Saving June

  I thought taking her to California would fix things. Would allow me to make peace with what she did. But I know now that it isn’t that easy. Nothing is. I understand June a little better, I think, but I feel like some part of me is going to be angry at her for the rest of my life. And angry at myself.

  I stare down at my shoes; they’re covered with rich black soil. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to forgive her?”

  “I don’t know, baby. That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

  I fight back the tears welling up behind my eyes. When did I turn into such a fucking faucet? It’s ridiculous.

  “Hey.” Mom reaches out and touches the side of my face. I try to turn away, embarrassed, but she makes me look at her. She’s got little lines by her eyes, and lines by her mouth. Laugh lines? Frown lines? I’m not sure. “I love you. You know that, right? I love you.”

  I nod, put my hand over hers and draw it away, but I keep holding it. It feels weird, being this openly affectionate when we never really have before. But at the same time it’s sort of nice, too. I figure I should enjoy the maternal affection while it lasts.

  Mom turns toward the garden again, her head tilted to one side appraisingly. “It’s a little late in the season to be planting. You think it’s too late for the daisies to make it?”

  I look at them, that splash of bright color, the stems that extend into the thick soil. Held down by the roots.

  “Nah.” I shake my head and smile a little. “It’s not too late.”

  On the Fourth of July, Mom goes out with Aunt Helen to meet up with their knitting group for a barbecue. She offers to let me shed the ball and chain and tag along, but I opt instead to sit on the roof with a tuna sandwich and watch the kids across the street play with sparklers on their front lawn. Soon enough their parents will probably be carting them off to the park by the lake, where the whole town always gathers to see the fireworks.

  I have the letter with me. Mom must have sneaked into my room while I was sleeping, because this morning I woke up to find it placed on my nightstand. I keep turning it over in my hands, fingering the torn edge of the envelope, but I’m too scared to open it. I know it’s stupid to be so freaked out by a piece of paper. I know I should get over myself and just read it already. But before I can talk myself into opening it, I’m interrupted.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  Laney’s voice makes me jump about a mile high. I turn to see her head popping through the window, and I surreptitiously slide the envelope out of sight.

  “You know, you really shouldn’t sneak up on someone perched precariously on a rooftop,” I point out.

  “Whatever. If you fell you’d survive. You’d probably break a leg, maybe crack some ribs, but you’d survive.” She climbs through the window and pushes me to one side. “Move over.”

  I scoot over to make room as she settles in beside me. She hands me a Popsicle, then unwraps her own and sticks it in her mouth.

  “So what is this? Your parents let you out on parole?” I ask. I peel off the wrapper of my Popsicle—it’s one of those triple-flavor tiered ones: red, white and blue. Very patriotic.

  “More like I’m AWOL,” she confesses. “They’re having dinner at the steak house, then they’ll be at the fireworks display and probably go out for drinks afterward, so I’ve got a few hours. I figured I’d make the most of my one night of freedom.” She glances down at her Popsicle. “Hey, what flavor do you think the white is supposed to be? The red’s obviously cherry, and the blue is blueberry, but they never say what the white is.”

  “White lemon, maybe?” I guess. We sit there eating for a little while, and then I look right at her, unable to hide my worry. “Laney. How are you? What happened? Did you—?

  It takes her a minute to answer the unspoken question. She shrugs and says, “I’m not pregnant.”

  “What? How—”

  “I lost it.”

  I freeze. “You did?”

  “It didn’t look like anything. It was just…like, like I had really bad cramps, and I bled a little, and I sort of completely freaked, but I snuck out and took the bus to the free clinic on the west side, and they told me it happens a lot. They said some women don’t even notice when it happens.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Laney, I’m…” Sorry? Glad? No. Relieved, mostly, but also sad—sad that this had to happen in the first place.

  Laney seems to understand. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “It happened the day after we got back. My parents don’t have a clue.” She goes quiet for a moment. “I just keep thinking—what if this is karma? What if I’m being punished?”

  I stare at her, incredulous. “Punished? For what?”

  “For slutting around. For not wanting it.”

  “You’re looking at this the wrong way. Aren’t you the one who’s always saying everything happens for a reason? Maybe this was supposed to happen. Like, it was fate or something.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?”

  Laney considers this as she sucks on her Popsicle and watches the kids below, screaming and chasing each other in dizzying circles with their sparklers in hand.

  “Have you talked to Jake?” she asks. The question makes my stomach twist; I was wondering when I’d be forced to have this conversation. “No. And I don’t plan to,” I tell her. “Why? Have you?”

  “Only once,” she admits. “He called and asked if I still needed any money, so I explained to him why I didn’t. And then I told him off for what he did to you.” She pauses. “I may have at some point referred to him as a douche nozzle.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “You did not! A douche nozzle? I don’t even know what that is!”

  Laney starts giggling, too, and it’s like it’s contagious, because soon enough we’re falling all over ourselves with laughter.

  “You know,” she says breathlessly, a few minutes later when we’ve composed ourselves, “I get why you’re mad, and don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on your side. I’ll hate him till the day I die if you want. But I think he’s pretty broken up over this. I’m not saying he was, like, crying tears of man pain over the phone, but he sounded upset.”

