Promise Me by Monica Alexander

to school? Was she still in Indiana?  What was she studying? Why did I suddenly care?
    I had a feeling my past was catching up with me, even though I swore I’d never let it do that. For eight years, I’d done everything I could to keep it at bay.
    After I’d left Indiana and had started to recover from my life being ripped to shreds at the hands of my father, I’d forced myself to cut ties with everything that was related to that life. I just wanted to forget it all. And that meant I didn’t reach out to anyone, including Kate, figuring it was better that way.
    I’d wanted to move forward. I had a new life that had been gifted to me out of the worst circumstances, but it was still mine. I was going to embrace it. And as much as it killed me to push Kate out of my mind, I did it. She was my old life, and the last thing I wanted was to be reminded of how things had been – even if it was just for the length of a phone call.
    But she had been such a significant part of my life for so many years, practically my other half, that I wondered if my brain was trying to tell me that she was someone I’d never be able to truly let go of – no matter how much I wanted to. And I had a feeling that was because after all this time I didn’t know if she was even okay. I’d left her behind without a second glance, and that gnawing feeling in my gut that had been present for the past eight years likely wasn’t going to go away until I knew for sure.
    Kate’s life had been almost as bad as mine. She didn’t have to deal with abuse, but she had a father who wasn’t in the picture and a mother who liked drugs more than she liked her kids. Because of that, Kate was practically a mother to her younger sister when she was just a kid herself. And while I’d been living with my aunt and uncle, getting a second chance at an awesome life, she’d likely been in the same place she’d been when we were kids, struggling with the same things she’d fought her whole life.
    I suddenly felt like the biggest jerk. My allowance when I’d moved in with my aunt and uncle had been fifty dollars a week. A week! In the beginning, that was a crazy amount of money to me, and I’d socked away almost all of it for fear that I’d need it someday.
    But why hadn’t I thought to send it to Kate? She could have used it more than me. I didn’t want for anything once I moved in with Aunt Deena and Uncle Rob. They provided everything I needed and then some, and that money just stayed in an envelope under my mattress until I opened my first savings account when I was fourteen.
    Damn, why hadn’t I thought of doing something meaningful with it back then? I felt like such an asshole.
    “Jack, where did you go?” Alyssa asked, staring at me in concern.
    “I was thinking about this girl I used to know,” I blurted out, not thinking about how that would make her feel.
    Alyssa’s expression clouded over. “You were thinking about another girl?”
    “No!” I said quickly, but she eyed me skeptically. “I mean yes, but it’s not what you think. She was my best friend when I was a kid. Something you said made me think of her, and I was just wondering how she was doing.”
    Alyssa was looking at me in confusion. “Why?”
    “Because she had a hard life, and we lost touch when we were twelve. I don’t know what ever happened to her.”
    It wasn’t like I could explain everything to Alyssa in its entirety. She had no idea that I’d had a different life before moving in with my aunt and uncle. She had no idea my name had been Johnny Evans for twelve years of my life, and she had no idea that I’d ever lived anywhere but Texas. I’d never told her what had really happened to my mom or that my dad was in jail. She thought I lived with my aunt and uncle because I’d lost my parents in a car accident. She didn’t know the truth. Neither did my best friends, and I wanted to keep it that way.
    “I’m sure she’s fine,” Alyssa said, blowing off what