Saving June (13 page)

You know that story about the Revolutionary War, how no one knows for sure who officially started it, whether it was the American colonists or the British army who shot first that morning in Lexington? Well, this is kind of like that. Because I’m not sure if the first punch is thrown by the Bible-thumpers in response to the girl-on-girl macking action, or if it’s thrown by the anarchists in response to the snarling man’s hocking spit that arcs through the air and lands somewhere in Anna’s hair. It happens too fast to tell. There’s just a flurry of motion, indignant cries and shouts, the sound of signs being ripped apart, fists flying.

“Come on.” Jake latches onto my arm and drags me out of the circle.

I dig in my heels. “But Laney—” I say. I’m not going anywhere without her.

“The cops are going to break it up in a second,” he answers. “If she gets arrested—”

Oh, God. I crane my neck to see three nearby policemen descending on the skirmish. The one Laney is caught in the middle of.

I strain forward, but Jake yanks me back by the arm again. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not just going to leave her!”

“No one’s leaving anyone,” he says calmly. “I’ll go track her down. You, make yourself scarce.” He points across the street, to the alley between two buildings. “Wait there and don’t move.”

“But—”

“Wait. There.”

Jake leaves no room for argument. He pulls his black bandanna over his face, heading back toward the growing crowd, and I waver, not sure if I should ignore him and follow anyway. Finally I decide listening to him is the best course, because if the cops grab me, I am so screwed. Beyond screwed. And if Laney gets arrested.

I’m so caught up in worrying about this possibility that I don’t even notice the curb until I’ve tripped over it. My arm and knee scrape roughly against the pavement where I brace my fall. I stay down on the ground for a moment, catching my breath, before I slowly pull myself to my feet and duck between the two buildings. I cradle my skinned arm. It stings really badly, along with the knee I landed on. There’s a hole torn through my jean leg. My favorite pair. Fantastic.

I press my back against the brick and close my eyes. God, where are they? I tell myself Laney will be okay. She’s always okay. And Jake’s handling it. I almost laugh. Yeah, like I trust Jake to do anything. He can’t even be up front about June.

Suddenly I realize it has been almost three hours since my sister crossed my mind at all. A new record. It hurts to think about June, but not thinking about her feels like betrayal. After all, this trip is about her. For her. And I deserve to carry all of this. Her ever-present memory. The incessant twinge of guilt in my gut. I deserve every bit of pain I get. I deserve to hurt.

I slam my injured arm back against the brick. On impact the scrape singes with pain. I cry out, feeling like an idiot, but at the same time feeling a little better. It’s better than empty numbness. Better than this anger that just sits in my chest, simmering but never boiling over.

The pain brings everything into sharp focus. God, I am so screwed up. I’m no better than those goth girls at school who cut themselves with safety pins and razor blades, the ones with silver scars laced around their wrists like bracelets. Why can’t I just feel things like a normal person?

I’m holding the hem of my shirt to my bleeding elbow and panting against the pain when Jake appears with a breathless Laney in tow. Laney grabs me in a tight squeeze, but I’m still reeling too much to reciprocate.

“You’re okay?” I ask when I can speak again.

“I’m fine,” she tells me. “They’re arresting Anna and Devon, though. I have no idea where Seth is.” Her eyes widen when she sees my arm. “Oh, shit! What happened?”

“I tripped.” I shrug. “It’s nothing.”

She looks me in the eye for a second longer before she nods. She then turns to Jake. “What do we do now?” she asks him, fingers wrapped around my good wrist, like she’s afraid if she lets go I’ll just float away into the clouds or something.

He glances over his shoulder and then back to us. “We run.”

The moment we find an opening, we don’t stop running for two full blocks, where we reach the entrance to some small corner grocery market. And we stop then only because I’m afraid I’m going to pass out. We’re all breathing hard.

“We have to go back,” Laney says breathlessly. “Seth—”

“Seth can handle Seth,” Jake tells her. He gives her a nudge, pushing her over the store’s threshold—not hard, but firm. “He’s gotten out of a lot scrapes on his own before.”

