Every Last Promise by Kristin Halbrook Read Free Book Online Page B

to Jen and slowly unscrewed the cap to the glittery gold polish.
    I thought about the time I’d had a crush on Jay Brewster. I was probably ten or eleven and he was just starting to form muscles in his scrawny arms. He’d so far avoided the awkward phase it seemed every other boy our age was going through and looked poised to dodge it completely. But my infatuation had faded quickly. Even then, Jay Brewster knew he was something special, and his ego’s growth spurts matched his body’s.
    When Hailey first started going out with Jay last fall, we’d thought it was strange. Jay usually dated girls who worshipped him, but Hailey wasn’t the kind of girl to have patience for diva types. She was Bean’s older sister, and we all looked up to her as an example of independence and strong will, staying at the top of her class all throughout high school, getting into big-name schools, leading the field hockey team in goals. Over the past year, Jay had mellowed a little bit,though. Her influence seemed to be good. Until the weeks leading to their breakup.
    Once, back in February, I came down Jen’s stairs to overhear Jay telling Steven that he always got what he wanted. And Steven agreeing with him. Who could stop boys like them? They’d laughed. I’d brushed it off then. It was easy to talk big. Nothing to take seriously.
    Still, I’d felt compelled to grab the cookies I’d come down for and hightail it back upstairs, crossing my arms over my chest because I was wearing a fitted T-shirt and no bra underneath.
    In my living room now, Selena flung her head and arms around to the music. Her reaction to bralessness and boys was different than mine. She’d given me a flippant I don’t care earlier in the evening when I’d mentioned that my brother was home and so she might want to wear more than a sports bra and boy shorts, but I knew she cared very much because her eyes roved from the front door to the stairs to the kitchen as though waiting for him to come in and see how beautiful she was.
    He was almost a college guy, after all.
    I always liked watching Selena and Bean dance. They were so different. Selena looked like she should have been dancing on a stage at a club. But Bean moved like she heard a different song than the rest of us. Her movements were a littleoff-tempo, slower. In one moment, Bean reminded me of a little girl. But then I blinked and she swung her hip to the left and she looked so confident that she seemed impossibly far away, older, closer to womanhood than the rest of us. More like the woman Bean’s real name, Sabine, suggested. Even though she was the only one of us four who was still a virgin.
    I drew the polish brush along my thumbnail and thought again about our one year left to be together in this town. How I wanted to make it special. Sometimes, it felt easy to figure out who everyone else was in our group. Jen, our leader. Selena, the warrior. Bean, the peacekeeper. But me?
    Across the room, my most recent competition ribbon sat on the mantle above the fireplace. A huge, ruffled blue thing that I hadn’t yet taken to Caramel Star’s stall to put with the other ribbons and cups I’d collected over the years. Jen had taken first in dressage but hadn’t placed in the top three in jumping. I’d congratulated her, and she’d said, “We did all right, but I just can’t get off the ground like you can. You’re so much stronger than me. Better grounded in your saddle.”
    And maybe that was me. Strong and grounded. I knew, somehow, that after high school, I was going to be the one to keep us close. I was going to be the one to insist we come together, insist they come home regularly and reconnect with one another. Without that, I was afraid the four of us would drift apart.
    But we never would. I’d make sure of it.

FALL
    WHEN MY FIRST DAY back at school finally ends, I wait for the bus several feet away from the