June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny

by Rebecca Chace

  1972 Penny: In 1972 I wasn’t even born. President Nixon was elected. Then he had to resign a couple years later because of Watergate. In 1972 there were demonstrations against the Vietnam War in places like San Francisco and NEW YORK CITY.

  What was all this about New York? June wondered. Of course June wanted to go home, but her mom hadn’t even moved there yet. Then she remembered the CDs that had fallen out of the closet and the rock-band poster on the back of the door. Maybe her mother had been a punk rocker! The punks all lived in the East Village in the eighties, so maybe that was it. But why had she hated her life in 1999?

  June did the math: her mom was born in 1982, so she would have been seventeen years old. No wonder she hated her life: she was in high school in this same town, living in this same house and sleeping in this very same bedroom. June liked the bedroom, but she would have hated her life too. Luckily, this was not going to be June’s life for too much longer. Somehow, some way, she and Indigo were going home.

  June flipped more pages, and each one had the same thing: a penny taped to the upper right-hand corner and two entries. One was a short description of the day her mother had found the penny, and the other told some facts or memories about the year of the penny. Some of the pennies were really old, from before her mom was born, and sometimes she wrote what the old ones were worth next to the penny, though it was never very much, maybe one or two dollars. Of course, that was one or two hundred times more than a single penny was worth, but it still didn’t seem worth getting too excited about.

  November 25: It’s Thanksgiving, so I don’t have much time to write. Bob had to go to Sioux Falls to be with his aunt and uncle, so it’s even more boring here. But we’re looking for the Big One! Maybe he’ll find it there. We now have $327.00, and if I can only get Bob to say YES, we could go to New York RIGHT NOW.

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  The Big One! What was that? And who was Bob? Her boyfriend? June reread the memory of the day. It was pretty cool to know what her mom had been thinking back when she was a teenager right here in this very bedroom. It was even better than a diary, because who really kept a diary for long? June had started several diaries, but even though she liked the kind that came with a little lock and key, she could never stick with it. Her mom’s Penny Book seemed like a lot less work and a lot more fun. The penny on this page was circled in red marker:

  1960 Penny: Not the Big One, but this is special because it’s the year that President Kennedy was elected. Back in the sixties Bob’s family turned their storm cellar into a bomb shelter with cans of Spam and baked beans. It’s still like that. Gross.

  Okay, who was Bob? June’s dad’s name was Jimmy. Jimmy and Roseanne Sparrow—June liked the sound of that; names like that belonged in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Bob and Roseanne sounded awful. June herself would never date anyone named Bob. How utterly boring! But then again, this was high school and maybe her mom had been desperate. She was such a nerd.

  December 25, 1999. Christmas Day

  Bridget tried to make Dad’s special waffles and bacon as a treat this morning. Then she stole the second piece of bacon off my plate. She is a senior and pretty and popular. It’s kind of hard not to be jealous even on Christmas when she’s trying to make it nice for us. I miss Mom and Dad. I also got two pennies to put into loafers. I am going to tape them here instead, and I hope that counts even though I didn’t find them myself. Penny loafers are cool and vintage I guess, but I don’t have the loafers yet, just the pennies. Bridget ordered the loafers from a catalog. I already have my Converse high-tops and wear my cowboy boots most of the time. But it was really sweet of her. Problem is that it’s extra sad to be sad on Christmas.

  Aunt Bridget had been pretty and popular? Her mother had been jealous of her? Not June’s glamorous mother, who flew around the world with her handsome husband, lived in New York, and went out every night of the week! Her mother was the one everyone was jealous of, not Aunt Bridget with her baggy old sweaters and rubber boots. June thought about the photograph in the hallway of the two of them. They had certainly both been pretty back then, and they looked happy. What happened? Was it because their parents died and Aunt Bridget was the oldest? But why hadn’t she ever met Aunt Bridget before, and why didn’t Aunt Bridget have her own family? Aunt Bridget had said that she never went anywhere, but did she really mean anywhere?