Laney sticks out her lower lip, obviously unconvinced.

“He’s probably already gone,” he continues. “And do we really need to draw attention from the cops right now? I’m not going to jail for you two.”

Would that actually happen? An image of Jake handcuffed
in the back of a police cruiser passes through my mind. I haven’t spent much time contemplating the consequences for this. Not outside the “grounded for life” thing, anyway.

Laney huffs and marches down the snack food aisle. I follow, watching as she picks up a pack of gum and examines it single-mindedly. She refuses to acknowledge my presence.

“I’m sure he got out fine,” I try. “He’s done this stuff a million times before. He said so himself.”

“I guess,” she mutters, still not looking at me.

“I know you’re worried, but Jake’s right. It’d be useless to go back. He’s probably with Danny.”

“I just—” She bites her lip. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

This stops me. I know a little something about not having the chance to say your goodbyes. But this isn’t the same, for obvious reasons.

“We can call him on his cell later, when things have calmed down,” I tell her. When she doesn’t say anything, I roll my eyes, exasperated. “Seriously, chill out. It’s not like he’s
dead
.”

That last part slips out unintentionally. I want to take it back, but it’s too late, and Laney’s never looked at me like she’s looking at me now. Like she doesn’t even know me.

Finally she sighs like she’s shaking something off. “Whatever. I’m going to go get a coffee.”

She walks off without me, and if I was a better person, I would follow her. But I’m too annoyed to soothe her bruised feelings, too afraid I’ll snap at her again if I try. Instead I wander into the back, staring at the array of colored labels in the coolers. I open one of them and stick my roughed-up elbow in. At least it’s stopped bleeding by now. The rush of cold air feels good.

“Hey.” It’s Jake, right at my ear. I jump about a foot in the air.

“Don’t do that,” I snap. “Jesus.”

“Sorry,” he says, without sounding sorry at all. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Hmm, I don’t know, maybe because you left half your arm on the pavement of Michigan Avenue?”

“Lovely imagery,” I drawl, thoroughly grossed out. I shrug. “I’m fine. Just…kinda sore.”

“Let me look.”

Before I can object, he takes my arm in both hands and gingerly traces his fingertips over my wrist and elbow. As he touches it, I hiss between my teeth, the pain sharp and sudden. He keeps his hand there longer than necessary. The contrast of his cool fingers—how can they be so cold when it’s so warm outside?—on my too-hot skin makes me shiver involuntarily.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, quickly drawing his hand back.

Is he blushing? “I think you’ll be okay. Might want to pick up some bandages, though.”

Good idea. I swipe a box of gauze and some antibacterial cream and meet Jake and Laney at the counter. The cashier eyes us suspiciously as we pool our purchases together. He probably realizes we’re part of the protesting crowd—he looks prepared to whip out a baseball bat and chase us out of the store at the first sign of trouble. I try for a disarming smile as Jake pays with a twenty-dollar bill; the clerk’s dubious expression stays static, but he says nothing, and we slip out of the store unscathed.

All of us are quiet on the train ride back to Wicker Park. I take the window seat, and Laney sits at the other side of the aisle by herself, popping and snapping her gum sullenly. Jake squeezes in next to me, his feet propped up on the seat in front of us. I’m all too aware of his hip pressed up against mine.

“How’s the elbow?” he asks.

I shrug, and he rolls his eyes and pulls out the box of bandages. I let him pick up my arm and cover my scrape. When he gently smoothes out the bandage’s edges, I feel kind of light-headed and breathless, and that just makes me feel ridiculous. When I actually think about Jake himself, I’m reminded of the other feelings he inspires: annoyance, anger, exasperation. Basically any emotion on the spectrum that causes me to roll my eyes so hard they just about fall out of their sockets.

We get off the train at our stop and drag ourselves the three blocks to the brownstone on Albertson, and when we load into Joplin, the sense of relief shared between the three of us is nearly palpable. It isn’t until Jake sticks the key into the ignition and starts up the van that he says what we’re all thinking: “Time to get the hell outta Dodge.”

