As she watched her mother walk away, Juniper heard Skeksyl’s offer repeating over and over within her head, growing louder and louder. She saw her very own balloon waiting to be blown up. She just had to sign her name and breathe.
Without even realizing it, she had crept downstairs, out the back door, and toward the woods. The tree, the raven, and everything they represented were in sight, only steps away.
“You can do this,” she whispered. But she knew she couldn’t do it alone.
She had to talk to Giles.
She walked to the edge of her yard, the western border. She had never crossed it before, never would have even dreamed of trying lest she be harshly punished and confined even further.
One foot went over, then the other. She stopped. Her parents didn’t come out screaming, security didn’t rush her, there was no commotion by any of the staff. Nobody cared. And so she kept walking. She walked until she reached her nearest neighbor, nearly a mile away.
A house came into view, another sprawling home much like her own, and along with it came the seemingly obligatory commotion arising from the front yard. Juniper’s first thought was that there would be a mass of fans lingering outside these gates as well, seeking autographs and pictures and the like. Her second thought was that maybe she could blend in with them for a little while, experience what it was like. She wanted to see her world from the outside in. Maybe from that perspective things wouldn’t appear so bad, maybe everything would make sense. Then she had another, even darker thought, one she never believed she would have. She could just give everything up and walk out those gates as someone else. Maybe she could change the way she acted and looked, change her name and attitude, create a new her, and then everything she was previously would just vanish. Her parents no longer cared; it was obvious she wouldn’t be missed. She could start over.
She walked around the house and indeed saw a crowd. But this one was of a different sort. This mob was a bunch of children her age, gathered in a circle. Doing what? A game, she thought. They’re playing a game! And she rushed to join them, no gates to keep her in or out, no parents to call her back.
The circle was tight, so she had to push a bit to get a view of any kind. This is where a periscope would come in handy, she realized, regretting she left her World War I replica in her closet. But no, on second thought, had she brought it, such a device would have kept her far from the group. Now she was able to rub elbows with boys and girls who, she imagined, could have been her friends in another life. She was able to listen to their jokes and share in their laughter; she could help spread gossip if so entrusted; she could receive fashion advice. Standing among them, she couldn’t believe how wonderful it felt.
Once she squeezed to the front, however, she saw the crowd’s main focus: two boys standing in the middle, their fists clenched and held up. An onlooker began chanting and, like a highly infectious disease, it soon caught hold with all the rest. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Fists pumped in sync, feet stomped the ground, even girls hollered for punches to be thrown. Juniper scanned the circle for Giles, but he was nowhere to be found. She figured that made sense. He wouldn’t be anywhere near this crowd.
The fight held no interest to Juniper, and it was over almost immediately after it started. Surprisingly, the bigger of the two boys was on the ground, clutching a bleeding nose.
The smaller boy raised his hands in triumph, and the crowd’s chanting shifted to “Giles! Giles! Giles!”
Juniper’s head snapped to the center of the circle. She couldn’t believe it. The smaller boy was Giles. So badly she wanted to run through the crowd and greet him with a hug, but she looked closer and hesitated. Something was different; she knew it immediately.
Giles was smiling broadly, a toothy grin dominating his oval face. The thick tangles of hair atop his head were gone, shaved clean off, leaving dark stubble and a slight scar behind his ear. His clothes fit him better, his shoes were brilliantly white. In contrast to when they had first met, he now stood ramrod straight, head cocked back and sure. Juniper noticed his deadened eyes—they’re starting to look like my mom’s, she thought, my dad’s.
In disbelief, Juniper stepped back and hid at the edge of the crowd. She watched as the kids gathered around Giles, congratulating him on his victory. Two girls reached up and rubbed his shaved head. Everyone cheering him on, talking to him—the entire group was made up of the same kids who always tormented him, only now he was their champion, and Giles was loving every second of it.
