The Pledge (16 page)

I listened to the sounds of my little sister’s sleeping breaths as I wondered what it would be like to
hear
those words rather than just to read them. To listen to them quietly whispered in the night.

In any language.

ix

I couldn’t bring myself to look at it again. Not once over the next few days did I even allow myself to peek at the note nestled inside the flap of my schoolbook.

I was too afraid. Too worried about the words I’d read, words heavy with meaning and laced with the promise of things not said.

I was terrified of him.

I tried to concentrate on my lesson, on the professor lecturing us from the front of the classroom. He was passionate, even after years of teaching the same subject, the history of our people, the Vendor class.

Our lessons were divided into blocks that included three hours in history—one hour of Vendor history and how we fit into our society; another about the history of our country; and yet another about world history, which was filled with stories of ancient aristocracies, democracies, and dictatorships that had risen and failed before the Time of Sovereigns.

Because we were vendors, there were also classes in trade,
accounting, and economics. Our one discretionary hour could be fulfilled by anything in the arts, sciences, or culinary skills. Still, these elective classes had a purpose that served a vendor’s skill set. Even art involved learning about textiles, potteries, and graphics that could be packaged and sold. All of it training, preparing us to take our place in society.

I took halfhearted notes on the lecture, pretending that what the teacher said was more interesting than the letter concealed inside the book beneath my desk.

When I shifted my foot, I inadvertently bumped my leather bag, spilling its contents onto the floor. I bent over to pick up the mess, ducking my head beneath my table, gathering pencils and sheets of paper that had slipped out. I took great care to arrange everything, placing it all neatly inside. I saw the folded note peeking up from behind the cover of the book in which I’d hidden it.

I brushed my fingertips across the lineny surface, my skin sparking with electricity, my fingers itching to pull it free.

I shouldn’t
, I told myself, even as I held my breath and watched myself withdrawing it from the book. I tried to tamp down the feeling of anticipation coursing through me at the same time I argued that it was a mistake to look at it again.

It didn’t deserve any more of my time.
He
didn’t deserve the space he
already
occupied in my mind.

I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed me there, tucked beneath my desk, reading a note that I’d already memorized.

No one paid me any attention.

I held the letter, vividly picturing the six words written inside
the folds. Six words that I already knew by heart. Six words that meant more to me than they should.

I unfolded the top third of the paper, then the bottom, purposely keeping my eyes unfocused for just a moment.

My heart stopped.

And then my eyesight cleared.

I pledge to keep you safe.

I spent the rest of the day trying to forget the note, trying to undo the damage I’d done in the moment that I’d allowed myself to read it just one more time. The words now felt inescapable, as if they’d somehow been etched into me and the letters were traced, ragged and raw, into my very flesh. The meaning behind them made my head ache.

He was asking too much from me with that simple pledge.

How could he vow such a thing? How could I take such a promise seriously? He barely knew me, and I certainly didn’t know him. Not well enough to trust him. Not with the kind of information he already knew, or at least suspected he knew, about me.

The kind that could get me killed.

I couldn’t allow myself to consider his words, so I decided to ignore them. Decided to forget about the note. To forget him.

I gave up trying to concentrate on my schoolwork and busied myself with other tasks instead. I went to the restaurant after school, even though it wasn’t my day to work. I stocked
the kitchen, and did dishes, and cleaned tables and countertops. I inventoried supplies that had already been inventoried, and I helped my mother chop vegetables until there was nothing left to occupy my restless hands.

Even then my mind refused to stop fixating on the letter he’d written.

Finally I decided I had only one choice.

I grabbed a candle and marched through the kitchen, out the back door, and into the alley behind the restaurant.

I found a spot in a darkened corner, away from the view of passersby on the street beyond, and I crouched down, cupping my hand around the candle’s wick as I lit it. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded note.

I thought about reading it again—just this one last time—but I didn’t need to. I would never need to look at it again; those words would haunt me forever, even in the absence of the paper they were written on.

I held the corner of the sheet above the candle, hesitating only slightly before letting the fire claim it. I watched as the flames consumed it, and I dropped it to the ground before they could reach all the way to my fingertips.

Ash flickered in front of me, first orange, and then black, and then pallid shades of gray, caught in the slow currents of air that carried it away.

I felt better once the paper had disintegrated, once it could no longer tempt me.

And that was how Brooklynn found me, in a darkening alley, squatting over a candle as I stared at its tiny flame, feeling free at last.

