she dropped her hand and forced a laugh.

  Bean wound a piece of hair around her finger and frowned. “It didn’t really look like she was letting him.”

  “They were probably just messing around,” I said uncertainly. I cared less about defending Jay than I did about putting Bean at ease.

  “Or maybe your brother is just a dick,” Selena told Jen.

  “Preaching to the choir.” Jen chugged the rest of her beer and threw the bottle back toward the parked cars.

  “Guys like that get away with anything.” Selena shrugged.

  I shot her a warning look. Not for Jen’s sake—she was so over her brother’s fandom in this town—but for Bean’s. We didn’t talk about it, but we all had heard that Jay and Hailey’s relationship was full of . . . ups and downs. And over the past couple of weeks it had gotten more intense. Hailey was leaving for college that summer, but Jay was a junior, like us. I knew Jay wanted them to stay together, but Bean had told me that Hailey wanted to break it off. Waiting for their breakup was like watching the slow march of a spark to a box of dynamite.

  “I’d let a guy like T. J. Brown get away with anything,” I said, nodding toward the so-hot wide receiver.

  “And what, exactly, would you let him get away with?” Selena narrowed her eyes and gave me a crooked, knowing smile.

  “Only gross things!” Jen yelled suddenly, blowing a raspberry into my skin. I doubled over, giggling.

  Selena stood and brushed her butt off. Guys watched her do that, too. “Get a room, you two.”

  “You know you’d come with us,” I said. “And Bean would hold the camera. Since she’s the artist.”

  Bean wrinkled her nose and tossed her strawberry hair over her shoulders with both hands. “I don’t even paint naked people.”

  “Yet. College will change that, I bet. But sorry, ladies, you’re not my type.” Selena tipped her head to the side and watched the people in the river. A guy who looked an awful lot like me, with dirty blond hair and a square chin, stood on the dive platform, making hooting sounds. He flung his T-shirt over his head, flexed his biceps, and kissed both of them. “Kayla’s brother, on the other hand . . .”

  I covered my eyes just as my brother leaped. The sound of his cannonball splash drowned out the laughter of the girls around him. “Ew, ew, ew, please don’t go there.”

  “Caleb is a wild man tonight,” Jen said.

  “No more so than usual.” I shrugged.

  Jen pulled a stem of partridge pea by its roots and tied the ends into a knot. She balanced the crown on my head. “Maybe. He seems pretty high-strung to me.”

  “‘High-strung’ is the definition of Caleb.” I adjusted the crown so it was slightly off-kilter. “He’s been going on and on with all these big thoughts about the end of high school and leaving home, lately. He almost didn’t come tonight because he had ‘more important things to do.’”

  “That doesn’t seem to be holding him back now.” Bean laughed. “But . . . I don’t know. I can kind of imagine how he feels, you know? All those new things waiting for him. A whole world to explore. It’s exciting. Hailey’s been the opposite. Doesn’t talk at all about leaving. I think because of Jay. Because they haven’t figured if they’re going to do long-distance or not and all that.”

  “They better figure it out before my party because I am not having any of their drama.” Jen grimaced and tied off three more flower crowns. She placed them on Bean and Selena, then finally on her own head. “The last day of school deserves nothing more than the most epic celebration.”

  “It will be epic,” I promised. “Girls in leis, guys in grass skirts, the limbo, drinks with those cute little paper umbrellas.”

  “I love those,” Bean said. “And the photo booth is almost done. I just need to add the sand glitter and finish cutting out the props.”

  “There’s going to be a line out the door for that booth, Beanie. It looks so amazing. I can’t wait. Everyone is going to be there and everyone will be talking about how awesome I am.”

  I laughed at Jen as she raised her chin in the air and flicked her wrist.

  “Except Eve,” Selena said. “She is officially uninvited.”

  “Aw, don’t be mean, Selena.” Bean gathered all four of us into a hug. A yellow flower petal drifted down her cheek. She blew it away with a sideways smile and pressed her forehead against Selena’s.

  A strange feeling came over me. Something out of place on a night like this. Something that reminded me of melancholy passages in books. I looked again toward my brother splashing the girls on the platform, swimming to the shore and getting out, shaking water from his hair. May was coming so fast. Yeah, we were all together for another year. But I could feel a change on the air. Tiny as a single loose thread now, but something I knew would grow, like the unraveling of a sweater. I wanted to fight it off for as long as I could.

  I loved my home. My life here. My friends. Cute boys in sports jerseys. Horse shows. Hikes at Point Fellows, where the view of Missouri’s rolling hills and valleys went on for miles and miles. River parties. Watching Selena flip her tiny cheerleader’s skirt at the crowds that packed our champion football team’s games. Knowing everyone. Being known.

  Eventually, that would all be over.

  I caught Bean’s eye across our little circle. She smiled again, this time gently, like she knew what I was thinking.

  “Don’t worry, Jen. Your party will be tiki-riffic,” Bean said. We groaned at her. “Hula-riously great? Definitely not aloha-rrible?”

  “Thank God you can paint, Bean,” I said as we settled back into our places in the circle. Bean stuck her tongue out at me as she got to her feet. I took a chunk of Jen’s long hair and began a thin plait. Selena retrieved another drink and walked to the water’s edge, still watching Cal
eb’s antics. Bean joined her, pushing her hip into Selena’s to get her attention and starting to dance. Selena put her hands in the air and moved to the beat from the stereo behind us. I moved my shoulders back and forth as I braided. Overhead, the stars winked at us.

  I could have stayed sad. Thought about the day when I wouldn’t have Jen’s long, confident stride beside me as I walked down the school halls. When there would be no one to gossip with me on long, rambling trail rides. When the four of us lounging like this on a riverbank on a lazy weekend night would happen more often in my memory than in reality.

  Like I did every time those thoughts wiggled to the surface, I stamped them back down. Because right now—this moment—was perfection.

  FALL

  THE BLUE HOMECOMING BANNER reaching across Main Street shimmers like the river on a stifling summer afternoon. Windless, golden warmth greets my return home. Despite the sweat beading under my arms, my sweatshirt is zipped all the way up, pulled high to hide the bottom half of my face. But even without it I would have trouble breathing.

  It’s been almost three months since I’ve been here. Home. And this late August looks the same as every August before it. Even the same face on the homecoming banner as last year. Jay Brewster has led Grant High to the state championships three years running.

  We drive under the banner and I feel like I’ve driven into it instead. Pressing against my throat until I let out a cough. Mom glances at me in the rearview mirror, and I turn my face away from the worried wrinkles around her eyes. As the sun dips below the horizon, my breath creates a cloud on the window, and I’m glad. Because now I can’t see the town I love or the people who don’t want me back.

  My suitcase lies open on the floor, my summer-in-the-city wardrobe spilling over the sides. Every time I start to unpack, I stop. I’m waiting for that sense of permanence, of This is mine, to wash over me. It hasn’t yet.

  “Kayla, did you get the mail?” my mom asks, drifting into the doorway as I reach under my bed, poking into the darkness that veils all manner of ancient treasures: raveling ponytail holders, too-small T-shirts, crumpled papers with bold numbers printed on them from riding competitions.