Finding June

  When Gran and Joseph appeared in the kitchen, I realized how foolish my thought process had really been. Joseph instantly burst into a fit of laughter at the sight of me. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

  “Did you and Annette get into a food fight?” he finally managed to ask. It was always a little odd when I heard people call Gran by her first name, though I used it every time I slated for the camera and I named her as my agent.

  “For your information, this will make my skin more porcelain than Clara Bow,” I said sarcastically, standing up and smearing a handful of pineapple pulp onto Joseph’s cheek, much to Gran’s horror.

  “Honestly, Bliss, I don’t know what to do with you sometimes,” she said in an overly dramatic tone. “You just make sure you clean this up,” she threatened, nodding toward the mound of pineapple now on the wooden floor as she left, muttering about high-maintenance actresses.

  I looked back to Joseph, grinning wickedly and relieved that he didn’t seem to harbor any animosity for my attack on him that morning. He simply swiped a finger full of the fruit on his face and licked it.

  “Is this pineapple?” he asked surprised.

  “Apparently it makes your skin whiter,” I said knowledgably.

  “So, does that mean I’m going to have one white cheek and one normal cheek?” he asked jokingly, though I could detect a hint of worry in his voice. I squinted my eyes at him, leaning in closer.

  “Wow, you know what? I think it’s already working,” I said, my tone full of amazement. Joseph’s eyes grew wide as he quickly wiped the pineapple from his face. I laughed at his obvious distress and shook my head. “I’m joking,” I reassured him.

  “Funny, June. Very funny,” he deadpanned. “How about you wash the produce off your face while I get the stuff on the floor? That way we can get to our night full of eating too much ice cream and watching Forensic Faculty.” I nodded my agreement and we soon were sitting comfortably on the couch in the living room with big bowls full of huckleberry ice cream. Joseph tossed a few Indian pillows onto the ground, since there were always so many on the couch that you could barely find a place to sit.

  “Do you think it’ll be different to watch the show now that you’ve met everyone?” he asked, spooning ice cream into his mouth and making me smile.

  “I think it’ll be a little different, but it probably won’t really be weird until I’m on the show. Then I think it may be difficult just to watch,” I admitted.

  “How was Anna Farthing? Is she really as scary as her character on the show?” Joseph asked, suddenly very intrigued by the fact that I could give him the inside scoop. I wished beyond anything that I could bring him to set with me. I knew I’d be so much more comfortable with him by my side, and he’d love to meet everyone in the cast. But sadly, that wasn’t a possibility, so he’d just have to settle for my stories.

  “She was actually really nice! And she’s British, which caught me off guard.”

  “Wait, she’s British?” he asked, just as shocked as I was when she had first spoken to me. I nodded with a grin. It was kind of fun knowing all of these little facts about the show.

  “Everyone was pretty nice to me. Will Trofeos actually winked at me while we were reading our lines,” I said, crinkling my nose. “Is that weird?”

  “A little,” Joseph answered with the same unsure look on his face. “Was he being funny?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said with a laugh. “But I’m pretty sure I’m not his type . . . since I’m like, thirty years younger than him.”

  “Well, let’s hope not,” he said emphatically.

  “The only person who wasn’t all that nice to me was Joann Hoozer,” I confessed, remembering the icy looks and indifferent stares she had given me throughout the table read.

  “I can see that,” Joseph said with a nod of his head. “She seems like a bit of a diva.”

  I thought about his statement for a moment, realizing how little I knew of the people we had watched every week for years. “I guess I never really thought about it,” I said with a shrug. “I always assumed they were all like their characters . . . although Benjamin and Ryan are exact replicas of their characters.” Rich and John were Joseph’s favorite characters on the show, so I knew he’d be excited to hear that they weren’t huge jerks in real life.

  “I want to meet them,” he whined, giving me a pouty look.

