Saving June

Mom started smoking again after she and Dad split. She thinks she’s good at hiding it, like I don’t know she keeps a stash of cigarettes hidden in her jewelry box. Sure enough, there’s a pack of Camel Lights stowed away under a mess of necklaces, along with a plastic lighter. I nab both and retreat back into my own room.

There were times, before the divorce, when our parents would fight. Mostly it was Mom who would yell, while Dad sat silent, a stony wall to her barrage of shouts and accusations. I know she thought he was messing around on the side, during his late nights at the office, and hiding money from her. I have no idea how much of that was actually true—if any of it—but Mom would get so worked up, she must’ve really believed what she said. She’d just go on a total rampage, annihilating everything in her path. The best coping method was total avoidance, and so sometimes during their arguments, June would come to my room, near tears, and we’d climb out my window and onto the roof and just sit. Sometimes I’d smoke, sometimes we’d talk, and sometimes we’d just sit there in mutual silence. During our conversations, we never acknowledged the obvious: our parents’ marriage was vaporizing before our eyes.

Maybe we thought if we didn’t mention it, it would go away on its own. Maybe we just didn’t know how to talk to each other the way we used to, when we were little kids and best friends who shared everything.

Now I wrench the window up and slowly slide my legs outside, climbing out just enough to sit on the ledge with my bare feet flat on the slanted roof, already warmed by the high sun. I shake a single cigarette from the pack at my side and stick it in my mouth. It takes only two tries to strike up a flame, which is quite impressive considering how hard my hands are shaking. I wonder if it’ll always be this hard, to think about June, if I’ll ever be able to separate the good memories from bad, or if they’ll always be intrinsically tied together.

I light the end of the cigarette, inhaling deeply. The air is hot and still, the breeze nonexistent, the sun beating down in an otherwise clear sky. From my perch I can spot some kids a few doors down, skipping rope on the street and chanting in unison. Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in nineteen hundred and forty-two. The waves got higher, and higher …

If I close my eyes it’s almost like June’s beside me, the way she used to be. I can see her perfectly in my mind—those slim arms wrapped around her knees as she pulls her long legs in close to her chest. She used to sit like that all the time, like she was trying to make herself as small as possible.

Maybe she was always trying to disappear.

I’m sitting there, breathing in the mingled smells of smoke and cut grass and tar from the shingles, trying to remember, when suddenly a voice cuts through my meandering thoughts.

“Hey!” My eyes fly open to see Jacob Tolan, standing on the edge of my front yard, shielding his eyes from the intense sun with one hand and squinting up at me. “Enjoying your moment of faux teenage rebellion?”

The unexpected intrusion nearly sends me plummeting off the roof and to an early death. At the very least, a few broken ribs. Flustered, I quickly right myself and glare down at his figure. The first thing I notice is that he’s wearing a black leather jacket open over a long-sleeved red flannel shirt, even though it’s about a billion degrees outside, and black jeans, again. Possibly the same pair. What is this, the nineties?

“Get off my lawn,” I shout, holding the cigarette away from my face.

“Oooh, tough words from the girl who smokes—let me guess—Virginia Slims?”

Who the hell does he think he is, coming here and accusing me of smoking girly cigarettes?

“Camel Lights, actually, dickwad.” I take another long, harsh drag, just to prove a point. Unfortunately, the effect is diminished when I start coughing up half a lung.

Jake extracts his own pack from his jeans pocket, tilting it up for me to see. “What do you know. Same brand. Got a light?”

I reel my arm back and chuck my lighter at him, hard. My aim is decent enough, but Jake dodges out of the way just in time; the flimsy thing barely clips him in the shoulder, and he shoots me a long, even look as he leans down and fishes it from the grass at his feet.

I keep on glaring as he straightens and lights his cigarette. “What do you want?”

He says, “We need to talk,” and glances around conspicuously. “Preferably in, you know, private.”

“Like … private, private?” I ask. Does he seriously think anyone would bother to listen in on this conversation?

He scowls and does that annoying squinty thing again. “Is there any other kind?”

Part of me wants to tell him to go screw himself; the other part of me is curious to know what possible reason he could have for coming around and wanting to talk. Curiosity wins out in the end. I stub the cigarette out, making sure to roll my eyes and blow out an exaggerated sigh so he won’t think I’m, like, really wanting to know what he’s doing in my front yard.

