The Pledge (The Pledge 1)

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 counter-tops. 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 nicknam Bght Anicknam e 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 B A#8217;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.