The Vow

“Are you ignoring my good advice?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to steal your truck. Your dad would totally press charges.”

“Maybe, but you could use your time in juvie on an application essay. Just think of the sympathy points.”

He smiles. Finally. He has good teeth, straight and even like piano keys. Other things are crooked—his nose, the thin white scar that breaks his left eyebrow in half, the weird way he half shuts his right eye when he reads. But he’s got perfect teeth, and a nice smile when I can force it out of him.

“Why are you staring at me? Aren’t you late?”

If I can just get him through finals without the stomach acid climbing up and eating a hole in his brain, we’ll be good.

“Stop stalling,” he says. “Go.”

So I go, the stack of silver bangles on my wrist jingling with every step. Chris Dorsey brought them back from Mexico for me. That was last fall, two weeks before I broke up with him, which seemed like long enough not to have to return them. Mo thinks I’m heartless for wearing them, but I like the sound they make.

Besides, Mo doesn’t know why I broke up with Chris. I tell Mo almost everything, but he wouldn’t understand that. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be talked into doing something you don’t want to do. Mo never does anything he doesn’t want to do.

It took me a long time to be able to wear the bracelets. But I can do it now.

I look up. Mr. Twister has movie-set charm, a quaint yellow cottage-converted-to-custard-shop shaded by colossal white oaks. Ivy covers the entire west-facing wall, and there’s something shimmery and fairy-tale-like about the way light slices through the canopy of leaves. It makes me want to paint.

There are people on the lawn, on the steps, on the wide veranda that wraps around the cottage. I weave through them, smiling and saying hi to the ones who say hi first, trying to ignore the sudden sour taste in my mouth.

This is not a big deal, Annie.

Except it is. The sweat is starting to pool in the center of my bra. I can feel it dripping down my back too, rolling over my calves. The memory of humidity always fades over the winter, but then summer hits and I don’t know why I didn’t appreciate every dry day.

I force my feet up the steps and to the door. Almost there. I put a steadying hand on the brass knob and will my heart to slow down. Just an interview for a minimum-wage summer job.

Except not any job. Her job.

Without warning, the door swings open and I lunge back. A couple of seniors rush by, and in their wake, a blast of cool, sweet air rushes at me. It almost sucks me in. It’s butter and honey with a hint of vanilla, the smell of baking sugar cones, and I remember it. It’s what my sister smelled like.

A horn blares behind me, two long, nasal beeps—my horn—and I turn around to see Mo leaning over the driver’s seat. He’s motioning for me to come back.

I scramble back down the steps.

“Weren’t you just yelling at me to get in there?” I ask, pretending to be annoyed.

“I forgot to tell you don’t be nervous,” he says. “You clam up and get all shifty-eyed when you’re nervous. It’s weird. You need to be, you know, bubbly.”

I nod. “Bubbly.”

“And for the record, I still don’t think this is a good idea. At all.”

“Let the record reflect that Mo thinks this is a bad idea.”

“Right. So good luck. I should have said that before.”

“Thanks.” I pause, bite my lip, wait for the flock of dive-bombing birds in my stomach to settle. They don’t. Mo’s right. This is a really bad idea. The nerves are a premonition, the universe’s way of warning me that I have no business trying to slip into Lena’s life. It’s been empty for eight years.

“Okay, go,” he says abruptly.

I push away from the car with both hands and spin around. I can feel Mo’s eyes on my back, forcing me up the steps.

This moment, this is why I love Mo, why he’s my best friend and always will be. He’s only nice when I need him to be. He doesn’t treat me like a china doll teetering on the edge of a shelf, just waiting to be knocked over by a puff of air. He doesn’t think I’ll hit the ground and explode into a thousand pieces.

He’s the only one.

Chapter 2

Mo

I can’t be the only one. There have to be other people out there who see the Mr. Twister mascot for what he is: Hitler. A grinning, cartoon, twisty-cone version of the Fuhrer himself, advertising to the world that this place is secretly Nazi central. There is no other logical reason to put one of those little black smudge mustaches on a custard mascot.

Of course, I’ve got Annie in my head—Chill out, Mo. It’s obviously supposed to be Charlie Chaplin—so fine, where’s the cane? And the hat? Exactly. Hitler.

This truck is an oven. I am pot roast.

I’d go in, but I’m already throwing up a little in my mouth just thinking about the assault of peachy-ness behind those doors. Peach walls, peach aprons, peach countertops, peach chalk on the blackboard menu. And of course, Annie is in there smiling and faking brain-dead. I’m better off as pot roast, and besides, the Spanish Inquisition isn’t going to learn itself.

I turn back to the previous page, the one that I’ve already read and forgotten three times this hour, and start over. The picture of Ferdinand II of Aragon is freakishly distracting. It’s the way he’s glaring. I close my right eye and glare back at him and his unapologetic scowl. I bet nobody told him to quit being cranky.

Laughter erupts from the porch and I look up.

She’s going to hate working here. The clientele is sprawled all over the veranda and grass, mostly kids from school, plus a few of the Saint James snots and some vaguely familiar faces from Bardstown. It’s a typical mix for this side of E-town: some privileged, some middle-class, some trailer park, all white.

Everyone is pretending that finals are already over, even though a good chunk of them have more exams tomorrow. But why study when you could be celebrating the near-completion of another substandard academic year? And why not be patriotic at the same time? Some girl I recognize from basketball games in Taylorsville is wearing an American flag bikini top. And right in front of the truck, that douchebag Chase Dunkirk is licking custard off Tia Kent’s palm, while Maya is five feet away.

Maya Lawless. I mouth her name, imaging what it would feel like to say it to her and have her turn her head and smile with those full lips. Lucky for Chase, she’s too busy doing some kind of cheerleading routine to notice that he’s licking sugar off someone else. Go team.

This. This is why Annie working here is such a bad idea. She’s better than all of this. She sees through it, like I do, and she’s going to be miserable in one of those frilly aprons, listening to bubble-gum pop, counting change for morons all day.

And at some point she’s going to realize Lena isn’t in there.

I’m not an idiot. I know that’s why Annie wants this job, and I don’t like it. It seems dangerous, thinking her sister’s essence is waiting to be unearthed in a bucket of Mr. Twister’s world-famous Strawberry Storm, but I can’t stop her. Or maybe I could if I wanted to, but I don’t want to stop her. People are always stopping her.

If she didn’t want the job so badly, and in that quiet, intense way she has where every cell in her body leans toward an idea, I’d have already talked her out of it, but she’s like an iron shaving being pulled by a magnet on the other side of the screen.

“Chase?” Maya’s voice from clear across the lawn pulls me from my thoughts.