Nick and June Were Here

by Shalanda Stanley

  “Becky,” I said, louder. Just a few more feet.

  Becky doesn’t want to see you, the little girl’s voice said.

  “She does,” I said.

  She knows you knew what he was doing to her and you didn’t do anything about it.

  “I didn’t know for sure.”

  Becky never said it out loud.

  “She’ll forgive me.”

  The people mixing on the sidewalks made it harder to move. I bumped into a man and he looked at me like he knew me, like the man in the diner had. Did I know him? His face wasn’t one I’d seen before. There was no time to figure it out, because Becky was getting away.

  I pushed away from him. “Becky!” I yelled.

  Was that Nick yelling back?

  “Becky!” I yelled again.

  Becky didn’t stop. Maybe I was wrong and she couldn’t hear me. Other people did, though, because they turned to look at me. They looked worried and backed away, giving me space on the sidewalk. Thank God, because now I could move faster.

  “Becky!”

  Maybe if I ran. It felt good to run.

  “Becky!”

  The sidewalk was uneven and I tripped, falling hard, the concrete rushing up to my face.

  “Are you okay? Can I help you?” a man asked.

  I’d skinned my palms and they bled. The man reached for me, taking my hand to help me up, but I jerked back. Becky was moving farther from me.

  “Becky!” I yelled. “Did you see her?” I asked the man.

  He didn’t answer, just looked confused. I got up from the ground, my hands stinging.

  “Becky!”

  She didn’t turn back, didn’t stop. She couldn’t hear me. It was the music and all the noise. Or the little girl was right and Becky couldn’t forgive me.

  “Becky!” I screamed, louder this time. My throat burned from it. My voice cracked.

  Once, I’d tried giving her the doll, but she’d looked at me like the idea was crazy, like her house was no place for dolls.

  “June!”

  It was Nick. His voice came from behind and I wanted to turn to him but I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off her. If I did, she might disappear. He was close to me now and out of breath, like he’d been running. Maybe he saw Becky, too, and wanted to help me.

  He was at my back, his panted breaths on my neck, his fingers touching me softly, catching the blood dripping from my hands now.

  “June,” he said again, his voice so quiet.

  Nick turned me slowly, like he thought fast movements might scare me away. His eyes were soft and saying It’s okay, one of his hands was raised like he was praying that it was okay, his voice said, “It’s okay.”

  His eyes darted around, looking at all the people. They formed a circle around us now.

  “June,” he repeated, like he was making sure it was me.

  I nodded. I was June.

  “It’s Becky,” I said, pointing in the direction that she’d gone. “She’s here. In Little Rock. I saw her.”

  He might’ve believed me, but he didn’t look away from my face. Maybe he thought I’d disappear if he took his eyes off me, like I’d thought Becky might. I couldn’t see her anymore.

  “She’s real this time,” I said. One look at him kept me talking. “I know how it sounds, but I saw her. She’s been in Little Rock. She’s okay.”

  There was a crowd now. We were fish in a bowl and the people watched us. There were police officers standing at the end of the street and someone was talking to one and pointed in our direction. Nick saw and squeezed my hand that he was still holding.

  My eyes burned with tears, because Becky had disappeared, just like that day when I’d followed her behind her house.

  If my mind wasn’t my own, then I didn’t know who it belonged to.

  Nick squeezed my hand again. “You ready?” he asked.

  I knew what he was asking and squeezed back twice. We ran like our lives depended on it, because they did.

  Everyone darted out of our way. We turned a corner and ran down the street. The neighborhood was full of tiny shotgun houses that all looked the same, some of them run-down with boarded-up windows. Nick led us to a truck sitting in someone’s driveway. He grabbed the handle and pulled, but it was locked.

  “Shit,” he said. He was sweating.

  He let go of my hand and jumped in the back of the truck. There were tools scattered in the bed. He grabbed a crowbar, lifted, and swung. It crashed through the back window, the glass shattering and flying in different directions. I screamed but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of blood rushing in my ears. Nick was inside the truck and had it cranked in seconds. He threw the passenger door open.

  “It’s important to avoid stress,” Dr. Keels had said. She’d even written it in her notes, right under Drink plenty of water while taking your medication.

  We were in the truck and flying down the street. Nick wore another new face, but I didn’t have a name for it. He sped up, faster now. I looked for cops and listened for their sirens, because surely someone had heard the glass breaking or my screaming. Surely someone had noticed us flying away. My hands vibrated in my lap.

  You’re not crazy. You’re sick, the little girl said.

  I nodded my agreement.

  We left Little Rock, Nick’s fingers gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white. I didn’t know how far we’d gone when he looked at the dash and said, “We’re not gonna make it very far before we run out of gas.”

  We were good at stealing vehicles that were low on gas. Nick sounded exhausted. We must have been crashing from the adrenaline rush, because my eyelids were heavy, too. He turned off the highway and down a county road before taking a right down a narrow path into the woods. He pulled the truck off to the side, farther into the trees, so we wouldn’t be seen. The sun was setting.

