He Deserved It

CHAPTER 20 – The Promise

The backyard was quiet the next morning. Empty chip bags fluttered in the grass. A Capri Sun pouch lay half-deflated on a lawn chair. One glitter star sticker clung to the rim of a Solo cup, blinking like it still had something to say.

Lia stood in the doorway in a hoodie three sizes too big, sleep crusted in her lashes, curls half-flattened on one side.

She stretched once. Yawned like a cat. Then said, soft and certain:

“Rise and shine, my little emotionally repressed queens. It’s time to bury our trauma like real adults.”

Savannah groaned. Imani cursed. Mila flipped her off without opening her eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, they were out the door with backpacks, a shovel, and a box.

⋆⸻⸻⋆

The park was empty. Early enough that the grass still held on to the night, wet and silver-edged. They walked in quiet formation, Lia leading the way with her glitter socks visible above her sneakers, humming some untraceable tune.

Behind the mural wall, tucked between two crooked trees and a rusted utility shed, there was a patch of ground they all instinctively knew.

It wasn’t sacred. But it would be.

Mila carried the box—an old waterproof lockbox she’d spray-painted matte black and covered in stickers: a broken crown, a flaming heart, four tiny wolves. Plastic seal. Steel hinges. Built to last.

“I feel like we should say a prayer or something,” Savannah said, pulling on gloves.

“I got you,” Lia said. She cleared her throat.

“Dear moon goddess of messy girls and deleted texts, bless this box and the drama it contains. May it stay buried unless it’s needed for a documentary or court deposition.”

Imani snorted. “Amen.”

They sat cross-legged in the dirt, the box between them. Each girl had brought one thing to bury—something real, something that still hummed.

Mila went first. She unfolded a torn corner of a sketch—the one that became her mural. The charcoal lines still smelled faintly of aerosol and something older. Regret, maybe.

“It’s the only original,” she said. “I ripped it the day we found out. Couldn’t look at it for weeks. Figured it belongs here.”

She laid it in the box like it might flinch.

Imani followed. She pulled out a screenshot, printed on glossy paper. The Snapchat—the blurry pep rally clip that showed Lia and Jordan in the background, a split-second kiss frozen in time. Underneath the image, in her neat handwriting:

We saw it too.

Savannah hesitated. Reached into her bag and pulled out a small, scuffed phone.

“He gave me this,” she said. “A second phone. Said it was just for us—so my parents wouldn’t read our texts.”

The screen was cracked. One corner had a tiny sticker shaped like a sun.

“I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want it to mean anything. But now it does.”

She looked down at it one last time before placing it in the box.

Lia reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out something unexpected: a plastic charm bracelet. Cheap, glittery, ridiculous. Four mismatched charms dangled from it—a wolf, a heart, a lightning bolt, and a tiny juice box.

“I bought it from one of those gumball machines outside the community center. Right after our first meeting.”

She looked at each of them in turn.

“I didn’t know what we were yet. I just knew it felt like something.”

She ran her thumb over the juice box charm.

“I kept it in my bag every day. For luck. For you.”

And then, quieter:

“This is the thing I want to remember when I forget who I was before us.”

She set it gently inside and closed the lid.

The box clicked shut with the kind of finality that made your chest feel both lighter and heavier. Lia exhaled like she’d been holding it in for months.

⋆⸻⸻⋆

Savannah dug the hole. Mila cleared the rocks. Imani checked the depth.

And Lia? Lia held the box with both hands like it was full of fireflies. When she placed it in the earth, she did it slow, like she wanted the ground to remember the shape of it.

They buried it together. Covered it with soil, leaves, and one shiny gum wrapper they didn’t bother to move.

They stood in a loose circle. Savannah extended her hand. Imani placed hers on top. Mila followed. Lia, last.

Four hands. Four stories. One promise.

“We come back,” Lia said.

“Same week,” Savannah said.

“Winter break,” Imani added.

“Even if we’re different,” Mila said.

“Especially if we’re different,” Lia whispered.

They broke the stack. No hugs. No dramatics. Just the soft exhale of something sacred being finished.

They walked back in silence. Not heavy. Just full.

Savannah talked about traffic patterns. Imani wondered aloud if college printers accepted Apple Pay. Mila swore she saw a hawk blink at her disrespectfully.

Lia stayed a few steps behind. She looked back. Not long. Just enough.

Enough to remember the spot. The tree. The gum wrapper. The silence they all agreed on without ever needing to say it out loud.

We promised we’d come back. We just didn’t know what was waiting for us.