  “Who knows, maybe we’ll become great friends and they’ll hang out with us so you can meet them too,” I said enticingly. Joseph laughed, giving me a nudge with his shoulder and then not moving back to his side of the couch after. We stayed shoulder-to-shoulder while we watched the show, and I couldn’t help but notice how much I liked how comfortable we were around each other. After a day of tension and nerves, it was nice to just sit with Joseph and forget about all of the scary things coming up.

  CHAPTER 9

  Just as she did every morning, Edith Piaf interrupted my blissful dreams with her low, resonating voice. I rolled over, my eyes still closed, and hit the snooze button. I was always pretty good about getting up in the morning, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. I rubbed my eyes wearily and wondered how my bed managed to become so warm and inviting the second I had to leave it. I pulled my fluffy comforter up around my face and tried to hold on to the last fleeting memories of my dream.

  Five minutes later, I was staring blearily into the mirror in my bathroom, trying to tame my wild mass of curls. I had fallen asleep on Joseph’s shoulder the night before. When he finally left, I was too tired to shower, and now my mane of hair was very vocally lodging a complaint, with ringlets sticking up in all directions. Most of the time my hair had a medium wave that curled naturally. Today, however, the lack of washing had turned it into a giant mass of curling chaos.

  I gathered my dark hair up at the back of my head and began randomly shoving bobby pins into it, hoping that it would form some semblance of a proper hairdo. In the end it actually looked quite nice, although some of the ringlets were escaping wildly around my face. I did my makeup light today, sticking with a peaches-and-cream color pallet.

  As I re-entered my room to get dressed, I heard Joseph pull up outside. I looked around in confusion, wondering why he was so early, only to find that I was actually the one falling behind on our normal schedule.

  “Shoot,” I muttered under my breath, tripping over my backpack in my attempt to hastily get dressed. My phone buzzed by my bed as I threw on a pastel pink tunic top and some faded gray skinny jeans.

  Running late are we? my phone read, much to my annoyance. Joseph knew that if my bedroom light was still on when he pulled up, we were in trouble.

  Two seconds, I texted back, realizing that if I had not texted him, I might already be out the door. I quickly put on some cream-colored peep-toe heels, grabbed my backpack, and ran out the front door, sticking light pink feather earrings through my ears as I rushed down the driveway. I could see Joseph smirking from the driver seat of his Beetle.

  “I have no idea how that happened,” I said, referring to my late arrival.

  “Maybe we’ll skip the hot chocolate for today?” he asked, with a questioning glance in my direction.

  "Well, it is Friday, so someone’s going to bring food to seminary, right?” I asked. Fridays were the best. It was almost the weekend, everything went by faster, and someone was assigned to bring treats to seminary for everyone.

  “I think Grace is bringing them,” Joseph said as he pulled away from my house.

  “Oh, do you think she’ll bring that fruit Danish thing? It’s amazing,” I said closing my eyes at the mere memory of the delicious dessert.

  “We can only hope,” Joseph answered with a laugh. “You know, I think this show is already starting to wear you out,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. “The second they revealed who the killer was last night, you were out like a light.”

  I blushed slightly at the memory, knowing I had fallen asleep on his shoulder. I couldn’t help it that his
shoulder was right there next to me, just begging to be slept on.

  “I thought for a minute I was going to have to carry you up to your room,” he said with a grin.

  “Lucky for you, you didn’t,” I reassured him. “I’d like to see you try to carry my dead weight up those stairs.”

  “I’ve had to carry your dead weight a lot of places over the years. I don’t think the stairs would’ve put up much of a fight,” he countered playfully. I rolled my eyes at him while I secured a long strand of brown pearls around my neck.

  Walking into the classroom that we used for seminary in our church building, Joseph pointed to the pizza-shaped dessert sitting on a table and gave me a quick thumbs-up. I smiled at him but refrained from laughing. Our seminary room was always so quiet in the morning before our lesson started. I liked to think it was because everyone was being so reverent, but I knew it was most likely due to the early five o’clock hour. There were only about ten people in our seminary class, since most of the kids our age went to the later one at six. Only we zero period kids got up to learn about the gospel that early, when a lot of people were just getting into bed.