Laney falls asleep before we even get out of the city, snoring soundly as she curls up against the armrest. I don’t blame her; the weight of the day settles over my bones more and more as Joplin eats up the interstate, the dashed lines on the road bleeding together in a blur.

My mind wanders as I look out the window. I think about the last thing I said to June. Before—before. Well. The last thing.

It’d be easy to say that our final exchange was profound, meaningful, or at the very least amiable. No one would be any wiser. The only witness to it was Laney—but that’s only because I was on the phone with her, and even she doesn’t know that that was the last time I saw June.

I was sitting on my bed. In theory I was doing a reading for World History, but in all actuality, my textbook lay facedown a few feet away, woefully neglected. I’d ditched the adventures of Charlemagne and opted instead to paint my toenails while discussing weekend plans with Laney. Laney, as usual, was advocating an activity that involved
public intoxication, nudity and committing multiple felonies.

“So Sara just called me. She said a whole bunch of people are going to get totally trashed at her house and then drive over to the community pool at, like, two in the morning. Apparently Greg’s brother was a lifeguard last year, and he told him how to sneak in, so we can all go skinny-dipping. Isn’t that awesome?”

“That’s not awesome,” I said. “That sounds unbelievably lame.”

“Come on!” she whined. “We never
do
anything.”

“That is such a lie.”

Okay, so usually we ended up going to the one-screen dollar theater across town, or to the bowling alley, or to a crappy party serving equally crappy beer. Grand Lake isn’t exactly brimming with entertainment possibilities.

I’d just finished painting my toenails black. With the phone cradled between my ear and shoulder, I unscrewed the bottle of red. The idea was to do red stripes down the middle of each toe to match my hands. Just as I started on my left big toe, my door opened, and the sound made me jump a little, the streak of red smearing into a zigzag blob.

It was June. I don’t remember what she was wearing. I don’t even remember if her hair was up or down. All I know is that she asked me if I’d taken any of her notebooks. Like I’d have any reason to steal her school notes.

She was being annoyingly relentless about it, like it was so vital to her very existence, and I, already pissed about the nail polish and at being interrupted, snapped, “No, I don’t have your stupid notebook, get the fuck
out,”
and she said something back—I don’t know what. Maybe she yelled, but probably not.

She was already retreating to her room, but I got up and slammed the door anyway. I said something to Laney like, “God, what a bitch,” and Laney laughed, and we continued our long-standing debate on whether or not Mr. Collins, the newly divorced physics teacher in his late twenties, was boning Angela Tapely, our fellow junior who was prone to leaning over his desk in low-cut tops and giggling at his stupid jokes about thermodynamics.

So stupid, that I can remember what color I painted my nails, but I can’t remember what my sister looked like, what she last said to me, before she killed herself.

I push the thought away and close my eyes to Jake humming along to some Neil Young number under his breath. I know it’s Neil Young because he’s taken to automatically briefing me on each artist as their songs come on. It’s like a twenty-second condensed episode of
Behind the Music
every time he opens his mouth.

I actually do find it interesting, despite myself. But I’m not going to let
him
know that.

The last thing I remember is him schooling me on Grace Slick—“Once she and Abbie Hoffman, the activist, wanted
to spike President Nixon’s tea with LSD. They came pretty close, too. Oh, and this song’s called ‘Never Argue with a German if You’re Tired or European.’ She wrote it about crashing her car near the Golden Gate Bridge in a drag race. She is
badass!
“—right before I drift off.

I dream about riding in June’s car with the windows rolled down. No music, no talking, just the two of us enjoying the summer weather and the open road. I can’t see her face—every time I turn my head, it’s like looking directly into the glare of a blinding light, but somehow I know instinctively that it’s her. I tip my chin up to feel the sun warming my face, the wind in my hair. When I venture a glance at the driver’s seat again, it’s empty, no one at the wheel.

I’m jolted out of sleep when Jake hits a bump in the road. Elton John is wailing about a rocket man, and my head knocks hard against the window, smacked into stars. Great. Now I’m injured in two places. Life can’t get any more awesome, can it?

