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“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” I say, and I grab Jasmine’s hand and pull her away from another one of my parents’ “business” meetings inside the house.
“Wait, what if my parents ask for me?” Jasmine says as I drag her out of the living room and into the garden. “They’re on the verge of striking a new deal. I should be there.”
“They can do that on their own perfectly fine,” I reply, walking farther onto the grass.
She stops and jerks free from my grip. “You know it’s important to me.”
I turn and look at her. “This is important too.”
“What’s going on?” She folds her arms.
“Nothing,” I reply, smiling awkwardly, but of course she sees right through me.
“Liam … spill it.” She taps her foot the way she always does when she gets impatient.
“Fine, fine,” I say, holding up my hands. “I just thought, maybe we could dig up the box.”
“The box …” she mutters. Then her lips form an o-shape. “Oh … That one.”
“I wanna add a new promise,” I say, walking farther across the grass into the muddy area until I find the spot. “This is where we buried it.”
She raises her brow at me. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
I dig up the soil with my hands, not giving a shit that my clothes might get dirty. I’m already done with this party anyway. I don’t find anything interesting about my parents' deals, even though she does.
I’d much rather spend more time with her. Even if she doesn’t see it that way.
“C’mon, Liam, let’s go back inside,” she says, rubbing at her arms. “It’s cold out here.”
“In a minute,” I reply, digging until I finally hit the wood. “There.”
I tear it out of the ground and pull it up, brushing off the mud.
“God, I didn’t even think it’d still be out here,” she says.
“Of course. Where else would it be?” I reply, and I look up into her eyes. “No one knows we hid it here. Unless you told someone.”
“No,” she says, making a face. “Of course not.”
“Good.” I fish my key from my pocket. “Because this is our secret.”
“From ages ago,” she says, sighing. “Why do we have to do this again?”
“Because I’m bored,” I say.
It’s a lie. It’s more than that. So much more. But she’d refuse if I told her the truth.
I push the key inside the lock and open the box. The inside smells musty, but the papers are still intact, along with our bloody thumbprints.
“Wow …” Jasmine murmurs, and she goes to her knees right beside me to take one of them out of the box. “I haven’t seen these in ages.”
I nod as she reads one of them.
“They mean a lot to me,” I say, and I look into her eyes until she finally meets my gaze.
But her face is cold, distant, as if she isn’t actually here. “We were kids when we made these.”
“So? That doesn’t make them any less real,” I reply.