  Joseph and I took our seats in desks toward the side of the room and pulled out our notebook and scriptures. Seminary was nice because it was a lot like auditing a class in college—you can go to class to actually learn, not because you know you’ll be tested on the material or will have to turn in assignments, but rather because you want to be there. We didn’t even need to take notes on the material; I just liked to write down little thoughts that would come to my mind while Sister Pond taught.

  Slowly, people trickled in and took their seats, some in pajamas, others fully dressed, but everyone looking like it was a struggle just to keep their eyes open. Joseph looked around the room, a bemuse expression on his face.

  “Maybe we should move to Utah so we can have seminary in the middle of the day,” he whispered. I nudged him playfully but didn’t respond, finding that I was too tired to think of a clever comeback. Maybe Joseph was right—the stress of the show was already taking its toll on me, and we hadn’t even started filming yet.

  Since it was Friday, our lesson in seminary wasn’t straight out of the scriptures like it normally was. Instead, we would break into groups, read a story or talk given to us, then get up in front of the class and tell them about it, making us the teachers. I always liked this idea because it shook things up a bit. Plus it was really easy to let your eyelids droop so early in the morning with just one person talking for an hour.

  Sister Pond passed out papers to each group and gave us ten minutes to figure out how we were going to present it. Joseph and I had been given a talk from General Conference on charity. Some people would stick to the standard method of standing there and talking, while others would try to be more creative by acting their lesson out or playing a game.

  Joseph and I would normally try to be pretty creative with our lesson, but today I was just too exhausted to think of a clever tactic. Instead, we opted for playing a game of hangman with the class to get them to guess what the topic of our lesson was before we taught what we had learned from reading the talk.

  After seminary was over, we grabbed a slice of the fruit Danish, thanked Grace, and hopped back into Joseph’s car to go to theatre. Joseph had eaten his Danish in about two bites, but I savored mine, trying not to eat it too fast. It was some sort of pastry crust with cream cheese frosting, cherry pie filling, and sugar glaze. I was pretty sure if heaven had a taste, this dessert would be it.

  “Are you going to eat it or marry it?” Joseph asked me jokingly.

  “I’m still not sure yet,” I replied happily, making every bite count.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who loves dessert as much as you,” Joseph said with a shake of his head.

  “And if I play my cards right, you never will,” I answered. We drove for a moment in silence as I finished my Danish. I felt as if Joseph was gearing up to saying something important. His mood had quickly gone from lighthearted and joking to tense and quiet.

  “You remember that we’re supposed to perform our skit in class today, right?” he asked finally, revealing what the cause of his tension was. He was afraid I would attack him again.

  “Yeah, I do,” I answered carefully, not sure exactly where he wanted this conversation to go.

  “Are you ready for it?” he asked, equally as carefully.

  “I am,” I replied. This was ridiculous. Joseph and I were never weird around each other. It was blatantly clear to me that I’d have to be the one to make this situation less awkward. “We don’t have to actually kiss in the skit if that’s what you’re worried about.” I said, proud of myself for being so bold.

  “What?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he sounded puzzled or a little upset.

  “Well, that’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? Me attacking you again?”

  “No, June. You can attack me any time you want,” he said with a laugh, though he went quiet right after the laugh had escaped him. “I mean . . . that came out wrong,” he muttered. “I think the kiss is fine . . . I just want to make sure it’s okay with you if we do that.”

  I thought about this quietly, puzzled by what he had said. Why would I mind? I wasn’t the one who had gotten all weird after we had rehearsed the kiss, was I? I tried to think back to yesterday, which seemed like years ago already. Maybe I had acted a little weird.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Now that I know you’re fine with it, I won’t be concerned at all. I just thought maybe the whole thing made you uncomfortable or bothered you or something,” I said with a shrug.

