Page 1 of Promise Me Nothing
CHAPTER ONE
Hannah
It felt like it had to be a mistake this morning when I saw the email in my inbox.
Or maybemistakeisn’t the right word.
I tap my pen against my half-finished math homework, trying to come up with the word I’m actually trying to…
Warning.
That’s the word I’m looking for.
It feels like a warning, the email that sits in my inbox.
It taunts me even now as I choose to ignore it. Try not to think about it. Consider deleting it so I don’t have to deal with the whole mess that’s surely headed my way once I decide to finally face whatever information it contains.
IfI decide to face it.
There’s a big part of me that wants to delete it. Like one of those Bed, Bath and Beyond emails letting you know you have a twenty percent off coupon for one item as long as you use it this week.
Just chuck it in the trash. You don’t need it.
I scrub my hands over my eyes, feeling like my thoughtsaren’t making sense.
There’s a niggling voice, a little thing in the back of my mind that’s telling me this message is…notas disposable as a discount coupon email. Even now, ten hours after I received the ping announcing its presence in my inbox, it feels likefor some reason…this is just, something else entirely.
Something bigger.
Something life-changing.
And being someone who aggressively dislikes change, I saw the email and did what felt right.
Powered down my phone, closed the screen on my rented laptop, and pretended it didn’t exist.
The easiest thing to do when you’re faced with something difficult is to ignore it. Obviously that’s also the stupidest thing to do as well. But easy and stupid tend to go hand-in-hand.
Instead of reading something that I knew could very well change my life in an instant, I tried to distract myself with othermore importantthings that needed to be accomplished today.
Like this homework that still sits incomplete in my lap, my pen tap, tap, tapping against it like that will somehow clear my mind and allow me to focus on polynomial functions. Whatever the hell those are.
I stare blankly at it for a moment longer before finally accepting defeat.
Setting my homework to the side, I stretch my long, lean frame diagonally across my full-size bed, focusing my eyes on the cracks in the ceiling. The little bit of water damage in the corner from where the leak upstairs happened last month. The dusty ceiling fan that stopped working last year.
Sometimes I wonder what else life could possibly have in store for me. Whatotherland mines and trip wires are stacked along the path ahead? Will my life evernotfeel like I’m rushing head first into a war zone with every step I take?
I suck in a deep breath, hold it, then let it out. Long. Slow. Trying to release the pent up anger and frustration and disappointment. Because sitting in irritation never solved anyone’s problems.
Rolling onto my side, I glance at the alarm clock sitting next to my bed. It’s two o’clock on a Friday. That means Sienna is probably sitting uncomfortably on a bar stool at her sunglass kiosk job at the mall.
I briefly consider heading her way. I might not have any money to spend, but I have a monthly bus pass that can get me there, and talking to Sienna is better than sitting around my hot ass apartment.
But when I do the math in my head, I know there isn’t enough time to get there and back before I need to pick up my roommate Melanie’s daughter from school a little after three o’clock. So I stay laying on my back, just staring at the ceiling, trying to force myself to complete my homework.
I hate going to school, and all of the tedious busywork that comes along with it.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I wouldn’t be getting the traditional college experience. The one you see in the movies filled with coffee shops and doing homework at the library, Friday night frat parties and Saturday morning walks of shame.