  My breathing was heavy, my hand on my chest, counting the beats of my heart. I knew it still beat too fast and I wondered about all the things that caused a heart attack. I pulled out my notebook and opened to a new page and titled it “A Heart Attack Feels Like This,” but then I scratched it out and wrote “Becky Wilkes Is Okay.” I couldn’t write fast enough, listing all the ways that Becky was fine now. My handwriting looked like scratch marks.

  Nick’s arm brushed past me as he picked up his bag, but I couldn’t be bothered by it. I needed to finish the list.

  “June,” he said.

  He put his hand on mine so I’d have to look at him.

  He held a yellow dress. It was like the one from the street festival. It had eyelet embroidery around the collar and the sleeves. I’d noticed it because it was like the dresses that old June had worn.

  Nick held the dress out to me. His eyes were sad. “I wanted you to have something yellow,” he explained.

  He was trying to fix things, to fix me.

  I took it from him. “Thank you.”

  He reached for my hands, turning them over in his. He studied the scratches on my palms like there might be a test later, but all he said was my name.

  “June.”

  I waited for him to say more, but there was nothing.

  The energy from the street festival had followed us into the truck. It was trapped here, even with the back window busted out. We breathed it, in and out. It made the hairs on my arms stand. It tickled my lips.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  “For what?”

  “I never should have—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “I knew you weren’t okay, but I didn’t care.” He looked angry now, but I knew it wasn’t me he was mad at. “I just wanted you with me. I thought you’d be okay with me. I thought I could take care of you. That I could be all you needed again. I was so stupid.”

  “You�
��re not stupid. I am okay with you.”

  He knew I was lying. He looked heartbroken. I’d broken his heart.

  “I’ll feel better soon,” I promised. “I’m already feeling better.”

  He didn’t believe me.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I said. I was mad now, too.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re scared of me.”

  “I’m not scared of you.” He swallowed and I watched his Adam’s apple move up and down in his throat.

  “Are you sure?”

  He reached for me, pulling me across the seat to him. It was the saddest I’d ever seen him, sadder than when his dad went to prison and John was deployed, sadder than after his mom left town and he told me Hank was dead. He took the dress from me and laid it across the steering wheel. He surprised me by reaching for my shirt. He slid it over my head. We sat for stretched seconds as he looked at me like he did sometimes before he painted on me. He put his hand over my heart and his mouth moved, just a little. I leaned closer to him, to see if I could hear what he was saying. Our noses bumped and then our mouths met. Everything slowed down, our movements, time, before speeding back up, our breathing louder now. Arms and legs bumped the dash and the steering wheel as we shed our clothes in the tiny space.

  “I’m not scared of you,” he said again.

  This time I believed him. Our movements were hurried and our hands were everywhere. The leather on the seat was split and the broken glass from the window had settled in the cracks, but it didn’t cut us. If it did, it didn’t hurt.

  Our movements slowed down again. He pushed my hair off my face. His lips pressed against my shoulder. We moved slower and slower, until we were still, like someone had hit a pause button.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Even if he was sorry for bringing me with him, he’d said those words, even if his voice was rough when he said them, like they’d been cut from his throat.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  His eyes stayed locked to mine as he started moving again. Under the canopy of trees, in the cab of a stolen truck, he looked at me like I was all he needed.

  The pinks filled in a little at a time as the sun pushed up between the trees. It looked like someone had a crayon and was coloring in the lines. I looked at my hands. There was no paint there. I hadn’t touched paint in days.

  June slept with her head in my lap. I’d watched her all night, only nodding off a time or two, too scared to take my eyes off her in case she disappeared again. She held her notebook to her chest like it was the thing keeping her safe. When she slept, it was easy to pretend that she was fine, that I wasn’t a horrible person for bringing her with me. It was the most selfish thing I’d ever done and I had to make it right.

  She shifted and then opened her eyes. “Hey, you,” she said.

  “Hey. We need to get going,” I said.

  She sat up and I grabbed our bags and opened the truck door. I had to make it right soon.

  “We’re not going in the truck?” she asked.

  “We’ll come back for it. There’s somewhere else we gotta go this morning.”

  “And we’re walking there?”

  “Yeah, but not far.”

  We moved through the woods, trying to avoid the mud.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I shook my head. Neither of us was.

  We walked out of the woods and onto the path. In the morning light, June could tell that it was a driveway.

  “Did we park in someone’s yard last night?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  She looked at me, puzzled, and then the lightbulb came on when she realized that I knew exactly where we were.

  We continued walking down the path until it opened up into a front yard. Sitting at the back of the property was a house trailer.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  It was just a yard, but it felt like a battlefield I had to cross.

  “My mom’s,” I said.

  It’d been almost a year since I’d seen her, since the beginning of last summer when I was on my way to Hank’s. I usually stopped in before heading up the mountain.

