The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones

by Daven McQueen

  “Long story short, he got friendly. Too friendly. Used to be that they’d say hello when they saw each other around. That’s all anyone thought it was. But then her daddy found them together out in their garage. I think you can guess what they were doing.”

  Juniper clutched tighter at her skirt. “She cared about him.”

  “She thought she cared,” Noah fired back. “He brainwashed her. It’s what people like him do.” Juniper was shaking now she was so angry, but he turned pointedly away from her, back to Ethan. “The dad chased him off the property, of course. But he didn’t stop there—how could he? Running into the woods stark naked in the middle of the night isn’t punishment enough.”

  Despite himself, despite Juniper’s quivering lips, Ethan leaned forward. His heart was racing.

  “Luckily,” Noah went on, “he knew people. Ever heard of the Klan, Ethan? May not be big in Washington, but everyone knows them around here. They keep the Negroes in line. Anyway, this dad, he knew someone in the Klan. My uncle. Lives just a couple towns over. And he called my uncle, and he said, ‘Rick, we’ve got a problem here,’ and my uncle Rick came over right away.”

  Noah smiled, his eyes as heartless as Ethan had ever seen them. “The next day, they found Cole strung up in a tree down by the lake.” He drew a finger across his neck. “Dealt with.”

  Ethan was silent. His heartbeat was loud in his ears.

  “I just wanted you to know,” Noah said after a while, “what happens when you try to mix things together. Try to say that this”—he pointed between Ethan and Juniper—“is okay. Because it’s not, Ethan. I know you’re not from around here, that’s why I’m telling you. Just being a good neighbor.”

  “Noah O’Neil,” Juniper hissed, low and hard. “You worthless piece of crap.”

  Noah simply smiled. “Oh, shut up, Juniper. You know as well as I do that Ethan’s not welcome here. God knows why his father thought he could show back up to town with his half-breed child.” He turned to Ethan, tilting his head to one side. “Things have been changing since the court’s ruling last year, about that school in Kansas. The colored folks have been changing. They’re saying that a revolution’s coming, did you know that? They’re saying that things are gonna change.” He laughed. “But I’m not worried. Because my uncle, and all the people like him, they’ll keep everything under control.”

  When Ethan’s mother, at her kitchen table in Montgomery, had said the word revolution, it had made Ethan’s heart lurch. From Noah’s lips, it sounded like a slur. Ethan didn’t realize it, but he was standing. He was dropping his chicken sandwich onto the grass. He was turning, arm outstretched, to slap Noah O’Neil across the face.

  There was a shattering clap as Ethan’s palm connected with Noah’s cheek, then a moment where everything froze. The lake, the wind, the hovering bugs—everything was suspended midair, midmovement. Everything was silent. Then Noah toppled backward into the dirt and the sound came rushing back.

  “What the hell?” Noah cried, clutching at his cheek. He lay stunned, looking up at Ethan with wide eyes.

  Juniper, too, had leapt to her feet, and now looked frantically between Noah and Ethan. Ethan stood panting, fists clenched, ears ringing. As Noah regained his composure and struggled to his feet, Ethan stumbled backward.

  “How dare you,” Noah growled, lurching at him. But Ethan was faster, and he knew it. He whirled and took off running toward the trees, heartbeat ricocheting through his whole body. Noah didn’t give chase, but Ethan heard him shriek the same thing over and over: “You’ll regret this. You’ll regret this!”

  Juniper found Ethan in the forest clearing some time later. He was lying next to the brook, fists clenched at his side. He stared up at the sky through a gap in the trees until she leaned over him and filled his vision with her freckled face. She carried the picnic basket, still half full of sandwiches.

  “I thought you’d be here,” she said. She sat down beside him, crossing her legs, and picked at the grass. Ethan said nothing.

  “Okay, I’m guessing you’re upset. That makes sense.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ethan asked. He still stared upward, where the blue was so bright it hurt his eyes. Only minutes before he’d been looking at Juniper as they ate chicken sandwiches and thinking about how sometimes she made his stomach turn somersaults. And as if reading his mind, Noah had appeared and informed him that this could never be.