  “It definitely doesn’t bother me,” he said with a smirk, though just as before he let his face melt instantly into a mask of neutrality. “That came out wrong again,” he amended. I giggled at his odd behavior but wondered inwardly what it meant. He was definitely not acting like his usual self.

  When we pulled into the school parking lot, we were already running late for class. Joseph quickly grabbed his backpack and our fake sack of money while I shoved the neon green water guns into my bag. We ran to the theatre, which proved to be very difficult in my heels, and made it just as the first group was getting up to perform their skit. Joseph and I slumped into some seats in the audience, trying to keep our panting to a minimum. Almost instantly Xani was sitting next to Joseph. I couldn’t help but wonder how she would react when she saw our kissing scene. I half thought she might think I had planned this all along—that I had somehow bribed Mr. Carroll into pairing us together and giving us this script. But maybe it was just my exhaustion talking.

  The first group to perform consisted of four people. They acted out a scene where two of the students were on a date with each other while the other two stood behind their respective person and voiced their thoughts. It was actually amusing to watch the difference between what the sitting people on the date were saying and what they were thinking. The skit ended with the girl’s thoughts walking over and slapping the boy’s thoughts, while the sitting girl simply said, “Check please.” Joseph glanced over at me and shook his head sadly.

  “They got to be funny,” he said.

  “You get to be funny too,” I said helpfully, though the way we had put our script together meant it ended up being less funny and more intense.

  As soon as the first group sat down, Xani popped out of her seat to walk up on stage. She threw Joseph a wink over her should and mouthed, "Wish me luck," as she walked away.

  “You little heartbreaker,” I whispered to him.

  “None of that is my fault! I’ve done nothing! I just come to class to learn. Is that such a crime?” he whispered back dramatically.

  “Save the acting for our skit,” I shot back with a wicked grin.

  Xani’s skit consisted of her and a girl named Laura. They were supposed to be new roommates who were meeting for the first time, only to find that they were complete opposites. They walked around the stage, arranging thei
r imaginary rooms and talking about their likes and dislikes. While Laura’s back was turned, Xani would rearrange her things so that they weren’t on "her side," only to have Laura do the same thing to Xani as her back was turned. This all occurred as the girls continued to talk about how well they were going to get along despite their differences.

  “Even Xani got to be funny,” Joseph said in a singsong voice under his breath.

  “Well, then, why don’t we show them why we’re good even without a funny script?” I challenged.

  “Fair enough,” he replied happily.

  Right as Xani sat down next to Joseph and leaned over to talk to him, he bolted out of his seat and hustled to the stage, obviously happy to avoid any close contact Xani would force upon him. I followed suit and sat down on a black wooden block, right next to where Joseph had dropped our pillowcase full of board game money.

  Glancing at the audience, I felt a wave of nerves go through my body as my palms began to sweat. I loved acting, but being in front of a crowd always made me nervous. On top of that, Joseph and I had to perform a pretty intimate scene in front of our classmates, which was never something you wanted to do. It didn’t help knowing that all of the skits thus far had been funny—it just made our skit seem out of place. Also, as paranoid as I’m sure it made me, I couldn’t help but feel my classmates would be more critical of my acting ability now that they knew I was on Forensic Faculty.

  I cleared my throat and gave Joseph the smallest of nods, letting him know I was ready to begin. I saw him pause for a moment before completely altering his expression to one of pained frustration. I was always amazed at his ability to do that. He began pacing back and forth across the stage, making sure to throw an exaggerated trip in there for at least a little bit of humor. The class laughed and I saw the smallest flicker of a smile cross his lips.

  “What could you possibly be thinking?” he finally spat at me while he continued to pace. He kept his head down with his eyes trained intently on the ground in front of him, as though it took all of his concentration not to shoot me right then and there. I wondered for a moment if anyone else in the class thought it was a bit terrifying to see Joseph so worked up, even if it was fake. “Robbery is an art, not an excuse to throw a brick through a window." His voice was full of venom, as if I were a complete imbecile whose only goal was to drive him crazy.