The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones

by Daven McQueen

  “Maybe you’re not who I thought you were,” he whispered. Then, before he could stop himself, he hurried to the front door. When it shut behind him, all the air went out of his chest in one long stream and he nearly collapsed onto the scratchy doormat. The bonsai tree, on the table to his left, seemed to taunt him.

  It was in a daze that he made his way through the floral maze. Several times he imagined Juniper, sitting there alone in that sad, sad house, and almost turned back around—but another emotion, anger or maybe fear, drove him away again, made him forge ahead until he burst through the gate of the white picket fence and left it all behind him.

  Juniper’s bicycle had fallen to the ground; he picked it up and leaned it against the fence, then picked up his own. He cast one last glance back at the house, feeling his heart pounding heavily in his chest. Anger made his vision pulse with red. There was a rolling nausea in his stomach; he didn’t want to be here anymore. Forcing his gaze away from the house, he climbed onto his bike and pedaled away down the narrow path. The trees seemed to sigh in relief.

  Thirteen

  The dust swelled in Ethan’s wake as he pounded down the path. Arms pumping, head tipped forward, legs carrying him in long strides. By now he knew these paths by heart. At the next turn, he’d see the old magnolia whose branches bent nearly to the ground. There was a fork coming up: to the right was Alligator Hill and to the left, the lake. He knew the spots where the birds chirped the loudest, where the grass was filled with hidden burrs, where the path became almost smooth and the dust nearly disappeared. Juniper had taught him well.

  But it was Juniper he was trying to forget today as he ran. There was a state he could reach sometimes during his longest distance races when his mind went blank and all he knew was the way his heart beat in time with his footsteps. He couldn’t quite get there now, but he was close, his skin burning with the effort. Just another mile, maybe, and he could forget that he hadn’t spoken to Juniper in nearly four days.

  He made it half that distance—maybe less—when a rumbling sound cut through the forest, seeming to come from the trees themselves. It had been cloudy all day while Ethan was at work, but now, with a flash of lightning, hot rain poured down between the branches. The trees offered little protection; in a few paces, Ethan was soaked. He swiped a hand across his eyes and turned right at the next fork, toward home. Now, as he ran, dust was replaced by spurts of mud and his sweat mingled with rainwater. By the time he reached Aunt Cara’s front porch, his curls were plastered to his forehead and his sneakers felt like they were filled with water.

  Aunt Cara met him at the door with two towels, motioning for him to stay on the porch until he was dry. “First real storm of the summer,” she said, peering out at the downpour. Ethan didn’t respond as he scrubbed the towel across his face, wrung out his hair, and kicked off his shoes. Even with two towels wrapped around him, he still dripped all the way to the bathroom.

  “Lunch is ready when you’re done!” Aunt Cara called as he stepped inside.

  “Okay,” he said to the closed door. “Thanks.”

  One hot shower later, he emerged into the kitchen in sweats. Though it wasn’t cold outside, Aunt Cara scooped him up a bowl of thick bean soup and set it at the table. She hovered for a moment as he silently began to eat, then blurted, “So, Juniper hasn’t been around lately.”

  Ethan paused, spoon halfway to his mouth. “No,” he said carefully. “She hasn’t.” He didn’t look at his aunt. He was worried that she would catch on after half a week without Juniper stopping by the house at least once, but he’d hoped that his disappearances during his now-daily runs would be mistaken for meetings with Juniper.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Ethan considered—if he told her, she’d keep asking questions. Then again, if he didn’t tell her, she’d probably still keep asking questions. He set down his spoon and said, “Actually, we’re kind of in a fight.”

  “Oh, honey.” One hand on her swelling stomach, Aunt Cara lowered herself into the seat across from Ethan’s. “What happened?”

  “I was at her house the other day and her aunt called me something.” He turned away, cheeks burning, unable to repeat it. But Aunt Cara seemed to understand.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh dear.” Ethan felt one of her hands close around his. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”

  He shook his head. “I mean, it’s not the first time I’ve heard it. It’s just coming from her aunt—I mean, I know I’d never met her, and it shouldn’t mean anything. But it hurt.”