  Juniper frowned down at her hands. “I guess I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “I’m already scared, Juniper. I’ve been scared this whole time.” It was the first time he’d said it out loud, but it was true. For weeks now, fear had been his default. Now, it just felt more real.

  “I’m sorry,” Juniper said.

  “I know.” Ethan lifted a hand and trailed it in the brook. Juniper, sitting a few feet away, seemed to fill the entire clearing with her anxious energy. He wondered if she was imagining, like he was, finding this boy he’d never met in a tree out in the woods, looking into his eyes and realizing how easily that could have been him. How easily that could still be him.

  Juniper scooted closer. “I should have told you,” she said. “No one else was going to, at least not in a nice way. But of course they’ve all been thinking about it. And I know you being my friend doesn’t make it any better.”

  Ethan felt the urge to inch farther away, but there was nowhere to go. He was struck with the sick realization that his proximity to Juniper was a threat to both of them and it always had been. How foolish he’d been to let himself feel anything for her, thinking their friendship could be anything more.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he blurted, looking up at her.

  Juniper glanced at him sharply. “Why would you say that? I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “No, I—” He shook his head. “I’d never mean to hurt you. But I don’t want it to happen by accident either. Like collateral damage.”

  “Ethan, you don’t have to worry about me,” Juniper said quietly. “Nothing’s going to happen. Noah just talks big.”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan said. He could still feel a sting on his palm where it had connected with Noah’s face. And he still heard the older boy’s words repeating over and over. You’ll regret this.

  “I can’t believe I hit him,” he murmured.

  Juniper snorted. “I can’t believe it took you so long. Really, he deserved it.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said, sitting up slowly. “But it’s not so simple, right? Deserving and not deserving. Hitting a white kid in Arcadia got me sent here. Hitting a white kid in Ellison could mean—” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Juniper shook her head. “Don’t,” she breathed.

  “How can I not?”

  Juniper was silent. Her cheeks were red, her eyes misty. Ethan looked over at her, his fierce advocate and loyal friend, and wanted nothing more than to keep her safe. But how, he wondered, when he wasn’t even sure he could protect himself?

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said, his voice breaking. A few tears came loose, trickling down his cheeks.

  “Ethan,” Juniper whispered. She leaned forward, gathering him into his arms, and he leaned against her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said again.

  Juniper squeezed him closer. “We look out for each other. As best we can.” She pressed her face against his shoulder. “That’s all we can do.”

  Ethan said nothing, just let himself be held as the sun filtered down through the trees and the brook trickled past them. Juniper’s embrace was soft and warm, and her hair smelled like flowers. She was right, he knew. They would look out for each other, just as they had all summer. In some ways, they were each all the other had.

  The wind shifted, sending a scattering of loose grass blowing toward them. Neither Ethan nor Juniper moved. He stayed there in her arms until
she had almost convinced him that everything would be okay. Until he was almost sure.

  Nineteen

  From the top of Alligator Hill Ethan felt like he could touch the stars. The crest of the hill wasn’t very high, but the sky was so clear tonight that it seemed inches from his reach. Juniper was trying—she stood on her toes and stretched for the tiny pinpricks of light.

  “I’ll get one, one day,” she said. “Just you wait.”

  They had come to learn the stars. It had been Juniper’s whispered request to Ethan over a month before and he hadn’t forgotten. Uncle Robert had an old constellation map and a handheld telescope, and with two weeks left in Ethan’s stay, they were determined to memorize as many constellations as they could.

  “Which way do you figure we’re supposed to look at it?” Ethan asked, tilting his head. He’d rolled out the map on the flattest part of the hilltop, until it extended a few feet long. Looking at it now, it seemed impossible to read—hundreds of tiny dots connected by thin lines and labeled in cramped text.