  June read the entry again, looking for clues. She agreed with her mom: it was extra sad to be sad on Christmas. June often felt a little lonely on Christmas, though she went to The Nutcracker with Indigo Bunting and then home to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and cry into her takeout Chinese food—which was an absolutely perfect Christmas as far as she was concerned. But the season could feel out of sync when you were surrounded by all these images of families that did not have the constellation of an orphan girl and a miniature pig. The good thing about New York was that you didn’t have to be traditional about anything, so it felt less lonely when your family photos didn’t match up.

  June turned the next page and stared—it was torn in half! The part of the page where the penny had been taped was ripped right out of the book. There was nothing there to even tell the year of the penny. June quickly read the diary entry:

  February 25, 2000: My 18th birthday! I found it! THE BIG ONE! I can’t even write because I am supposed to go have cake and ice cream, but THIS IS IT! New York City, here we come! I am meeting Bob at the bank tomorrow and we are getting on the bus! In New York we’ll go to the coin dealer first off. THE BIG ONE!!! I found it at the This ’n’ That shop, right in the crack between the boards by the register. I only told Bob. THE BIG ONE!!!

  The next page was blank. The page after it was ripped out. So were the next and the next! June flipped through the stubs of the missing pages. Nothing! The pages started up again close to the back of the album, but they were blank. Then she finally saw a penny taped in the corner:

  I met a guy named Jimmy at the movie theater today. He gave me this penny. It’s a new-minted 2000. Which is right now.

  Jimmy! That had to be her dad! 2000 is right now. . . . What about going to New York with Bob and cashing in the Big One? Where was the Big One, and why hadn’t her mother written anything else? Some more pages were ripped out after the one about meeting Jimmy, and there was a big gap in the Penny Book. What happened to the Big One? What had happened to make her mom stop writing? Or maybe she hadn’t stopped writing at all, but for some reason she decided to rip out the pages.

  June ran her finger along the ripped edge at the binding of the book, and suddenly she remembered something. She reached for her purse, which she had shoved under the bed when she’d first arrived. There was her birthday penny, and inside the ziplock bag from Mr. Mendax was the piece of paper she was looking for: her mother’s list. She spread the piece of paper out inside the notebook on her lap. Then June stopped breathing.

  It matched. The ragged edge on the left side of the paper was exactly the same color and height as this notebook. This page had definitely been ripped out of the Penny Book!

  “Look, Indigo,” she whispered. “This means . . . it means . . .”

  Indigo looked confused.

  “You’re right. I don’t know what it means.” June studied the list.

  “If we’re right about J.S. standing for June Sparrow,” June said quietly, “then Mom must have written this list after I was born. But the paper matches, so that means she took at least one of the ripped-out pages from the Penny Book with her. And if she wrote this crazy list on one of the missing pages, maybe she did something special with the other ones. Maybe—maybe one of the other missing pages has the Big One still taped on it!” She grabbed Indigo and hugged him so hard, he squeaked. “Oh, Indigo! That penny could be our ticket home!”

  Indigo perched on the pillow next to her as June read the whole list over again:

  J.S. 2 R.B. 4 B.D.

  Travel inside a b
eehive

  Climb a ladder to the top of the world

  Hug my oldest friend

  Eat ice cream for breakfast

  Take a ride on the La-Z-Boy express

  Find metal that won’t stick to a magnet

  Let gonebyes go bye-bye

  June sighed. Indigo sighed. None of it really made sense except for “J.S.” Then June turned over the paper and saw something that made her literally gasp out loud. There was a hand-drawn red circle the exact size of penny. She could still see the remains of Scotch tape stuck around it. She hadn’t even known what that meant before!

  But there was no penny. No diary entry. No Big One.

  June quickly flipped back to the beginning of the Penny Book.

  “Come on, Indigo,” she said. “We’ll read the whole thing over again from the beginning. There has to be a clue in here somewhere.”

