“Those are the fat bodies,” the teacher said. “You’ll need to remove them to see the other organ systems.”
*
Justine wasn’t at work the next day. I was relieved. I took a copy of Seventeen from the magazine display. Katie Holmes was on the cover. She always wore that same half smile. Michelle appeared at my register, eyes puffy, tears running down her face, making the blonde baby hairs at her ears moist. She laid a copy of the Daily News on the conveyor belt, open to the local news.
“Northport Girl Dies in Swimming Pool,” the headline read. Next to it: Justine’s yearbook picture, her black bob carefully curled under, her wide mouth curled up at the sides, but not in what I’d call a smile. You couldn’t really make out her mole. I leaned in close to the newsprint, studied the arrangement of tiny black dots, read the first few lines: “A local teenage girl dove to her death in a tragic accident, breaking her cervical spine in the shallow end of her family swimming pool.”
Michelle threw her arms around me, wet cheek at my cheek, fleshy biceps hung over my shoulder bones. Should I have been crying? I felt separate from her, like the space created by the weight I’d lost was a buffer. She couldn’t touch me through it.
A woman wheeled up a full shopping cart. I passed each product over the sensor with painstaking precision, the resultant beeps creating a comforting rhythm: Perdue boneless skinless chicken breasts; potatoes, russet, 4072; Tropicana Pure Premium 100% orange juice, lots of pulp. I constructed double paper bags, sorting the refrigerated items in one, frozen items in another. I bagged the produce in layers: first potatoes, then apples, carrots, lemons, lettuce. I experienced especial satisfaction when three large cereal boxes—Lucky Charms, Cheerios, Frosted Flakes—slid snugly into a single bag. I placed each bill faceup into its respective slot in the cash register. I Windexed the conveyor belt at regular intervals.
At noon, I surveyed the cool dairy aisle for my lunch. I did not see any Dannon Light fat-free strawberry yogurt. I stood there long enough—staring at the place where it should’ve been, between the peach and vanilla—that I got cold. A stock boy I’d never seen before pushed a dolly stacked with boxes of Smucker’s Concord grape jelly.
“Dannon Light fat-free strawberry yogurt?”
He stopped and scanned the shelf. “There’s blueberry.” He pointed. “Or what about low-fat?”
I shook my head.
“Strawberry Yoplait?”
I ran back to my register and scoured the candy rack: Bubblicious in fat hot-pink balloon letters, Hershey’s in official silver capitals, Snickers in reassuring blue italics. I tore open and ate an entire bag of M&M’s in under a minute, barely grinding the candy shells between my teeth. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up brown with little flecks of rainbow. I started to cry, dug my fingernails into my palms so I’d stop. Theresa came in as I pumped pink liquid soap from the dispenser. She perched her rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses on her head and pursed her lips in the mirror. She looked older under the fluorescent light. Foundation had collected in the fine lines under her eyes. She dragged a fingertip along the delicate skin, redistributing the makeup. I soaped my right hand with my left, hiding my inflamed knuckles. Her lipstick had bled into little rivulets above her lip. She lined them, coated them with gloss. She zipped her makeup bag closed and smacked her lips together. She glanced at my reflection. I dabbed my eyes with a stiff paper towel.
*
Outside, the early evening light turned the parked cars glittering gold and striped the lot with long purple shadows. An old man struggled to get grocery bags from a cart into his trunk. A woman struggled to get her toddler into a car seat. A girl dropped her keys onto the asphalt, picked them up again.
I drove directly from the Stop & Shop parking lot—taking the speed bumps hard and fast—into the Hess station. I saw Ryan inside the glowing Express Mart. He shuffled out, hands pushed deep into his pockets, long braided leather belt hanging down his thigh.
“You heard?” he asked, looking down at me through the open window. His eyes were dark. He shifted his gaze to the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street.
I nodded.
He shook his head, arms crossed, drummed his fingers along his biceps. “See you at the wake, I guess,” he said.
I shrugged. I mean, I didn’t even know her.