  Juniper knelt next to him, squinting at the map, then up at the sky. “This way,” she said, then, rotating it, “actually, no—this way.” She repeated this dance a few more times before settling it down at a diagonal. From this angle, they could see the dark banks of the lake in the distance.

  “You sure this is it?”

  “Oh, absolutely not,” Juniper chirped, dropping into a squat. “But that’s never stopped me before.”

  Ethan shrugged and knelt beside her. “Maybe we should start with Orion’s Belt,” he said, pointing out three stars on the bottom left of the map. “That’s usually the easiest one to spot. Wanna do the honors?” He handed her the telescope, and she lifted it to her eye, squinting skyward. Ethan watched her, with her face awash in moonlight and stardust, and felt so completely at home.

  “That’s it!” she cried, dropping the telescope. “That’s it, right?”

  “Which one?” Ethan followed her finger to a few bright stars that seemed to be mostly in a row.

  “Wait—maybe it wasn’t that one.” Juniper frowned, lifting the telescope again. She swung it left and right with increasing speed. “Gosh darn—I think I lost it! I swear I found it though, Ethan, trust me. I’ll find it again.” She stuck out her tongue in concentration and Ethan laughed.

  She did find it again, eventually, and from there, they traced the stars to all of Orion. “Oh, I totally see it,” Juniper said. “Look, you can practically see him mounting his horse.”

  Ethan took the telescope from her and peered through it. “I don’t think he has a horse, June.”

  “In my story he has a horse.”

  They managed to spot Taurus after that, and what Juniper insisted was Ursa Major—and then they got stuck. All the stars seemed indistinguishable, and they went back and forth about whether one star was the top of Aries or the bottom of Pisces before Juniper finally said, “Y’know what? Let’s make up our own.”

  She flopped backward on the grass, dropping the telescope to the side. Ethan lay next to her, staring up at the glittering night. “Okay,” he said. “See that star right there?”

  “That one?”

  “No”—he adjusted her hand—“that one.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I see that one.”

  “And see how around it there are those four other ones, kind of in a zigzag?”

  She squinted. “Uh—uh-huh.”

  “What constellation is that?”

  “That is”—Juniper pursed her lips, thinking hard—“that’s the lady washing her clothes in the river.”

  “Sorry, what?” Ethan snorted.

  “No, look, it totally is! That’s her knees, and her head, and that’s her hand putting the clothes in the water.”

  Ethan tilted his head in every direction but couldn’t make the image appear in his mind. He shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t see it.”

  “Your loss. Okay, my turn.” Juniper slapped one hand over her eyes and swung the other in a pendulum motion, counting under her breath before finally coming to a stop with her finger pointing out to her right, over Ethan’s face. “Those ones,” she said. “The four going down, kind of, and the three going across.”

  “Hm.” Ethan followed her hand. “I don’t know, a cross?”

  “Wrong!”

  “What do you mean, wrong? We’re making them up!”

  “Yeah, but that’s just about the least creative idea I’ve ever heard. Haven’t I taught you better than that?”

  Ethan sighed heavily. “Fine, fine. It’s a . . . tree?”

  “You can do better.”

  “Can I?” He stared up at it again, until the pinpricks blurred in his vision and became a watercolor of white on satin black. And finally, in this haze, he saw it.

  “A bird,” he said. “A big bird with huge wings flying straight up into the sky.”

  Juniper frowned up at the stars for a moment, considering. Finally, smiling, she nodded. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”

  “Not bad? That was great!”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve still got a lot to learn.”

  Ethan nudged her with his shoulder, then reached over to grab the telescope. “Whatever. I’m gonna find one for you now, and it’ll be hard.” He swung the telescope around across stars that all looked the same to him, trying to find the perfect arrangement. It was as he followed this arc, sweeping the telescope low over the trees, that he caught sight of something moving in the distance.

  “June.” He sat up quickly, trying to get a better view. “I think there’s a fire.”

  Juniper leapt to her feet, ignoring the telescope in Ethan’s outstretched arm to stare out at the edge of the lake. Sure enough, when Ethan stood up beside her, he saw orange lights flickering in and out of view between the trees.

