Chapter 1 – The Purple Crayon Pact
When Eli and I were six, we made a marriage pact behind the monkey bars.
It was written in purple crayon on a page torn out of my spelling notebook, the letters crooked and huge because I still pressed too hard when I wrote.
“If we are both still single when we are 30,” I read out loud, very seriously, “we promise to marry each other.”
Eli squinted at the paper like a tiny lawyer reviewing a contract.
“You spelled promise wrong.”
“I did not.”
“You wrote *promiss.*”
“You know what I meant.”
He let out a long, put-upon sigh, the kind only a six-year-old can perform with total sincerity, and signed his name underneath mine anyway.
Then we ran to the vending machine outside the grocery store and fed it quarters until two plastic rings dropped into the tray. Mine had a fake purple gem glued crooked to the band. His had a tiny silver star.
We locked pinkies over it, like that made it legally binding.
“Thirty is ancient,” I told him.
“Basically dead,” Eli agreed, nodding like we’d just settled something important.
Then the recess bell rang, and we ran back to class and never thought about it again.
At least, I didn’t. Not for over twenty years.
