Saving June (7 page)

“How much do you know?” I ask cautiously.

“You, her. June—the urn.” He pauses. “California.”

“How did you—”

“You’re not as discreet as you think,” he says. His grin is so smug I want to punch him in the face.

“You spied on us, didn’t you?” I don’t even try to hide the amount of disgust in my tone. The thought of him listening in on our conversation by the door the whole time like some kind of creepster leaves me feeling horrified and violated and pissed off, all at the same time. I cross my arms over my chest. “Okay, so you know. Congratulations. Would you like a cookie?”

Jake looks me in the eyes intently. “I’m going with you.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he insists. He steps forward, once again violating my personal-space bubble, and lowers his voice. “You take me with you, or I swear I’ll tell your mother. I bet she’d love to hear what you’re planning to do with her dearly
departed daughter’s remains. Or I could talk to your lovely aunt, who I had the pleasure of meeting the other day. She seems like the kind of person who’d be really on board with that plan.”

My heart starts racing a little faster. If Mom found out…if Aunt Helen found out…it’d be over, no question. I’d be under permanent house arrest and twenty-four-hour surveillance. And they’d probably call Dad and tell him to speed up the urn selection process, and if they split the ashes before I can figure out how the hell to get to California, that’s it. I’ll have failed before I even started.

Jake
has
to be bluffing.

But what if he’s not?

“Like she’d believe you,” I say sarcastically, but I’m less sure now, and he can tell.

“Like she’s not paranoid enough right now to listen to me?” He snorts. “I don’t think so.”

Damn. He has me on that one. “So now I’m being blackmailed by a tattletale?”

“Put it however you want,” he says. He heaves a long-suffering sigh, like even having this conversation is a total pain. “Look, I’ve got a van—”

“That—” I wave a hand toward the contraption parked on the curb “—is not a van.
That
is a death trap.”

“Leave Joplin out of this,” he retorts, and I blink in surprise. His van has a name? Before I can whip up a snarky comment, he plows on.
“And
I have some money, and no
one who’ll even notice I’m gone. You’re talking about two minors traveling across the country. If you take a car, or a bus, you’ll never make it. The cops’ll track you down in a second.”

That—that is actually all really convincing. But I’m not ready to concede to his common sense, not yet. Everything about this is too weird. Too.
wrong.

“Why do you even care?” I ask. “So my sister tutored you a few times for padding on her college apps. Big deal. You hardly knew her. Right?”

Jake doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that one. At least five different emotions flicker over his face, none of which I can pinpoint. There’s more to it—to him and June—than he’s letting on. I know it.

“That’s what I thought.” I start heading back to the door.

Good. Now I have the upper hand. Now he’s the one who’ll have to beg.

“‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down,’” he calls out to my receding back. I stop, but I don’t turn around until he breaks into a half jog to catch up to me. “Where did you hear that?”

I ignore him. “You’re hiding something. I want to know why you’re doing this.”

“I have my reasons.”

I shake my head. “That’s not good enough.” I need to
know why he’d volunteer for this, why he cares about my sister at all.

“Yeah, well, too bad!” he shouts. “I told you the deal!”

Maybe my strategy isn’t working as well as I thought. I called his bluff, but he doesn’t look ready to budge. He looks me up and down and then abruptly turns away.

As he walks toward his van, he looks over his shoulder and says, “Your move, Scott.”

Laney thinks Jake’s offer is fantastic. “It’s fate,” she gushes.

“There is no fate,” I say. “There’s what you do and what you don’t do.”

I don’t want to have this argument again. Though it would make sense, in a twisted way, for Jake’s proposition to be a sign from God. Just more proof that if He indeed exists, He hates my guts.

Laney isn’t having it. “Don’t even,” she chides. “This is nothing short of divine intervention and you know it.”

“Whatever.” I pull the phone away from my ear and double-check that my door is shut all of the way. The last thing I need is Aunt Helen eavesdropping on this particular conversation. “There has to be another way.”

That’s what I said last time, I know. But the idea of
driving cross-country in a van with a boy I don’t know is too crazy. Even for me.

“Hang on a second…” Laney pauses, working it out in her head. “You didn’t tell him we’d do it?”

“Of course not. We can’t drive to California with him. We don’t even
know
him.”

“Are you kidding? This is perfect! This is exactly what we’ve been hoping for! He has everything we need.”

Okay, I’ll admit. Turning it down does feel a little like kicking God in the balls.

I sigh. “It’s too easy.”

“You know I love you, Harper, but seriously? That’s a really lame excuse.”

The worst is that Laney’s right; this is potentially kind of completely perfect. Minus the fact that Jake refused to answer any of my questions, no matter how hard I pushed, and he apparently holds a grudge against me for no reason I can figure out. But what other choice do I have? No good one. And I totally believed him when he threatened to blab to Aunt Helen.

Rock, meet hard place.

“All right, all right. I’ll talk to Jake.” I sigh in defeat. “I guess we need to start planning. Figure out when we should leave.”

“Do you have a target date?”

“As soon as possible. Preferably.”

She laughs. “I hear you. Exams are over, thank God, and
Mom and Dad are going on a weekend trip to visit some friends in Pittsburgh—so maybe we should leave then? If it’s okay with Jake.”