  “Oh God,” Juniper whispered. “Do you think it’s a forest fire?”

  Ethan didn’t respond, but imagined the trees consumed by flames—how fast it would spread, with the brush so thick. It would overtake the town in moments. The image of destruction was so clear in his mind that it took a moment for him to realize that Juniper was saying his name, over and over.

  “Ethan—Ethan, look.” She grabbed his arm and pointed out over the trees. It wasn’t the forest that was on fire, he realized quickly. It was torches. About a dozen torches, coming out of the forest and into full view at the edge of the lake. Bearing them, and walking in a slow procession, were hooded figures in white.

  Ethan felt his heart drop. He would recognize these figures anywhere, though he’d never imagined he’d be so close to them. He thought immediately of what Noah had said, days ago, and wondered which among them was his uncle.

  “Ethan,” Juniper said very seriously. “We need to go.”

  But Ethan was frozen in place, unable to look away. The Klansmen marched in a slow circle, more frightening, somehow, in their silence. It seemed that one man was the leader, because when he suddenly halted, everyone else followed suit. He lifted a hand, and as one they closed the circle, torches pointed downward. Together, they dropped the torches to the ground.

  Ethan didn’t see it until it caught on fire: at the center of the circle, wrapped in black cloth, was a hulking cross. As they watched, flames clambered up the cross’s base to consume the entire structure. Soon it was just a hazy mass of red and orange, blowing smoke into the sky. The Klansmen stood in a tighter circle now around the burning cross, heads bowed in reverence.

  “Ethan.” Juniper’s nails in his arm pulled Ethan from his trance. She had the map and telescope tucked to her chest. “We need to go. Right now.”

  The men weren’t close—the lake was at least a quarter mile away—but Ethan knew she was right. He cast one more glance at the white-clad figures in pointed hats, then nodded at Juniper. She gripped his hand and they ran down the hill.
Or tried—it wasn’t long before the momentum sent them half running, half tumbling down the sloping grass. When they reached the bottom, both of their jeans were streaked with dirt. Neither seemed to notice.

  Juniper sprinted toward their bikes, tossing the map and telescope into her basket before climbing into the seat. Ethan was slower to follow. “Where are we going?” he called. “Back to Aunt Cara’s house?”

  Juniper shook her head. “Not safe. We’re going to the clearing. Follow me.”

  Ethan knew the way to the clearing from here, and so he knew that the path they needed to take ran dangerously close to the lake. But Juniper had other ideas. Instead of staying on the path, she suddenly veered her bike to the right and took off straight into the forest, dodging trees and rocks with quick flicks of her handlebars. Ethan maneuvered perilously behind her, his teeth rattling with every bump.

  “June, are you sure about this?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she hissed over her shoulder, going airborne for a moment as she skimmed over a tree root. Ethan hunched over his handlebars and pedaled harder. Once they were deep enough that they could no longer see the path in any direction, Juniper ground to a halt. They were both panting.

  Without saying a word, Juniper stepped off her bike and began walking to the left, kicking up dirt and leaves in her wake. Ethan followed. They walked in silence for several minutes, winding through the trees on a path that Ethan thought must be totally random. But then, suddenly, he heard the gentle trickle of water, and the clearing appeared through a break in the trees.

  Juniper pushed her bike into a bush and motioned for Ethan to follow suit. Then she circled the clearing until she found the tree with the largest hollow, the one in which they had hidden their invincible summer list, and crawled inside. Ethan ducked in after her. They squatted on the damp dirt, knee to knee, and shrank as far away from the gap of the hollow as they could.

  The darkness was nearly absolute and only Juniper’s soft breaths gave away that she was there at all. Ethan thought his heartbeat must be ricocheting off the bark around him, it was so loud in his ears. It wasn’t until Juniper put a hand on his arm that Ethan realized he was shaking. When he put a hand to his forehead, sweat came off on his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head against his knees.