  “Of course it hurt. How could it not?”

  “Not the word,” Ethan said. “The fact that Juniper let her say it.”

  Aunt Cara was silent for a while, her head turned to the window. Rain streaked down the glass and thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “I didn’t see a colored person till I was seventeen,” she said. “It was your mother. We’d grown up sheltered here in Ellison, but your dad went off to college in the city and met your mom while she was waitressing to put herself through nursing school. He didn’t think anything of bringing her back home. Our parents had a cow. I had a cow. I’d only seen black people in movies, and now here one was, standing on my front porch.”

  Ethan said nothing.

  “I thought he was crazy when he marched on in here at just twenty-three and said he was going to marry her. Our parents thought he was irredeemable. They said since his marriage wasn’t legal in the state of Alabama, it might as well not be legal anywhere. They refused to speak to him again after that, not even when they were on their deathbeds. And your poor mother, Lydia—I can’t imagine that visit was easy for her.”

  At the mention of his grandparents, Ethan felt cold. His father had rarely mentioned them, had only shown him a few dusty photographs of them in the thirties, young and blond and sitting at the edge of what Ethan now knew was Ellison’s lake. Never had he heard that they had disowned their son for his choice of partner. He imagined, with growing anxiety, his parents sending them his baby pictures, only to have the images thrown away without a glance. To them, his existence would have been shameful. But they had both died before he turned three, so thankfully, he would never know.

  “And as much as I hate to admit it,” Aunt Cara went on, “I didn’t talk to your dad for a long time either. Almost a year. But he wrote me letters from Washington when they moved up there to get married. He told me about Lydia, how kind and patient and tough she was. And about the life they were building together. And about how, when it came down to it, she was just a person, and all colored folks are just people. And slowly, he changed my mind.”

  “What?” Ethan muttered. “My dad’s a hero because he married a Negro woman? And the twins and I are miracle kids?”

  Aunt Cara shook her head, frowning as she gathered her thoughts. “No, he’s no hero. He’s a good man, but it’s separate from that. My point is, he was accepting, and open minded, and he really did love your mother. But there’s a lot he doesn’t understand, still, I know. There’s a lot more that I don’t understand. But we’re trying, Ethan. And Juniper’s trying too. Even if you can’t always tell.”

  Ethan laid his hands on the table, palms up in a gesture of helplessness. “Trying doesn’t make them stop staring,” he said. “Trying doesn’t make me feel safe here. And I guess I just think there’s only so much trying you all can do. There are some things about me and my life that you’ll never understand.” He paused, looked into his quickly cooling bowl of soup. “And probably there are things about my mom and her life that I’ll never understand. Or that girl who got arrested on the bus. Because of who my dad is, and the parts of him that are in me, even if they’re small.”

  Ethan was surprised to find himself being so open with Aunt Cara. These were probably the most words he had said to her since he’d been staying here. To her credit, she didn’t try to argue with him, just nodded thoughtfully and looked out th
e window again. The rain was less intense now, just soft patters on the roof.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said eventually. “About all of that. And I wish I knew what to say. In the general store that day, I wish I had . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what to say, Ethan, or how to help you. I wish that I did.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, and realized he meant it. “I don’t need you to have all the answers. Thanks for trying. And for lunch. It was good, I’m just not really hungry anymore.” He pushed back from the table and carried his half-full bowl to the sink. Aunt Cara was still staring out the window as he ducked out of the kitchen.

  Just as he was making his way to the hallway, she called, “You could call her sometime, if you want.”

  Ethan paused, turned around. “What?”

  “Your mother.” Aunt Cara was looking at him now, a small, sad smile on her lips. “You know she’s back in Montgomery now. Uncle Robert and I have her contact information. I could give you her telephone number, if you’d like to call her. Maybe it’ll help you figure some things out.”