  I don’t look at her as I lick the melted Popsicle juice off of my sticky fingers. “Good. He should be.”

  “All right, I’ve said my piece, so I’m staying out of this, forever and ever amen.” She raises her hands in a conceding gesture before biting off the rest of her Popsicle. “Hey, I meant to ask you—have you decided what you’re going to do with all those pictures you took? You must have a ton.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, no, I haven’t really thought about it.”

  Laney licks her Popsicle stick clean and squints at it. “Say, what do you call a piece of wood with nothing to do?”

  I think for a moment. “Board?”

  “Got it in one!” she exclaims, and when she holds up her hand, I roll my eyes but indulge her with a high five anyway. She looks up at the sky and says, “Too bad we can’t see the fireworks from here.”

  That makes me think of something. “Hey,” I say, “I’ve got an idea.”

  We scramble through the window and down the stairs, out the front door, and I pay one of the kids across the street two dollars for two of his sparkler sticks. I have my heavy black funeral dress in one hand and my mom’s lighter in the other. Laney stares at me like I’m crazy as I spread the dress out on the driveway.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, but she says it like she already knows the answer.

  “Making our own fireworks.”

  I light the end of the sparkler, then press the tip into the heap of fabric on the asphalt. It takes a few tries with both the sparkler and the lighter, but the material is flammable, and soon enough the dress goes up in flames. After a minute or so of watching it burn, Laney rushes to grab the hose. She douses the remaining flames, until all that’s left is charred remnants of the dress. br />
  It’s not all gone. That’s just science—matter can be neither created nor destroyed. The same way pieces of June survived in the dust of her ashes, the way those pieces are settling into the ocean floor right now. The dress and the memories that go along with it will last forever. Or until everyone who remembers dies, too.

  Laney drops the hose and looks at me. “Harper. How are you doing? I mean, really?”

  I think about it and say, “Better,” and as I speak the word I realize it’s true.

  I still go to bed sad, and wake up sad, and it still hurts like hell, but there are moments during the day when it hurts less. Sometimes I can think of June and not want to burst into tears or put my fist through a wall. Sometimes I’m close to happy and it doesn’t even hurt. Much. I’ll never be the way I was before, but maybe that’s okay. Life goes on, I’m going on, even without her. Not every day hurts. Not every breath hurts.

  Maybe that’s all we can really ask for.

  All of the pictures taken en route to California are still inside Carmen’s shoebox. I shoved it far under my bed the same night I came back to Grand Lake, and since then I’ve mostly forgotten about them. But the day after Laney reminds me of their existence, I get down on my hands and knees and slide the box back out from underneath the bed.

  The photos aren’t the only thing I haven’t sorted through—my duffel bag remains halfway unpacked. I probably would’ve finished if I hadn’t discovered Jake’s CBGB T-shirt buried among my things. Yup, somehow I mistakenly ended up with his shirt. Seeing it made my heart hurt, and I was torn between setting it on fire in the front yard like I did the dress or curling up on the bed and sleeping with it like a little kid’s blanket.

  I was too pissed off to do the latter, and feeling too maudlin to do the former, so I settled for tossing my duffel in my closet and leaving it there, untouched.

  Now I sit on top of my bed with the shoebox in front of me. I pull off the lid and turn it over onto the bedspread, scraps of celluloid spilling out everywhere. I pluck a photo out of the pile at random—it’s a candid of Jake and Laney pretending to duel with beef jerky ropes at some gas station in Texas. Or maybe it was Arizona, I can’t remember for sure.

  What am I supposed to do with these? Keeping them stashed away in a shoebox doesn’t seem right. I could put them in an album, except I don’t have any that are empty, and I’d probably have to buy a special one to fit Polaroids. I’m mulling over my options when I turn my head and see the answer staring me in the face.

  The wall closest to my bed. My white and empty and begging-for-decoration wall, the only blank one in my room. The others are covered in film posters and other pictures I’ve taken and liked well enough to showcase. My closet door is proudly decorated with patches of orange and green paper—all of the detention and tardy slips I’ve accumulated over the years, badges of my insubordination. It was Laney’s idea.

  Just as I’m working out the arrangement in my head, the doorbell rings. It can’t be Mom, since she’s at work, so really there are only two viable options: It’s either Aunt Helen, dropping by for one of her cherished surprise visits, or Laney, having managed to liberate herself once more. All the way down the stairs, I cross my fingers for it to be Option Number Two.

  Turns out, it’s neither. I open the door to see…no one. There’s no car or person in sight. At first I assume some stupid brat on the block decided it’d be fun to play a game of Ding Dong Ditch, but then I glance down and see it.

  A mix CD.

  It’s sitting on the doormat, in a clear case. I bend over and pick it up, and I can make out the words written across the silver disc—Saving June.

  Back in my room, I set it on top of my stereo, then pace back and forth for so long I make a dark trail on the carpet. What is this supposed to mean? It has to be from Jake, obviously, being his modus operandi and all. No one else would’ve done this. No one else would’ve known what I’d said, that evening on the boat.