  The door slammed open and June jumped off the bed. The Penny Book and Indigo Bunting both tumbled to the floor. Indigo disappeared under the bed so fast there was only a blur of curly tail. Aunt Bridget towered in the doorway. She had on a long, flowery nightgown that seemed like the last thing Aunt Bridget would wear. June wouldn’t have been surprised if she went to sleep with her rubber boots sticking out the end.

  “What are you doing!” Aunt Bridget swooped in and grabbed the Penny Book before June could make a move. “Reading your mother’s diary? Poking and prying into other people’s business at one o’clock in the morning? Not in this house!”

  Aunt Bridget slammed the closet door shut with a loud bang. She had been angry with Mr. Fitzroy in detention, but this was a new level of outrage. Maybe Aunt Bridget was a Jekyll and Hyde; maybe if she got woken up in the middle of the night; maybe when the moon was full—

  Aunt Bridget whirled back to face June, the Penny Book clutched tightly to her chest. “Do you hear me, young lady?”

  “Pretty hard not to!” June snapped back.

  “How dare you start sneaking around, staying up all night—”

  “I wasn’t sneaking! She’s my mother, and everything of hers belongs to me!”

  “Not everything!” Aunt Bridget said. “Not everything belongs to you, I’ll have you know. While you’re in my house you’ll follow my rules, understood?”

  June bit her lip. She was a prisoner here, at least for now.

  “I can read her diary if I want to,” June said more evenly.

  “No.” Aunt Bridget stepped toward the bedroom door. “It’s not her diary; it’s her Penny Book. And no, you can’t.” June jumped off the bed and followed her aunt down the hallway onto the second-floor landing with its worn blue carpeting.

  “It’s not fair!” June yelled. Aunt Bridget kept walking into her bedroom and closed the door without bothering to turn around. June ran after her and tugged at the door, but Aunt Bridget had locked it from the inside. Something cracked inside her, and June pounded on the door, screaming at the top of her lungs, “It’s mine! Give it back! That book belongs to me! She’s my mother! Give it back!” And finally, “I hate you!”

  She yelled and kicked at the door, the sound echoing inside the silence of that wooden house, which creaked every time anyone took a step. But you can only yell insults for so long when nobody yells back. You can only pound on a door for so long when nobody opens it. Eventually June slumped to the floor, and looking past the hallway night-light, she saw Indigo poking his head out of her bedroom, worried. June felt dizzy, and her throat was raw with yelling. She held out her arms, and Indigo scampered down the hall and squirmed onto her lap. She hugged him as he burrowed his head into her shoulder, but this was the kind of sadness that even Indigo couldn’t help her with. This time she felt too sad to cry. June pushed herself slowly to her feet, carried Indigo into bed with her, and tucked them both under the covers. She looked out the window at the tree branches moving back and forth against this strange midwestern night until the light began to come up and the landscape turned back into something recognizable. Indigo snored next to her inside her mother’s pink room, and she watched the horizon turn an even brighter pink.

  When June was home in New York, it seemed like things flowed along just like they were supposed to. Now that she was stuck in South Dakota, it was so much harder not to be able to ask her mom any questions. June felt for the list still safely in her pocket. At least Aunt Bridget hadn’t seen that. Was it a birthday list? A bucket list? Why had her mother kept it in her wallet, and why was it written on a torn-out page from the Penny Book?

  She reached for her purse, which had fallen behind the bed when Aunt Bridget came bursting in, and pulled out the plastic case with her birthday penny inside. Then she fished around for the small photo of her mother holding her as a baby. June took the photo and leaned it against the bedside lamp. She held her birthday penny tightly in her fist, looked at the picture of her mom, and whispered, “Why? Why? Why?”

  When Aunt Bridget called June down for breakfast, June realized that she had better apologize. June had done a lot of thinking and only a tiny bit of sleeping the night before. She had to make life bearable for as long as she and Indigo were trapped there, which looked like it might be longer than she thought. June was still angry—in fact, she was more than angry—she was outraged that Aunt Bridget had taken something of her mother’s away from her. But she had to play her cards right so that Aunt Bridget wouldn’t suspect anything until she got back the Penny Book.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Bridget,” she said with as much sincerity as she could muster. Aunt Bridget grunted and pushed the maple syrup across the breakfast table. June poured a liberal amount onto her oatmeal. She had to admit that it was nice to have hot cereal on a cold morning.