  Ethan’s heart skipped in his chest—never since his mother had left had he been able to call her. She’d moved around a lot those first few years before settling back in Montgomery, and between changing phone numbers and an increasingly unstable relationship with his father, it had never worked out. She always called him, as his dad had pointed out, on birthdays and holidays. But now he could call her on his own terms.

  His first thought was, I have to do it. His second thought was, I have to tell Juniper. Then he remembered her face when he’d left her house four days earlier, and his stomach sank. He thought about calling his mom and wondered what he’d say, where he’d start. Suddenly, without a friend by his side, the thought seemed daunting.

  “Thanks, Aunt Cara, really,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’ll think about it.”

  Once he was in his room, he tumbled into bed, threw an arm over his eyes, and willed himself to fall asleep. He dreamt in confusing flashes of color—of his father’s stern face, of his mother’s soft hands on his shoulders, of bright orange hair flying, cape-like, in the wind.

  When he woke up, it was dark out. Squinting at the clock on his bedside table, he saw that it was nearly midnight; he’d slept right through dinner. The rain had stopped, and through the window, Ethan could see that it had left behind a clear sky. He lay there for a while, listening to any sounds throughout the house, but it seemed that Uncle Robert and Aunt Cara had gone to bed. He tried for a while to sleep again, but after his nap, he was wide awake.

  Rubbing his eyes, he stood up and strode to the window, where he could see the half-moon hovering above the trees. His shoes sat by the wall, and he silently slipped them on. Like someone in a trance, he raised the window slowly and, just as he had with Juniper a few weeks before, climbed through and leapt out onto the grass.

  By now, he could make the hike to the lake with his eyes closed—which was nearly what he did that night as, by the light of the moon, he put one foot blindly in front of the other and hoped that he would find his way. The ground was hard and damp from the storm, and the trees were dewy. Occasionally, a gust of wind would disturb the leaves and send droplets of water onto Ethan’s shoulders.

  Somewhere among the trees, as pebbles crunched beneath his feet and a light breeze nipped at his skin, Ethan felt himself fully waking up. He rubbed at the sweat already gathering on his bare arms and blinked himself back to life—by the time he was making the final turn toward the lake, his head was clear.

  At this late hour, the lake barely looked real. Its surface glimmered as if it were made of crystals, and the water that lapped against the grass made the faintest whispering sound. He stopped at its edge and stared out at the midnight blue. He’d heard about lakes like this, nights like these, where the sky and water were so near in color that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. For all Ethan could tell, he was staring out at a curving expanse of sky.

  Shivering despite the nighttime heat, he removed his shoes, and, leaving them in the center of the path, made a barefoot trek to the dock that stretched out like a lonely arm next to the boathouse. Its dark wooden surface was slick with misty spray; he tiptoed carefully across the planks, wincing as they scratched at his feet. Once he reached the end, he contemplated for a moment the idea of diving in, clothes and all, and holding his breath—letting the water fill his lungs and drag him to the bottom of the lake, where his body would drift among the tiny minnows and waving plants until it surfaced several days later, bloated and pale.

  Instead, he felt gravity tug him down until he was sitting on the end of the dock, his legs dangling over the side. Dampness from the wood spread across the seat of his pants. He cuffed his sweats and dipped his toes into the waves. A tree across the lake bent its branches as it was struck by a sudden gust of wind, and it looked to Ethan as if it were raising an arm in greeting. He hesitantly lifted his hand in return.

  He suddenly wished that Juniper was beside him.

  “Look!” she would have cried, pointing at the waving tree. “It’s saying hello! Hi, tree! My name is Juniper Jones—I’m a tree, too, actually. A much smaller tree, but still a tree. We’re family.”

  And Ethan would laugh, rolling his eyes as she forced him to introduce himself to the drooping willow, to shout across the empty lake and shatter its jeweled surface with his voice. But he would do it, of course. With her, that was the person he could be.

  He looked sharply to his left, certain, for a moment, that he had seen a flash of carrot-red hair. But it was only a cattail, dancing among the shadows on the shore.