  Finally I decide to stop torturing myself and listen to the damn CD.

  Every song on it is something we listened to at some point during the trip. The Bruce Springsteen jam he blasted when he picked me up, the Beatles song I cried along to in Oklahoma, the Doors song that played when we—while we—

  Listening to that one brings back a slew of memories. The feel of his mouth on mine, the way our bodies stuck together with sweat in the afterglow. God, even just thinking about it, alone in my room, makes me blush.

  It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that Jake had to ruin everything by giving me that letter, or that June had to ruin everything by writing it in the first place, by choosing to end her life, by not caring what that did to everyone else’s. It is so unfair, and I am so, so mad at them, but even so, I still love them both, against my better judgment. It’d be so much easier if I could hate them—but I can’t.

  It’s like that Crosby, Stills and Nash song Jake sang to me on the hood of his van; my love for June and Jake is an anchor, bound with unbreakable chains. Weighing me down, but at the same time…keeping me grounded. Keeping me here. Tying me to the world. It hurts, but it’s supposed to, because that’s what it means to be alive. And that’s comforting, actually. The realization that I’m not some robot devoid of emotions. That I still have the ability to feel things this brutally, this immediate and sharp.

  When the room plunges into silence, I think at first the CD has finished, but then static crackles, and Jake’s voice comes out of the speakers.

  “Uh, hi, Harper. Didn’t expect this, did you? Well, you told me I was too chicken-shit to write my own songs. You’re not entirely wrong about that. But I don’t back down from a challenge, so here’s my best shot. I know it probably sucks, but…I hope you don’t hate it.”

  There’s another silence, and then some rustling like he’s moving around, followed by the strum of a guitar.

  “We left behind this small town

  But we couldn’t leave behind the ghosts

  As we headed for the coast, yeah, and you know

  There was something in the way she told me

  How my hair looked stupid, and

  How she couldn’t hold her tequila, and

  How she was broken and beautiful and

  Still standing, and how was I supposed to know

  All along we were saving June Saving June, yeah

  She had flowers in her hair and one powerful glare

  My modern day Rubik’s Cube, she made me feel

  Like maybe we could have it all

  But you can never have it all

  And now I’ve gone and lost

  All the things that they always sang about

  All the things that I still dream about

  Now I’m counting up the days, counting all the ways

  I never said what I meant, but it’s too late ‘cause

  June is over and so are we

  And I’m the one left, with nothing to save.”

  The song is just Jake and his acoustic guitar, open and aching and unguarded. It’s beautiful. It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, but I do neither. I just sit on my bed and listen to the CD on a loop until I’ve finished sticking each and every Polaroid to my wall.

  Until I’ve picked up my sister’s letter and finally read the last words she ever wrote, words intended for me.

  Until I’ve figured out exactly what I want—what I need—to do.

  The writing in June’s letter is sloppy compared to her usual perfect script, like maybe her hand was shaking while she wrote the words. I imagine her sitting down, plotting this out in a notebook, her final message, the grace notes of her life’s composition. The moment that must have cemented her decision. I’ll never know what she was thinking. What, exactly, drove her to that point.

  The closest I’ll come to knowing is through her note.

  Harper,

  I know you will not understand this. I don’t expect you to. I don’t feel the need to justify why I’m doing what I am to anyone
except myself, but I do want you to know a few things.

  1) I love you and Mom and Dad, and I know you all love me. I’m sorry for the hurt this will cause you.

  2) Trust me that it’s better this way. It’s the only way I can be free of this. I’m so sad I can’t think. I’m scared all the time. Nothing helps. I don’t see the point. I can’t explain it. The bastards have ground me down. Maybe I’m crazy. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.

  I should’ve tried harder. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t be strong like you. I think you were right before, about real love not existing. At least not the love I needed. But that’s my fault. Not yours.

  Tell whoever finds me that I’m sorry. I tried my hardest not to leave a mess.

  I feel like I should say more, but there’s nothing else.

  I love you.

  I’m sorry.

  Love,

  June

  P.S.—I’m not scared anymore.

  chapter seventeen

  Twenty-four minutes. That is how long it takes to get from the bus stop closest to my house to the Oleo Strut. Fourteen minutes on the bus, six minutes of walking time and four minutes of stopping every fifteen feet and willing myself not to ditch out on this.

  At least the heat helps, in the sense that I finally reason to myself that if I don’t get out of the sun, I’m going to fall over and die of heatstroke, and that’ll be of help to no one.

  “Well, hello, hello,” Eli greets the second I walk into the Oleo. He’s taping a blue flyer advertising a Journey cover band to the inside of the window. “Hey, weren’t you in here a while ago with that blond girl? The one who thought she was Nancy Drew?”

  “Maybe,” I answer evasively.

  He waggles his eyebrows—much like Jake used to waggle his. Must be a genetic trait. “Hope you’re not here for a follow-up interrogation.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll spare you,” I assure him. I take a deep breath. “Is your brother around?”

  “Ah,” he says with a knowing smirk, and I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t so annoyed. Apparently also a Tolan family trait: the ability to bug the crap out of me with a single look.