Free Promise Me Something by Sara Kocek Page A

on its wheels until it was almost all the way open; then it made a faint screech, and we froze.
    But there were no footsteps outside in the hallway—only the sound of the TV on the floor below us. Cautiously, Olive pulled out a tall, rectangular bottle of amber liquid and left the drawer wide open as she got to her feet. “It’s whiskey,” she said. “My mom’s favorite.”
    “You go first,” I told her.
    She climbed back onto the bed and twisted open the cap. “I hope you don’t mind my cooties.” Then she put it to her lips and took a swig.
    The expression on her face was not a good advertisement for the whiskey. She looked like she was swallowing lighter fluid. As soon as she managed to get it all the way down her throat, she opened her mouth and gasped for air. “Ugh,” she said. “That’s disgusting!” But as she passed the bottle to me, she swallowed a few times and added, “My throat feels kind of nice though.”
    I didn’t count to three or give myself any preparation. I just brought the bottle to my lips and took a small sip. It felt like liquid fire going down—and not in a good way—but Olive was right. Once swallowed, it left a pleasantly warm, tingling sensation in the throat. “Do you feel anything?” I asked her. “Are you tipsy yet?”
    She laughed. “One sip isn’t enough.”
    “Have another, then.” I held out the bottle and met her eye. “And I will too.”
    It wasn’t long before we were stretched out on her floor like beached whales. After three more sips of whiskey and two big gulps of vodka, I was more than just tipsy: I was tipped. Whenever I focused on one part of the room, it seemed fixed in place, but as soon as I moved my head, everything became unhinged and floated around like objects at sea.
    Olive wasn’t such a lightweight. Besides whiskey and vodka, she tried four sips of coconut rum, which she claimed was supposed to taste good with vanilla ice cream. Vanilla ice cream made me think of pigging out at Abby’s house when we were little, and without thinking, I sighed, “Don’t you wish we went to Ridgeway?”
    Suddenly Olive started groaning on the floor. I thought at first she was going to throw up from drinking too much, but then she moaned, “Why would I want to go to school with your friends? They hate me!”
    “That’s not true,” I said. My voice sounded far away, as though my head were packed with bubble wrap. “They think you’re nice.” It was a lie. Madison had told me a few days after our Halloween sleepover that Olive reminded her of the kind of person who would one day “go Columbine” and shoot up a school.
    She flopped over on the carpet and stared at me.
    “What?” I blinked. “Why are you looking at me?”
    “Promise me something,” said Olive.
    “What?” I sat up a little. Her cheek was pressed against the floor.
    “Promise me something, and I’ll promise the same to you.”
    “ What? ” I said again.
    “Never lie to me.”
    I crossed my arms. “I’m not lying!”
    “Suuuuure.” Olive reached again for the coconut rum, only, this time she didn’t sip from it; she put the bottle to her lips and chugged. There wasn’t much left in the first place, but what was left, she gulped down—probably an inch or two of liquid. And then, as she let the empty bottle roll off her fingertips onto the carpet, she began to cry.
    “Uh-oh.” I sat up on the floor. “What’s wrong?” She looked blurry just a few feet away from me, but rubbing my eyes only made them itch.
    “Sometimes I just feel like you don’t like me!” she burst out. “You spend all this time with me, but I get the feeling you secretly hate me.”
    I felt my mouth open. The edges of my lips felt crusty, but no words came out.
    “Are we friends?” She stared at me. “Because I’ve been nothing but a friend to you, and all you ever do is mope around wishing you went to Ridgeway.”
    “What about the time you threw a rock at my head?”
    “What?”