It worked, Juniper thought. The balloon gave him what he wanted. So why wasn’t she happy for him? Was she jealous? Did he not need her anymore? Did he have the life he always wanted, everything that she was always denied? It wasn’t fair.
Finally, Giles noticed her. She was the only person standing still among a mad rush of jumping and cheering and laughing children. Giles looked at her, then away, then back again. He shot her a quick smile but didn’t budge. Juniper made her way over to him.
Giles appeared nervous, perhaps embarrassed. He took a small step back. Then, when she was only a few feet away, he called out, “June, hey!” and pulled her aside, away from the crowd.
“You won’t believe it, June,” he said in a hushed tone and yet at a hyper pace. “I stood up to him. I didn’t let him push me around, and so he challenged me to a fight. I didn’t want to, but the whole class followed him here after school.”
Juniper crossed her arms. “And that meant you had to fight him?”
“Everything’s different now. Did you see what just happened? Nobody’s going to bother me anymore.” He glanced around to see if anyone was listening. “They’re talking to me now. Talking like friends. Girls, too. I won both the push-up and pull-up contests in gym class. I even got picked for football. I belong now. Look at them. Can you believe it? Can you?”
Juniper’s face scrunched in bewilderment. “They like you because you hurt someone?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I don’t care.”
He kept glancing over at the crowd. Did he not care about her anymore? Was he friendly with her those few days only because he had no one else?
“Do you ever wonder what you gave up to get like that?” she said defensively.
Giles shrugged. “Just some air. Besides”—he tapped his torso—“there’s plenty more where that came from.”
“Aren’t you scared of changing, becoming someone else?”
Giles shrugged, waving her question away. “June, come on, everybody changes. What’s wrong with that? It’s part of life, part of the world. You don’t have to be alone.” His eyes never left the crowd.
Still, she tried to convince Giles. “I am a part of the world. Just a different part than you. Maybe everyone else was supposed to join us. Ever think of that?” But the words sounded hollow, as if she were trying to convince herself and failed miserably. Juniper wanted to cry. She never thought there was a problem with herself, but maybe there was. Maybe she had it wrong all this time.
Giles started to look annoyed, anxious to get back. Juniper reached out and grabbed his arm. “You’ll return down there one day, won’t you, beneath the tree. Then you’ll go again and again and again.”
She was surprised at how easily he shrugged her off. He looked her full in the face, finally.
“June, we can have anything we want. Look at me, I’m fine.”
“But . . . but . . . our parents?”
“What about them? They’re famous, beloved. Who wouldn’t want that? Maybe they’re fine, too. Maybe they’re more than fine and we were the ones who were changing. Isn’t that what growing up is?” Infatuated, Giles glanced back at the crowd, which was now waiting for him. He smiled and slowly turned back to Juniper. “You know, I can hear him now. The raven. I can understand him, like Skeksyl said. I don’t know how. It just happened all of a sudden. A voice appears in my head, almost digging away. It overlaps some of my thoughts. Sometimes I don’t know which one is me. Isn’t that odd?” Giles thought a moment
. “But he knows exactly what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. He told me you’d come here. He doesn’t want me talking to you anymore. He says you’re just jealous.”
“That’s . . . that’s not true,” she muttered.
“I feel stronger, that’s all. Just like Skeksyl said I would. He didn’t lie.”
No, he didn’t. He didn’t lie to her parents either. They wanted the American dream and he handed it to them in a balloon.
The crowd started calling Giles over. “I . . . I have to go,” he said. Abruptly, he turned to leave.
“Giles,” she called, stopping him in his tracks. “Is it . . . is it everything you thought it would be?”
He turned to her and looked her in the eye. “It’s unbelievable, June. It changes everything.”
And that was exactly what she both hoped and feared.
Chapter 11
JUNIPER RETURNED TO THE TREE six times over the next three days. Each visit caused her further turmoil. Something was telling her to return to the underworld and make her deal with Skeksyl. And all of a sudden it wasn’t the world she was angry with; it was herself. Why did she have to be the way she was? There wasn’t any law saying Juniper Berry had to be a lonely girl, forgotten by her parents; she didn’t have to be locked away from the world around her. She could do something about it.