“Fine, whatever,” I tell him coolly. “Give me a minute.”

I scoot back through the window, carefully wedging it down, and then hurry downstairs. It seems like a good idea to make him wait for a while, just so he doesn’t think I’m dying to hear whatever it is he has to say. Even if I kind of am.

I stand at the front door and count to thirty before I open it. Jake is still standing in the same spot, stomping out his cigarette, and instead of approaching me, he just cocks his head to the side until I march over.

“What do you want?” I huff.

I want to know what’s going on, but if he keeps this up, forget it. I’ve never been the kind of girl to beg. I’m definitely not about to start now.

He grabs my arm and hauls me behind the towering oak tree at the edge of the lawn. “Let’s talk in there,” he says, jerking his chin toward the van parked right on the curb.

I glance around to see if anyone is in earshot. Our old neighbor Mr. Jones is mowing his lawn, and some woman pushes a stroller down the sidewalk. When the woman passes, she gives us a strange look, but then the baby starts wailing and diverts her attention.

I stare at Jake blankly. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

“What? Why not?”

“Sketchy black van? Weird stalking of my house? What are you going to do next, offer me some candy?” I scoff. “Sorry, I saw that Dateline special, thank you very much. Besides, anything you need to say to me, you can say be hind this tree.”

He makes this annoyed growling sound in the back of his throat, then takes a deep breath. “Listen. I know what you and Laney are planning on doing.”

Well, that is not what I expected. I look at him closely. He can’t know. Can he?

“Uh, okay,” I say. Best to play dumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What, like I’d come all the way over here just to bullshit you? Do you think I’m an idiot?” He pauses. “Don’t answer that.”

Not a problem, as I’m sort of at a loss for words at the moment. All I can do is look at him. Up close, I get a better view; there’s no denying the fact he is really, really good-looking, in this rakish, edgy, badass, I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-screw-you-I-don’t-need-a-mirror kind of way. He has these piercing, unbelievably green eyes that are as gorgeous and sharp as the rest of him; it’s like they can see straight through me. But I don’t want to be seen. I just want answers.

Realizing his hand is still on my arm, I shake it off. He shoves his hands in his jean pockets and waits.

“How much do you know?” I ask cautiously.

“You, her. June—the urn.” He pauses. “California.”

“How did you—”

“You’re not as discreet as you think,” he says. His grin is so smug I want to punch him in the face.

“You spied on us, didn’t you?” I don’t even try to hide the amount of disgust in my tone. The thought of him listening in on our conversation by the door the whole time like some kind of creepster leaves me feeling horrified and violated and pissed off, all at the same time. I cross my arms over my chest. “Okay, so you know. Congratulations. Would you like a cookie?”

Jake looks me in the eyes intently. “I’m going with you.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he insists. He steps forward, once again violating my personal-space bubble, and lowers his voice. “You take me with you, or I swear I’ll tell your mother. I bet she’d love to hear what you’re planning to do with her dearly departed daughter’s remains. Or I could talk to your lovely aunt, who I had the pleasure of meeting the other day. She seems like the kind of person who’d be really on board with that plan.”

My heart starts racing a little faster. If Mom found out … if Aunt Helen found out … it’d be over, no question. I’d be under permanent house arrest and twenty-four-hour surveillance. And they’d probably call Dad and tell him to speed up the urn selection process, and if they split the ashes before I can figure out how the hell to get to California, that’s it. I’ll have failed before I even started.

Jake has to be bluffing.

But what if he’s not?

“Like she’d believe you,” I say sarcastically, but I’m less sure now, and he can tell.

“Like she’s not paranoid enough right now to listen to me?” He snorts. “I don’t think so.”

Damn. He has me on that one. “So now I’m being blackmailed by a tattletale?”

“Put it however you want,” he says. He heaves a long-suffering sigh, like even having this conversation is a total pain. “Look, I’ve got a van—”

“That—” I wave a hand toward the contraption parked on the curb “—is not a van. That is a death trap.”

“Leave Joplin out of this,” he retorts, and I blink in surprise. His van has a name? Before I can whip up a snarky comment, he plows on. “And I have some money, and no one who’ll even notice I’m gone. You’re talking about two minors traveling across the country. If you take a car, or a bus, you’ll never make it. The cops’ll track you down in a second.”