  Juniper was shipwrecked in her worn house, surrounded by an ocean of flowers. And Ethan was here, sitting on this dock alone, because she had hurt him—and even though he knew deep down that she hadn’t meant it, the pain was still there.

  As if reprimanding him, a wave slapped his ankle.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  The voice came from just behind him, piercing the still night air with a familiar gruffness. Ethan jumped, nearly falling into the water in that moment before he realized it was Gus. He looked up to see the older man standing a few feet away.

  “Something like that,” Ethan replied.

  Gus nodded, then, with a grunt, lowered himself down beside Ethan, his legs in their faded jeans falling toward the lake. Some water sloshed over his thick boots, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  Ethan studied Gus out of the corner of his eye—the elderly boater was staring out at the lake with a quiet fondness, the slightest smile playing on his lips. Juniper might love this lake as a friend, but Gus loved it as a child. Anyone could see it in his eyes.

  Somehow both unnerved and comforted by the silence, Ethan kicked at the reflection of the stars. His bare feet were numb and shriveled.

  “Something’s wrong between you and Junie,” Gus said, a question that fell flat at the end. He didn’t look at Ethan, but his face had changed. He knew.

  “Yeah.” Ethan sighed, rubbing his arms so that his hands would not be idle. He thought that if he did not do something, he would use them to hurl himself into the lake.

  Gus nodded sagely. “She was here today. Didn’t say much. Didn’t tell me what. But I could tell.” Now, finally, he turned his head to Ethan, narrowing his eyes so that his bushy eyebrows formed a gray caterpillar across his forehead. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “No, not really,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “It’s not a big deal, really. I was just at her house, and her aunt was there, and she—and Juniper—”

  Tears began to slip from his eyes before he realized it, and as he blubbered out a fragmented mess of the story, Ethan wasn’t sure if he was crying over Juniper, or her aunt, or stupid Samuel Hill—he just knew that his entire body was shaking with the insurmountable sadness of something, and down to his bones, he was shattering.
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  Gus listened but made no move to comfort him. His hands remained stuffed into his pockets, his head bowed, moving only for the occasional nod.

  “I see,” he would mutter under his breath. “I see.”

  When he finished, Ethan felt as if he had been struck by lightning. Every limb felt in the wrong place and his face was raw from the tears. Embarrassed, he swiped angrily at his eyes, rubbing until they were sore and stinging and red, but dry.

  “Sorry,” he said, wishing he’d thought to bring his handkerchief. “You probably think I’m the biggest sissy right about now. Crying and all that—I know I shouldn’t be doing that, I’m not a girl, for God’s sake—I don’t know where it came from, really—”

  “Son.” Gus cut him off with a hard syllable, sounding almost angry. “There’s nothing wrong with a man cryin’. You go on saying that only the girls do it, and I shut you up myself. Understand?”

  Eyes wide, Ethan nodded. Looking satisfied, Gus turned back to the lake, cracking the knuckles on both hands before finally giving a response.

  “That girl’s proud,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Don’t seem like it, but she is. She’s protective too. Lives to please the people she loves. You and Annabelle are two of the people she loves the most. When all that happened, I’ll bet she just didn’t know what to do. And that pride, it’s stopping her from saying anything about it. She doesn’t want to admit she hurt you.”

  That was the most Ethan had ever heard Gus say, and as the words left the man’s lips, he wondered if they were true. He couldn’t imagine Juniper—bird wings, sunshine Juniper—being weighed down by something so silly and material as pride. He couldn’t imagine her being weighed down by anything; in his mind, she was a balloon, spiraling endlessly into the sky.

  Gus must have seen the doubt on Ethan’s face, because he added, “Listen, son, I’m not saying it’s right. And I’m not saying you should forgive her just like that. I’m just saying, she’s got pride enough for everyone in this town.” He paused for a long moment, staring at something in the dark between the trees. “And also twice the heart,” he said, quieter now, and looked at Ethan. “Hell, she’s got enough heart for the whole goddamn world.” Clapping Ethan on the shoulder, he clambered laboriously to his feet. “Don’t worry ’bout her, son. She’ll come around.”