The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. If her parents didn’t need her, then she should become someone they did need; if they hardly even noticed her anymore, she could become someone they couldn’t ignore. Someone they would love. Someone everybody would love. She never had to be alone ever again.
She walked to the tree one more time and placed her hand upon it. Her head dropped and her eyes closed. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s right anymore.”
Neptune fluttered down from his branch and settled just above her. He knocked his beak against the tree.
Gradually, Juniper’s hand crept up to the mark. “Sometimes I feel like the whole world knows something I don’t. I just want to belong. Somewhere.”
Again, Neptune, his black eyes fixed on Juniper, pecked the tree.
Beneath her finger the mark seemed to burn, aching to be pushed, and Juniper’s body filled with this warmth. It felt so comforting. It made the next part simple.
She pressed the mark.
Behind the tree the passageway opened up once more, welcoming her below. Neptune, acting as guide, swooped past her and down into the blackness of the underworld.
Following the raven with her eyes only, Juniper stared into the dark depths in which it vanished. Still, she didn’t move.
Why couldn’t she take the first step? A new life waited for her at the bottom. What was she waiting for?
A minute later, Neptune returned to the surface, acknowledged her, then flew back down, his screech not fading, not echoing, but deadening.
Then, in place of the flattened cry, drifting out of the darkness came a voice, Skeksyl’s voice. “Juniper.” Her name floated up to her sounding like a dry wind. His voice pulled at her. “Juniper.”
Her foot touched the first step. She was on her way.
“Juniper . . .”
A second step.
“Juniper.”
The voice came from behind her. She whirled around and climbed the two steps back up, just in time.
“Juniper, hello there,” Dmitri called to her as he approached with Betsy slung over a broad shoulder. “Where’s Giles?” he asked, driving his ax into the familiar stump, where it angled sharply into the air, forming a sundial of sorts.
Juniper didn’t know what to say; she just adjusted her position so that Dmitri couldn’t see the opening behind the tree.
Dmitri smiled. “Not around, huh? Are you waiting for him?”
“No . . . I . . . I was just bored.” Her eyes drifted back to the stairs; she was surprised to see that they were gone.
Dmitri looked in the direction of the tree as well, his eyes so sharp they could have finished the job his ax started. “You know, Juniper, I envy you. Your world is far different from an adult’s. You see things differently. As they ought to be, perhaps. It’s easy to lose sight of that. Most of us do. Pressures start coming from all sides and it makes you question everything. You lose sight of what’s important.”
“What is important? Who my parents are? The house we live in?”
“Those things don’t make you who you are.”
She looked down at her feet. “I guess you’re right. I only have myself to blame for that.”
Dmitri was silent for a moment. “I always see you with those binoculars and whatnot, always staring out into the world. What is it you see out there?”
“I see a place that I don’t know how to get to. Things I can’t touch.”
“Don’t despair, Juniper. There’s far too much of it in the world already. Trust me. People like you are the rare ones. Don’t be shaken by what you think you see. It’s not the lenses that make you special, it’s the eyes behind them. Trust them. They lead to the soul. They haven’t led you wrong yet.”
Juniper wasn’t quite sure what Dmitri was talking about. She felt as if he was keeping something from her. His words filled her with what seemed like wisdom, but nothing concrete. And hardly comforting.
“Well, I should get back to work,” Dmitri told her, pulling his ax from the stump. “I hope I won’t be in your way over here.” He pointed to some nearby trees.
“No. No, of course not,” Juniper said with a frown as she turned to make her way back into the house. “I’ve waited this long,” she mumbled to herself. “I can wait a little while longer.”
