A Promise Is A Promise

[5] Kayla

I could feel my thoughts spiraling away from comprehensive and drifting to an area of my mind that left them wild and uncontrollable. There had been some deep, dark thing on New Year's that was rising higher in my body—something that choked me up and made it increasingly difficult to say much when I spoke to Claire.

After I found out that she'd been invited and had gone to Frankie's house as more than a friend, I felt an awful discomfort when I was in the same room with them. It was like I knew something I wasn't supposed to and I didn't like the pressure of keeping that secret, though I knew I could do it. I'd always been good at that and I wouldn't have a problem being good at that now. It just seemed like I was the one thing standing in the way of the entire world finding out. She hadn't said a word about telling anyone. The last I knew, she wasn't even sure what she would tell people if she decided to be honest with them. She had no idea how far these feelings went or what they exactly meant. I was left to hope that whatever conclusion she came to wouldn't deal any damage to Frankie.

Even though I knew the basis of what was going on, I didn't know the details, and if I was being honest, I really didn't want to know them. The whole situation was just like that first night after the game, except worse. This time, a bed was likely involved and a bed was far more comfortable than a car. If the two of them spent their night in a way that wasn't exactly family-friendly, I wanted to be kept entirely in the dark. Thinking about my best friend doing anything with anyone made my stomach twist tighter and tighter until I nearly felt sick. Unfortunately, it wasn't really that easy to shake the thought by myself, but other people were always finding ways to unknowingly interrupt my dwelling.

"Kayla, let's go, dinner is getting cold," my mom urged, drawing me out of my own head and a blush to my cheeks. If she knew what I'd been thinking about, she'd force me to spend so much time at church that I'd practically move there.

"Sorry." I took her and my dad's hands so we could pray. "Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord. Amen," I recited with them and my brother. The words were seared so clearly into my brain that I didn't even need to put effort into remembering them.

Derek instantly reached for a pair of tongs to grab a pork chop, not noticing how spaced out I was. Mom had dropped it, too, and asked about our days like she always did. "School was terrible," my brother started first with a complaint. "I'm going to have four tests this week and only one of them is going to have multiple choice questions. One of them is in English, so it's going to be almost all write-outs. Miss Pollard said she was putting some fill-in-the-blank questions on the one we have in chemistry, so I guess that's something, but the rest of it's going to be over stoichiometry stuff, which is hard. Our geometry tests never have multiple choice and history is the one that will have some, but there probably won't be that many."

"It sounds like you'll have something to keep you busy after dinner, then," Dad said. "Maybe if you try hard enough, you can convince your sister to help you with the dishes so you can get to work."

"No," I protested. "That's not fair. He always does this, but whenever I actually have a reason, he comes up with whatever excuse to get out of helping me. I'm not doing his chores when he's perfectly capable of doing them himself." He really did always try to come up with an excuse and it drove me up a wall. Washing four plates and a couple of pots or pans wasn't difficult.

"Kayla, come on. Three of them are tomorrow, I really have to study as much as I can. It won't even take that long and—"

"Good. That's even more of a reason for you to be the only one to do it. If you were really so worried about not having enough time, you should've started studying when you found out you were going to have a bunch of tests instead of waiting until the night before. It's your own fault you didn't manage your time better."