  We stood side by side on the makeshift front porch of the trailer, my hand in the air like I was going to knock, but I didn’t. June looked like she might do it for me. I had never told June much about my mom. Anytime June brought her up, I’d change the subject or act like it didn’t bother me that she was gone. June knew better. She’d seen the photo of my mom that I kept in my wallet.

  I didn’t want to be here, but we needed help. And maybe part of me needed to say goodbye to my mom before I disappeared for good.

  Dogs barked from inside the trailer. The floor creaked as someone moved around. I rapped my knuckles on the door and the movement from inside the trailer stopped. The footsteps sounded closer as whoever it was walked to the door. It felt like we were all holding our breath. There was the sound of the chain being unlocked and the door opened.

  The person standing there was an older man with gray hair and tattoos on every part of his skin except for his face. If it wasn’t for the tattoos, he’d look like that old guy in all the western movies my dad used to watch, the one who sounded like he’d been smoking since he was five.

  The door squeaked in complaint as he pushed it all the way open.

  “Hi, Larry,” I said.

  It was the man my mom had left me for.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” he said.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” I said. “This is June, my—”

  “I know who she is,” Larry said. “We’ve heard all about her. Y’all are all over the news.”

  That was a surprise. June looked like she was going to be sick.

  “June, this is Larry, my mom’s husband.”

  “She told you we got married?” he asked.

  “No, Dad did. Congratulations.”

  He nodded.

  “Is she here?”

  “She’s still in the bed,” Larry said. “Y’all come in and I’ll go wake her up.”

  The two dogs were excited that we were here and they jumped at our legs. June loved dogs and she bent down to pet them; they pounced on her, almost knocking her to the floor.

  Larry came back in the living room. “She’ll be just a minute,” he said. “Why don’t y’all have a seat at the table?”

  It was a question, but he didn’t say it like one, gesturing toward the kitchen table. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in trouble. We each took a chair. Minutes ticked by before a door in the back of the trailer opened and footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.

  “There he is.”

  My mom’s voice was the same as it always was, raspy and quiet. She was wrapped in a ratty bathrobe. Her face was puffy with sleep. She looked directly at me.

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t move. My anger leaked out of me like it always did when I was in a room with her. I hated it. I wanted to hold on to the anger, but the little boy in me was always quick to forgive her.

  “Mom,” I said. My voice sounded younger and I hated that, too. I cleared my throat. June put her hand on top of mine.

  “It’s good to see you, June,” my mom said. “It’s been a minute.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” June said.

  June didn’t look like it was good, though. She looked mad. She looked like she was remembering all those nights I’d spent in her room after my mom had left town, before I’d gotten the courage to ask Aunt Linda if I could live with her.

  “Get over here and give me a hug,” she said.

  I counted to three before I stood. I went to her and bent down so she could hug me. She held me and didn’t let go right away.

  “You’ve
gotten so tall,” she said.

  I’d outgrown her a long time ago.

  Larry acted like there wasn’t anything unusual going on in the kitchen and stood to put food in the dogs’ bowls, talking to them the whole time.

  “Let’s go, boys. It’s time for breakfast,” he said.

  I pushed back from my mom. She flinched, a dejected look passing across her face, but it was only a flash.

  “The police have already been by here,” she said. “The sheriff says I’m supposed to let him know if I see you.” The look on her face said I didn’t have to worry about that. “They have a pretty good idea that you’re going to Hank’s, but they don’t know where the cabin is.”

  I knew she wouldn’t tell them that either. Only a handful of people knew where Hank’s cabin was or how to get there.

  “Sit back down,” she said. “I’ll make breakfast.”

  Larry sat on the recliner in the living room and turned on the TV. June turned her head to the noise.

  Mom took out a skillet from a drawer and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a slab of bacon. She heated the large cast-iron skillet and started placing the slices of bacon inside.

  June studied her like she was taking notes on how to cook bacon.

  After a time, my mom said, “What are you doing, Nick? What’s the plan?”

  “I couldn’t stay in Creed,” I said. “They’re cracking down on Benny and I was looking at fifteen years if I didn’t help them get him.” I cleared my throat again. “And then Aunt Linda came to see me in Durrant.”

  She flinched at the mention of Aunt Linda. Maybe it hurt to hear about the woman who had stayed to take care of me. My anger was back now. I welcomed it. “I couldn’t just let Hank sit on her mantle. He never wanted to leave his place. Ever.”

  That last part was an accusation. It was time for the fight now. She turned to face me like she was ready for it.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “We got no money.” She looked around at the trailer, like she was pointing out the evidence. “How am I paying for a funeral? The hospital wouldn’t release his body to me. John and me tried to get them to. John said he’d take Hank’s body back to the cabin and we’d bury him together, but there are rules, procedures the hospital had to follow. It was either donate his body or have him cremated. All the other options were too expensive. And then John…he didn’t take it well.”