Football captains don't fidget, Zack thought. They don't chew on their lips, and they sure as shit don't have to hold back tears as they fiddle with a promise ring in the pocket of a new letterman jacket. It was 18-carat yellow gold woven into Celtic knots with a heart in front. But what do you do when the girl who was supposed to wear it gets murdered? Could you ever give it to someone else? Do you just take it back to the store?
Zack pinched hard on the ring as the taste of blood subsided. He knew in his pounding heart that the ring was his last tangible link to Holly Holbrook. Every guy in school dreams of dating the head cheerleader, the homecoming queen, the pretty petite blonde class president. But Zack fucking earned it. Every 275-pound bench press, every 4.6-second 40, every bleary-eyed hour in the film room added up to make Zack the exceptional individual Holly deserved. Her soulmate.
And he knew it was true because the things Holly did to him in the back of the brand-new Mustang GT his parents got him for his 18th birthday were like bootlegging for a game-winning touchdown, only better.
It's why he knew in his aching heart he would see her again. She would appear to him and tell him who sold her the bag of marijuana and who stole her nameplate necklace. Then he could put all the clues together and find the killer before the police. And then...
Well, he could figure that out later. For now, Zack Lassetter didn't have time to fantasize about what he would do when he met the five-foot-eight male from the police description. The guy her mother saw lurking in the front lawn before she realized Holly had been strangled to death with the honor cords from her graduation gown.
Zack had work to do, so why was he sitting in the chilly gymnasium, waiting to meet the sender of some cryptic text message?
Because, he thought, maybe the gym was a good place to see a ghost. After all, it was the spot where he and Holly first kissed during junior homecoming. It was the very last slow dance of the night.
Zack squeezed the promise ring as hard as he could, but it would not bend.
Suddenly, Zack heard footsteps from across the gym. A tiny athletic shoe stepped into the blue light from the window above, followed by a leg and a cheerleader's skirt.
Holly? No, Zack thought. You can't hear ghost footsteps.
Fully bathed in the light, Zack could see the girl was wearing a military jacket over her cheerleader uniform. She had straight brown hair and glasses.
She dropped the coat to the floor. "Thanks for meeting me, Zack."
"You're not a cheerleader," he said.
"I could be. Don't I look good?"
"You're wasting my time, whoever you are."
The girl let out a sob. "It's me, Zack. Mildred Merck."
He stared at the pathetic stranger. If she wasn't Holly's ghost, she didn’t matter.
"I ..." she sobbed again, "I interviewed you for the paper after you won prom king."
"Well you can interview me after I find Holly's killer. Maybe I'll have a press conference."
"I'm not here for an interview, Zack."
"Then what the hell do you want?"
"I want to dance with you. Like at prom." She looked back at the jacket she had left lying in the pool of light. "I brought my iPod."
"That's stupid, OK?"
"Then why did you come?"
"I thought the text might have a clue about the murder." Zack clamped on the ring so hard that he imagined the point of the heart breaking the skin on the inside of his knuckle. He could almost feel the warm, sticky blood trickling down his finger. "And I thought I might..."
"Might what, Zack?"
"It's stupid."
"It's not stupid. None of this is stupid."
Would this girl understand? Zack tried to remember the prom king interview. Had those stick-out ears really listened to him? What questions had rolled off those mousey teeth? What did it even feel like to be a winner? Zack could hardly remember, but this girl had written it all down somewhere.
"I need to see her ghost," Zack said.
"Maybe you don't need to be alone. Strange things happen when you dance in the dark, Zack. Holly is gone, but maybe..." she looked at her jacket again. She probably wore it every day. "Maybe she can talk through me."
"This is the stupidest thing I ever heard. I'm going home."
The skinny girl walked back to her crumpled jacket. She bent at the knees, picked it up and zipped it all the way to the top. When she turned around, the only part of her face Zack could see was glasses glinting in the blue light.
The voice came out of nowhere. "Millie, what are you doing?" It was a different kid, just as skinny, in skinny jeans and a worn-out blazer. He had glasses, too — thick black ones.
Zack let go of the ring and stood up. He recognized this guy from a different interview, the one about his decision to play for State in the fall. Zack told this guy — Jay Jesperson was his name — about how playing for State was his dream, but the hardest part would be living eight hours away from Holly Holbrook.
Zack threw his arms up. "We're playing dress-up, Jay! You're just in time for the dance."
"You need to get out of here, Laser," Jay said.
Just then, Mildred Merck screamed. Her iPod fell to the gym floor as she pulled a gun from her jacket pocket and pointed it at Zack. The gun looked familiar.
"You really should lock your car when you've got your dad's gun in the glove compartment, Zack," she said, shaking.
"Hey Laser, um," Jay sputtered, "Millie killed Holly."
Impossible. The police had said the suspect was a man, probably a drug dealer. Five-foot-eight and thin, about the size of Jay Jesperson.
Zack took one step toward the shaking girl, then another. She sobbed louder and louder as he got closer, but Zack Lassetter kept his pace until the barrel of his father's gun poked him in the chest.
"Back up," the girl almost whispered.
Zack put one hand on the gun, the other on Millie's wrist and moved the barrel toward the ceiling. With a little twist, the gun came loose in his hand. Millie clawed to get it back, so Zack threw a knee into her stomach. She crumpled to the floor.
"Holy shit," Jay said. "How did you know she wasn't going to shoot you?"
"Jay," Zack asked, slowly raising the gun toward the writer, "you sell weed, don’t you?"
"Jesus, man. You've been driving around town drunk, picking fights with your friends. It's all anybody talks about, and they should be talking about Holly."
"You were outside her house the night she was killed."
"We just got high together and fooled around some. It started when I was interviewing her for the story about you. I'm sorry, man. When she ended up dead, I figured it was you. She told me how you freaked out when she wouldn't wear your ring."
"You killed her. The cops said it was a drug dealer. You sold her the weed."
"God damn it, dude, Millie killed her. Millie was obsessed with you after she profiled you for her story. She had a key to Holly's house because she babysits Holly's little brother. For fuck's sake, she's wearing Holly's cheerleading uniform."
Still on the ground, Millie groaned. When Jay turned to look, Zack saw the sparkle of a silver chain dangling from the pocket of his jeans.
Holly's nameplate necklace. Zack straightened his arm, holding the gun higher. It all made sense. Jay could touch the necklace and see Holly's ghost. That's how he found the real killer. But Jay couldn’t have been her soulmate.
Tears welled up in Zack Lassetter's eyes as he imagined his finger tightening on the trigger.
Jay looked at Zack again. "Heads up, Laser."
Zack jumped back as the mousey girl on the floor slashed at him with a pocket knife. Police sirens sounded in the distance as Millie rose to her feat and lunged.
Zack's first two knuckles smashed Mildred Merck's glasses as his left hand connected with her temple. She dropped to the floor, this time out cold. As she lay there in the light of the gym window, her arms spread and her jacket open to reveal the cheerleading uniform, she almost looked like Holly.
Zack clicked the safety on the gun and stuck it the waistband of his jeans. He pulled the promise ring from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the girl.
The Promise Ring by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.
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