Acknowledgements
Jin Auh, Paul Beatty, Yashwina Canter, Alexander Chee, Diane Chonette, Masie Cochran, Shelly Cohen, Aurélien Couput, Elizabeth DeMeo, Melissa Febos, Jessica Friedman, Javi Fuentes, Inger Gibb, Anna Godbersen, Emily Gould, Lauren Grodstein, Thomas Harmon, Ann Harmon Mayes, Ed Henrich, Hermione Hoby, Ajla Hodzic, Pamela Hint, Becky Kraemer, Catherine Lacey, Victor LaValle, Sanaë Lemoine, Nick Maravell, Christiane Manzella, Emma McIntyre, Nanci McCloskey, Monica McClure, Julie Montgomery, Alyssa Ogi, Ed Park, Rob Penner, Craig Popelars, Elizabeth Pratt, Kristen Radtke, Archie Rand, Spencer Ruchti, Kirsten Saracini, Andrew Shurtz, Lori Shurtz, Aaron Smith, Caroline Snyder, Dan Springer, Paul Stephens, Will Stephens, Kiely Sweatt, Molly Templeton, Marie Tennyson, Başak Ulubilgen, Tomas Vu, Mackenzie Watson, Alan Ziegler, Sara Zin
“Justine has the perfect electric feeling of that crush you have on the person you want to be next, when you don’t know any better, and you can’t tell if you’re running away from them or toward them. Harmon’s mix of text and image is seamless, intimate, a continuous dream, and Justine brings her talents together with formidable force and grace. A showstopping debut.”
—ALEXANDER CHEE, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“I’ve known Forsyth Harmon by the luxurious, eerie lines of her illustrations for years, and what a joy to discover that her writing is just as rich as her drawings. Justine beautifully captures the ragged-edged complexities of female friendship and the raw force with which a teenage girl moves through the turbulence of her previously quiet life. Justine functions like an illuminated manuscript, in which illustration can live independently yet brings wealths of new meaning to a text, weaving together a world that’s pulsingly alive.”
—KRISTEN RADTKE, author of Imagine Wanting Only This
“Forsyth Harmon tells powerful stories in both word and image, the two working together to convey meaning and emotion in a way that’s deeply satisfying. As a writer, and an artist, her gifts are on full display here. Justine is unsettling, adoring, insightful, and even a little frightening. The best books carry insights that will shake you. That’s what happened to me in this piercing novel. It shook me, and it made me see.”
—VICTOR LAVALLE, author of The Changeling
“Desire and self-destruction have a way of eclipsing and re-eclipsing each other in adolescence, as we look for reasons to live and ways to avoid living. With nervy, exacting illustrations and effortless prose, Forsyth Harmon’s Justine chronicles that struggle with the clarity and mystery of a black opal.”
—CATHERINE LACEY, author of Pew
“With reservoirs of emotional intelligence plus pinpoint precision of prose and line, Harmon conjures the world with a vividness peculiar to adolescence: she is devastatingly attuned to something as tiny as the poem of an unspooling cassette, as well as the enormity of those subtle yet life-shifting currents of longing, loathing, and eroticism that can run between two teenage girls. An exquisite book.”
—HERMIONE HOBY, author of Neon in Daylight
“Justine is a lushly rendered portrait of suburban teen girlhood in whose urgent and exquisite pages adolescent malaise, disordered eating, and the erotics of obsession are given the gravity of Greek drama. Forsyth Harmon is an artist who understands the holy power of longing.”
—MELISSA FEBOS, author of Girlhood
PHOTO: ©Emma McIntyre—emmamcintyre.com
FORSYTH HARMON is the illustrator of The Art of the Affair by Catherine Lacey, and has collaborated with writers Alexander Chee, Hermione Hoby, Sanaë Lemoine, and Leslie Jamison. She is also the illustrator of the essay collection, Girlhood, by Melissa Febos. Forsyth’s work has been
featured in The Believer, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Awl. She received an MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in New York.
www.forsythharmon.com
Follow her on Instagram @forsythharmon
Copyright © 2021 Forsyth Harmon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
Published by Tin House, Portland, Oregon
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Harmon, Forsyth, 1979- author, illustrator.
Title: Justine : a novel / Forsyth Harmon.
Description: Portland, Oregon : Tin House, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020040348 | ISBN 9781951142339 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781951142346 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Friendship--Fiction. | Coming of age--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H3717 Ju 2021 | DDC [Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040348
First US Edition 2021
Cover and interior illustrations by Forsyth Harmon
Cover and interior design by Diane Chonette
www.tinhouse.com
Justine Page 7