That—that is actually all really convincing. But I’m not ready to concede to his common sense, not yet. Everything about this is too weird. Too … wrong.

“Why do you even care?” I ask. “So my sister tutored you a few times for padding on her college apps. Big deal. You hardly knew her. Right?”

Jake doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that one. At least five different emotions flicker over his face, none of which I can pinpoint. There’s more to it—to him and June—than he’s letting on. I know it.

“That’s what I thought.” I start heading back to the door.

Good. Now I have the upper hand. Now he’s the one who’ll have to beg.

“‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down,’” he calls out to my receding back. I stop, but I don’t turn around until he breaks into a half jog to catch up to me. “Where did you hear that?”

I ignore him. “You’re hiding something. I want to know why you’re doing this.”

“I have my reasons.”

I shake my head. “That’s not good enough.” I need to know why he’d volunteer for this, why he cares about my sister at all.

“Yeah, well, too bad!” he shouts. “I told you the deal!”

Maybe my strategy isn’t working as well as I thought. I called his bluff, but he doesn’t look ready to budge. He looks me up and down and then abruptly turns away.

As he walks toward his van, he looks over his shoulder and says, “Your move, Scott.”

chapter four

Laney thinks Jake’s offer is fantastic. “It’s fate,” she gushes.

“There is no fate,” I say. “There’s what you do and what you don’t do.”

I don’t want to have this argument again. Though it would make sense, in a twisted way, for Jake’s proposition to be a sign from God. Just more proof that if He indeed exists, He hates my guts.

Laney isn’t having it. “Don’t even,” she chides. “This is nothing short of divine intervention and you know it.”

“Whatever.” I pull the phone away from my ear and double-check that my door is shut all of the way. The last thing I need is Aunt Helen eavesdropping on this particular conversation. “There has to be another way.”

That’s what I said last time, I know. But the idea of driving cross-country in a van with a boy I don’t know is too crazy. Even for me.

“Hang on a second …” Laney pauses, working it out in her head. “You didn’t tell him we’d do it?”

“Of course not. We can’t drive to California with him. We don’t even know him.”

“Are you kidding? This is perfect! This is exactly what we’ve been hoping for! He has everything we need.”

Okay, I’ll admit. Turning it down does feel a little like kicking God in the balls.

I sigh. “It’s too easy.”

“You know I love you, Harper, but seriously? That’s a really lame excuse.”

The worst is that Laney’s right; this is potentially kind of completely perfect. Minus the fact that Jake refused to answer any of my questions, no matter how hard I pushed, and he apparently holds a grudge against me for no reason I can figure out. But what other choice do I have? No good one. And I totally believed him when he threatened to blab to Aunt Helen.

Rock, meet hard place.

“All right, all right. I’ll talk to Jake.” I sigh in defeat. “I guess we need to start planning. Figure out when we should leave.”

“Do you have a target date?”

“As soon as possible. Preferably.”

She laughs. “I hear you. Exams are over, thank God, and Mom and Dad are going on a weekend trip to visit some friends in Pittsburgh—so maybe we should leave then? If it’s okay with Jake.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s okay with him.”

“What are you going to do? Threaten bodily harm?”

“I’ll think of something.” I pause. Outside the door, I can hear the sound of someone coming up the stairs. “Hey, Laney, let me call you back.”

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Mom—it has to be. Aunt Helen doesn’t knock. Clearly she does not understand both the symbolic and literal implications of a closed door. What if she caught me smoking? Or undressing? Or, like, masturbating or something? Not that I really do that, ever—but it’s the principle of the thing. If she caught me doing that, she’d probably have a coronary.

I make a mental note to ask Laney for tips on where to acquire a vibrator. Maybe I can stow it in my nightstand, because I’m pretty sure when I went out for coffee, Aunt Helen searched my room. Imagine if she found something like that. Heads would be rolling.

Ooh, or maybe condoms. Or birth control pills. Now that would really freak her out.

I sit down on the bed and put the phone down. “Come in.”

Mom opens the door, standing with it halfway ajar. She doesn’t make a move to fully enter, just stays there, looking. But I can tell she’s not really seeing me, is lost somewhere in her own mind. We’ve barely spoken over the past few days—we exist parallel to each other.