And wait she did. With Kitty at her side, she watched Dmitri, through her monocular, from her bedroom window, waiting impatiently for his day to end. But he continued to chop away, far longer than usual and never straying far from Neptune’s tree. The sun began to set and still he split wood, looking warily over his shoulder every now and then. “Come on, finish,” she moaned.
At last the sky began to darken, and Dmitri took his concluding swipes of the day. He slammed Betsy into her usual resting place and walked out of the yard, wiping his brow and eyeing the house. “Finally,” Juniper said. She jumped off the bed, ran into the hall . . . and right into her mother.
Unfazed by the blow to her stomach, Mrs. Berry glared down at Juniper, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back into her bedroom.
She tossed Juniper onto her bed. Frightened, Kitty dove under the covers. “Rat,” Mrs. Berry spat as she made her way to Juniper’s mirror. She walked with a jerking gait, as if being electrocuted. One arm shot downward while the other shoulder shifted violently toward the ceiling. Her head snapped back, her legs buckled, and her fingers tightened into claws. She leaned on the wall for support and caught her breath for nearly a minute. Then, looking up into the mirror, she began stretching the skin on her face, muttering to herself. “I can’t . . . I can’t take it anymore. What’s happened to me? Lines . . . my face is covered in lines . . . there’s one, there’s another . . . oh, these bags beneath my eyes . . . my lips, I think they’re getting smaller. Dear God, I’m hideous.” Horrified, she continued poking and prodding at her face, pulling at her hair, making odd faces and grunts. Juniper didn’t understand; She’s beautiful, she thought.
Mrs. Berry turned to her daughter and a look of confusion crossed her face. “Ju . . . Ju . . . Ju . . .”
“Juniper. My name’s Juniper.” She was nearly in tears. It was as if her heart went as flat as paper, or deflated like a balloon. Her mother had left their love behind, all their memories. And now even her name was gone, too.
“Yes, I knew that. Juniper. Yes, of course. Juniper, dear, do me a favor.”
“Yes?” Juniper clasped her hands together.
“Don’t ever get old,” her mother went on. “Prevent it any way you can. Or at least get a very reputable plastic surgeon.”
“But I don’t see anything wrong.”
“That
’s because you’re just a child. You think it’s easy to carry a career into your later years? Much must be sacrificed.”
Juniper wondered just how much her mother already had sacrificed. To her, it seemed like nearly everything.
“There’s talk I won’t be nominated this year. Can you believe it? That last movie, they’re saying I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t . . . Oh, it’s just absurd; it was the director’s fault. Moron. I can fix it, though. On this new movie . . . I can start fresh. I know I can. I’ve done it before.” Mrs. Berry appeared to be recalling something. “I keep asking him to help make me beautiful again, but it never seems to last anymore.”
“Who? Who do you ask?” Juniper knew, of course, but she didn’t receive an answer to this question. Instead her mother continued to ramble on.
“Tastes change. Trends. Looks. The people . . . they’re never satisfied. It’s never enough. Never. This next film will mean everything. But I don’t know how much further we can go. I . . . I think there’s something living in my mind. Something’s moved in when I wasn’t looking . . .”
She continued ranting about youth and beauty, aging and withering. At one point she stood before Juniper’s mirror and pulled her mouth wide open, stuck out her tongue, and peered down it just like Juniper’s father had done days earlier. She yanked on her eyelids, tugged at her hair, poked at her teeth in constant search of something. Right before Juniper’s eyes, her mother vanished. Indeed, like she said, it was as if her body and mind had been overrun, hijacked. She had hardly any control of it anymore.
Mrs. Berry slammed her hands down on the vanity. “This isn’t fair!” she screamed. “I don’t know who I am anymore! I’m not me! I’m not me! I’m blank!” She reached down and grabbed her calf. Her nails dug in deeply, and then she scratched all the way up. When she pulled her hand away, it dripped bright blood. Her mad eyes followed each flowing drop to the floor. “Is this me? Is this even mine?” She grabbed Juniper by the shoulders, staining them red. “Tell me!”
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