Brooklynn was a master at convincing me to do things I didn’t want to do; she always had been. When I was barely older than Angelina, Brook had talked me into cutting my own hair and pretending to be a boy. She thought it would be funny, a joke to play, tricking the other kids at school into thinking there was a new boy in our class.

Unfortunately, my parents didn’t get the joke.

And, even worse, I really did look like a boy with my newly shorn hair. That was the year the kids stopped calling me Charlaina and started calling me Charlie.

The nickname was fine. It suited me better anyway, and the hair eventually grew back. That was also the year I learned that I couldn’t always trust Brooklynn to put my interests ahead of her own.

It wasn’t because she was a bad friend . . . she wasn’t. It wasn’t even because she was vindictive or spiteful . . . she was neither. She was just . . . reckless.

Needless to say, I was forced, at times, to stand my ground with Brooklynn in order to avoid doing things that weren’t best for me.

Fortunately, this wasn’t one of those times, and in this instance, Brook had come along at precisely the
right
time. A time in which I most needed her particular brand of distraction. When I most needed to be pulled out of
my
world and into
hers
.

A night out with Brooklynn was exactly what I needed to take my mind off of . . . other things.

The rally at the park would be the perfect distraction.

We had to promise my father that we’d stay together—a promise I thought was meant more for Brooklynn’s benefit than for mine—and my mother that we’d be home in time for curfew. I’m not sure where else she thought we would be that late—the park would be emptied long before the sirens sounded. The last thing anyone wanted was to get caught breaking the law.

And, as always, I kept my Passport pressed safely against my chest.

I knew what to expect long before we arrived at the riverfront gathering. Back when the “rallies” had first begun, they’d been something else altogether, their name evoking an entirely different response. They’d originated as events intended to show support for those who’d been recently enlisted, a celebration of our newest troops as the threat of war from enemies, both inside and outside our borders, became imminent.

But as weeks became months, and months stretched into a year, the rallies had taken on an entirely different meaning. Now they were simply state-sanctioned parties. Events for the young to gather at the riverfront park under the pretense of patriotism, using the excuse to come together in the night, to dance and shout and sing and rejoice.

Only once had the rallies become dangerous, as a drunken crowd became restless and belligerent under the leadership of a man calling for dissent. Violence had broken out, spilling into the streets of the city.

Several of his activists had been killed by the very same military that the rallies had been designed to honor.

But that was many months ago, and now guards were set up to patrol the monthly gatherings, maintaining order before chaos had the opportunity to erupt. Before party became protest.

And tonight, as spring crested toward summer and the nighttime temperatures grew warmer, revelers were filled with cheer. The air along the banks of the river carried the promise of song and drink and dance. The sound of instruments, played together in practiced harmony, stretched well beyond the lush landscape of the park and into the streets beyond. It was hopeful and intoxicating.

Brooklynn gripped my hand, making sure I couldn’t change my mind and bolt. But she didn’t need to. I was happy to be here, grateful for her presence and for the distraction of the celebration.

We passed a group of men playing a variety of instruments beneath a dense cluster of leafy trees. They were singing, both loudly and poorly. I laughed at their efforts to draw our attention as their voices rose. Brooklynn giggled and encouraged them, waving and winking and swaying her hips. They shouted at us to come back, for
us
to sing for them, but Brooklynn pulled me along, ignoring their discordant pleas.

We stopped at a flowering bush, and while she was humming, her body moving to the sounds around us, Brooklynn plucked a flawless red flower and slid it into my hair, tucking it neatly behind my ear.

She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “You look beautiful,” she said, this time winking at me.

I grabbed both of her arms and narrowed my eyes, letting the hint of a smile curve my lips. “You’re drunk already, aren’t you?”

Her face broke, and she grinned. “Maybe just a little.”

She took my hand, and again we were moving. Torches lined the winding pathways as we got closer to the center of the park, to the center of the rally, where the festivities were well underway.

Several people greeted us, some we knew and some we didn’t. Brooklynn knew many more than I did, especially among the guards dressed in blue. She did her best to introduce me, but I knew eventually she would forget I was even with her and she would wander away from me. It was in her nature. I understood that.

Someone gave us drinks, and the cool liquid traced fiery fingers down my throat, relaxing my body and quieting my mind. Brooklynn probably didn’t need another, but she took it anyway.

Finding her way into the crowd beneath the canopy of blossoming trees, she went off to dance while I watched her go. She raised her hands high above her head and twirled in hypnotic circles, her eyes—and her actions—inviting others to move closer to her.