“Hi,” I say, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

“Hi.” Mom hovers in the doorway, her hand on the knob. She leans on it like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Maybe it is. “Helen invited me to her morning church service this Sunday. Not just me—you, too. She thinks it would be good, for the both of us.”

“Helen thinks?” I bristle. “No, thanks.”

“Harper.” She pauses, breathing in and out through her nose a few times, one hand pressed to her temple as if to prevent the onslaught of a migraine. “I don’t appreciate your hostile attitude. She’s trying to help—”

“Well, maybe she’s trying, but she’s not helping.”

“She’s helping me!” she snaps. Her chin quivers with the threat of tears. “I need someone right now. It’s not like your father has been of any help, if you’ve bothered to notice. Helen is the only one who’s here for me. I can’t do this on my own. Do you not understand that? Does that not make any sense to you whatsoever?”

So that’s how my mother sees it? That she’s all alone, save for Aunt Helen? My presence means nothing. I’m invisible, or worse, a burden.

“Helen says I need to surrender,” she continues. “That I need to let God in, let Him take control. And I think it might help you find some peace, too, if you came with me.”

“Let me think about it,” I lie, because I know already that I will never step foot inside that church, know that come Sunday I’ll be long gone from this town.

Why should I stay? Aunt Helen hates me. Mom doesn’t need me. I can’t do anything right. Really, I’m in the way. This just makes my decision all that much easier.

Mom nods once and starts to close the door. For a second, I want nothing more than for her to come back, to cradle me in her arms like when I was a kid and had badly scraped a knee, to smooth her palm across my forehead as if checking for a fever, to do something—anything—to remind me of the days when knowing that she was my mother and that she was there was enough to make the bad things better.

It’s weird because I don’t really want her to comfort me; I just want her to try. But that yearning is only a dull ache in my chest, the kind of phantom pains amputees get where their missing limbs should be. It isn’t anything real.

The next day I take the bus across town to the Oleo Strut. The bus stop is three blocks from the store, and even though I have on a T-shirt, it’s another blistering day, and by the time I arrive in front of the brick building, the thin cotton is stuck to my back with sweat like a second skin. No one notices when I enter. Jake’s brother—I don’t know his name—is behind the counter, arguing with a man in his forties dressed in a skuzzy, spiky leather jacket and a pair of dirty corduroys.

“Punk is not dead,” Jake’s brother is insisting emphatically. “Look at—”

“Who? Green Day? Avril Lavigne?” the other man sneers. “That’s just manufactured pop bullshit. You’ve got all these poser bands out there, cranked out of big-name labels, pretending to be part of the counterculture when they’re just another cash cow for the capitalist, consumerist machine. It’s a gimmick. Kids these days think they can go out and buy punk self-identification through massmarketed band apparel from Hot Topic.”

“Yeah, but there is still good stuff, true punk. It’s out there, it’s just not being played on the radio. Punk isn’t just a look. It’s not even just about attitude. If you have the aesthetics and the posturing, you better back it up with the politics.”

“Bullshit. Johnny Ramone was an NRA-supporting, full-fledged Republican!” the guy protests.

Jake’s brother leans farther over the counter. “Fuck Johnny Ramone. The U.K. had the right idea—look at Joe Strummer. Look at the Sex Pistols, and Crass and—”

“Whatever, man. The culture’s still dead. Nothing like that exists anymore.”

“You just have to know where to find it,” Jake’s brother says. He withdraws a neon-green flyer from underneath the counter. “The Revengers. They’re hardcore, the real thing, and they’re playing a few shows in state later this summer. You gotta check them out—they don’t mess around. If after that you still think punk’s dead, I’ll give you any record in the store, half off. Hand to God.”

He holds up one hand solemnly. The man only grunts in response—but he takes the flyer before he leaves.

“You make a compelling case on behalf of punk rock,” I say as I approach the counter.

“Someone has to do it,” he replies with a grin. “Need help finding something?”

“Yes. I’m looking for the latest Green Day album.”

He laughs, surprised, and eyes me more closely. “Hey, I’ve seen you before. You were in here the other day, with the blond girl, right?”

“Yeah, that was me.” I pause and clear my throat. “Is your brother around?”

“Jake?” He rubs his chin. “He’s not working today. But I think he’s at home.”

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