  “Don’t like noise late at night,” Aunt Bridget said. “Wake up early every day.”

  June was too tired to have a conversation, and that seemed just fine with Aunt Bridget, who shoved her chair back in less than five minutes.

  “Do those dishes and I’ll meet you in the barn for chores,” she said on her way out the back door.

  June poured on more syrup, making a spiral design with her spoon. She had played barnyard with plastic animals plenty of times, but she had a feeling that this was going to be a whole lot messier. June didn’t mind making Aunt Bridget wait awhile, and rested her head on her arms. Honestly, June was a little embarrassed by how badly she had lost it the night before, even though she knew she was in the right. She would have to sneak into Aunt Bridget’s room to look for the Penny Book, but couldn’t risk that this morning—better to wait until Aunt Bridget wasn’t home. June took her time washing the dishes and the oatmeal pot, then pulled on her mother’s hat and scarf and stepped into the muddy boots she had left on the front porch, which were dry but felt wet because the rubber was so cold.

  Aunt Bridget was milking the goat (who knew that girl goats also had horns and goatees?). She had left all the feeding and cleaning out of stalls for June. There were coffee cans in bins of grain and piles of loose hay that had to be pitched into the feeding racks for the horse and the cow. The manure had to be raked up and wheelbarrowed out to a large pile outside the barn door that was half covered by a big blue tarp. Aunt Bridget supervised her but didn’t actually lend a hand with anything, and June got the distinct feeling that this was the only time she was going to be shown how to do this—the next time she would be on her own.

  “You’re not ready for milking yet,” Aunt Bridget said, watching June maneuver nervously around the horse so she could clean his stall. The goat was tethered in the center of the barn and narrowed her yellow eyes as June tugged on the halter of Mr. Chips, who seemed determined not to leave the barn without his goat friend. I’ll never be ready for milking, June thought as Mr. Chips leaned his formidable weight in the opposite direction.

  Aunt Bridget reached over without even looking and slapped Mr. Chips’s backside with the flat of her hand. He took off out the door so fast that June lost her footing, let go of the halter, and ended up with a mixture of
dirt and hay down the back of her pants and inside her boots. She thought she saw Aunt Bridget grin as June pulled hay out of the top of her pants, but she couldn’t be absolutely certain. June wasn’t speaking to her aunt—but unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Aunt Bridget even noticed.

  Indigo Bunting, on the other hand, was having the time of his life. He trotted from stall to stall as if he was the mayor, sniffing and wagging his curly little tail. Traitor, thought June, as she carried a shovelful of manure past where he had perched himself on a nice dry nest of hay. One day here and he knows everybody. She glared at him and he gave her a sweet smile. She threw the manure with such force that it went flying off the shovel and landed with a loud splat on the side of the barn.

  Someone started laughing in a deep voice, and June spun around to see a farmer dressed exactly like Aunt Bridget, plus red suspenders. He had come around the side of the barn just in time to get some of the manure onto his wide, flannel-shirted front. He pulled a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his shirt clean, still laughing. June wondered if everyone in South Dakota found it amusing to get splattered with horse poop.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Really, really sorry.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t look angry at all. “And you are?”

  “June.” She felt horribly embarrassed. What a way to meet someone! “Really, I am so sorry, sir—”

  “No, no, it’s fine.” He shook his head, smiling. “These are my farm clothes. Actually, they’re my only clothes except for my funeral clothes.” He laughed again and held out his hand. “Bob Burgess.”

  “June Sparrow.” She gave him a good firm handshake, hoping this might make a better impression. But as soon as she said her full name, his smile faded and he stepped back.

  “Sparrow?”

  “I see you’ve met my niece.” Aunt Bridget stepped out of the shadow of the barn door.

  “Niece?” If all he can do is repeat what people say to him, June thought, maybe he’s a little slow on the uptake.