“Careful,” Jake warns me. “I don’t think you can afford to lose more brain cells.”

I glare, still caught in the last threads of the dream, and rub a hand across my eyes to push it away. I touch the soon-to-be goose-egg spot on my head and ask, “Where are we?”

“Still in Illinois. Not too far from the Missouri state line,
though. I pulled off the interstate a few minutes ago.” His face stretches with a long yawn. “Getting kind of tired.”

“Did you want Laney to drive?” I look over my shoulder; she’s still all balled up, mouth slack with sleep. I earned a learner’s permit months and months ago, but I haven’t gotten around to taking the driver’s test yet. What was the point, when I had Laney for rides, and if not her, June? Well. Not June anymore.

Obviously.

“You think I let just
anyone
sit behind this wheel?” Jake says incredulously. “I don’t think so. No, I’ll be doing all the driving. But I am jonesing for a decent mattress right now.”

We stop at a nondescript motel on the side of the road. The vacancy sign glows in yellow neon, the second
A
flickering in and out sporadically. Jake pulls into the drive and cuts the engine. He opens the door, hops out and leans back in for a second. “Stay here,” he instructs, and I roll my eyes, because really, what else am I going to do?

A couple minutes later he returns with a plastic key card in hand, and we drive around to the back lot, facing the rows of green doors. Jake elbows Laney awake before giving her the key card. She mumbles something unintelligible and scoots out of the van. When I start to open my door, Jake puts a hand on my arm and says, “Wait,” and I do, until Laney’s safe inside the room.

“You need to call your mom,” he says.

Part of me wants to argue, but I know he’s right. And I’d rather get this over with while Laney’s not hovering.

After a minute I nod. “Okay.”

I get out and head to the pay phone next to the ice machine, Jake following after. I stop and spin around.

“I don’t need the moral support, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I snap. The last thing I need is for Jake of all people to get annoyingly protective.

“Stop acting like a five-year-old who missed her nap time. I’m going to call my brother when you’re done,
if
you don’t mind.”

“Don’t you have a cell phone?”

“It’s one of those prepaid ones. It’s only got five minutes left. I’m saving it for an emergency.”

Oh. “You can have first dibs, if you want,” I offer.

He grins. “No, I think I want to watch you go.”

He really would, wouldn’t he? Ass.

I glare and snatch the phone off the hook, careful to keep my fingers off of the rock-hard gray wad of gum stuck on the handle. Jake is going to take a perverse pleasure in seeing me get reamed out by whichever member of the familial unit picks up the line.

I pop in my quarters and punch the numbers on the keypad sharply, just to show him I’m not intimidated by his being there. Still, the knot in my stomach slides into my throat as the line on the other end begins to ring. Five
rings will get me to the answering machine, and then I can just leave a message, which would be easy. So, so much easier than talking directly to someone.

On the fourth ring, I hold my breath, hoping, but just before the machine can click on, my mother answers, breathless.

“Hello?” A long pause follows, punctuated by her breathing. “Hello? Is anyone—”

“Hi,” I whisper, twisting the metal phone cord so tight around my hand that my knuckles whiten.

“Harper! “ Mom’s voice comes out in a gasp, choked with relief. “What’s going on? Where are you? Are you—”

“I’m fine,” I cut in. “Laney’s with me. We’re both safe.”

“Where are you calling from? I’ll call someone, or come pick you up myself—”

“No.” My response is firm, and as I speak the word, I release the coiled cord suddenly. It snaps automatically back into place, swinging from side to side. “I can’t tell you. I—I need to be…away. Just for a little while. To figure some things out.”

“Figure them out here,” Mom says, but it’s more of a plea than a command.

Her desperation tugs at me. For a second I think maybe I should listen to her. Maybe I should go home. She’s my mother, after all. She’s going through so much, and I’m adding to that. But then I think of June, and how she
always listened, always followed the rules, and about the California postcard folded up in the zipper pouch of my duffel bag, and I know it’s too late. I can’t back out now.