“Oh, I’ll
make
sure it’s okay with him.”

“What are you going to do? Threaten bodily harm?”

“I’ll think of something.” I pause. Outside the door, I can hear the sound of someone coming up the stairs. “Hey, Laney, let me call you back.”

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Mom—it has to be. Aunt Helen doesn’t knock. Clearly she does not understand both the symbolic and literal implications of a closed door. What if she caught me smoking? Or undressing? Or, like,
masturbating
or something? Not that I really do that, ever—but it’s the principle of the thing. If she caught me doing
that,
she’d probably have a coronary.

I make a mental note to ask Laney for tips on where to acquire a vibrator. Maybe I can stow it in my nightstand, because I’m pretty sure when I went out for coffee, Aunt Helen searched my room. Imagine if she found something like that. Heads would be rolling.

Ooh, or maybe condoms. Or birth control pills. Now
that
would really freak her out.

I sit down on the bed and put the phone down. “Come in.”

Mom opens the door, standing with it halfway ajar. She doesn’t make a move to fully enter, just stays there, looking.
But I can tell she’s not really
seeing
me, is lost somewhere in her own mind. We’ve barely spoken over the past few days—we exist parallel to each other.

“Hi,” I say, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

“Hi.” Mom hovers in the doorway, her hand on the knob. She leans on it like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Maybe it is. “Helen invited me to her morning church service this Sunday. Not just me—you, too. She thinks it would be good, for the both of us.”

“Helen
thinks?
“ I bristle. “No, thanks.”

“Harper.” She pauses, breathing in and out through her nose a few times, one hand pressed to her temple as if to prevent the onslaught of a migraine. “I don’t appreciate your hostile attitude. She’s trying to
help—”

“Well, maybe she’s trying, but she’s not helping.”

“She’s helping
me!
“ she snaps. Her chin quivers with the threat of tears. “I need someone right now. It’s not like your father has been of any help, if you’ve bothered to notice. Helen is the only one who’s here for me. I can’t do this on my own. Do you not understand that? Does that not make any sense to you whatsoever?”

So that’s how my mother sees it? That she’s all alone, save for Aunt Helen? My presence means nothing. I’m invisible, or worse, a burden.

“Helen says I need to surrender,” she continues. “That
I need to let God in, let Him take control. And I think it might help you find some peace, too, if you came with me.”

“Let me think about it,” I lie, because I know already that I will never step foot inside that church, know that come Sunday I’ll be long gone from this town.

Why should I stay? Aunt Helen hates me. Mom doesn’t need me. I can’t do anything right. Really, I’m in the way. This just makes my decision all that much easier.

Mom nods once and starts to close the door. For a second, I want nothing more than for her to come back, to cradle me in her arms like when I was a kid and had badly scraped a knee, to smooth her palm across my forehead as if checking for a fever, to do something—anything—to remind me of the days when knowing that she was my mother and that she was there was enough to make the bad things better.

It’s weird because I don’t really want her to comfort me; I just want her to
try.
But that yearning is only a dull ache in my chest, the kind of phantom pains amputees get where their missing limbs should be. It isn’t anything real.

The next day I take the bus across town to the Oleo Strut. The bus stop is three blocks from the store, and even though I have on a T-shirt, it’s another blistering day, and by the time I arrive in front of the brick building, the thin cotton is stuck to my back with sweat like a second skin.
No one notices when I enter. Jake’s brother—I don’t know his name—is behind the counter, arguing with a man in his forties dressed in a skuzzy, spiky leather jacket and a pair of dirty corduroys.

“Punk is
not
dead,” Jake’s brother is insisting emphatically. “Look at—”

“Who? Green Day? Avril Lavigne?” the other man sneers. “That’s just manufactured pop bullshit. You’ve got all these poser bands out there, cranked out of big-name labels, pretending to be part of the counterculture when they’re just another cash cow for the capitalist, consumerist machine. It’s a gimmick. Kids these days think they can go out and buy punk self-identification through massmarketed band apparel from Hot Topic.”

“Yeah, but there
is
still good stuff,
true
punk. It’s out there, it’s just not being played on the radio. Punk isn’t just a look. It’s not even just about
attitude.
If you have the aesthetics and the posturing, you better back it up with the politics.”

“Bullshit. Johnny Ramone was an NRA-supporting, full-fledged Republican!” the guy protests.

Jake’s brother leans farther over the counter. “Fuck Johnny Ramone. The U.K. had the right idea—look at Joe Strummer. Look at the Sex Pistols, and Crass and—”

“Whatever, man. The culture’s still dead. Nothing like that exists anymore.”

“You just have to know where to find it,” Jake’s brother
says. He withdraws a neon-green flyer from underneath the counter. “The Revengers. They’re hardcore, the real thing, and they’re playing a few shows in state later this summer. You gotta check them out—they don’t mess around. If after that you still think punk’s dead, I’ll give you any record in the store, half off. Hand to God.”

He holds up one hand solemnly. The man only grunts in response—but he takes the flyer before he leaves.

“You make a compelling case on behalf of punk rock,” I say as I approach the counter.

“Someone has to do it,” he replies with a grin. “Need help finding something?”

“Yes. I’m looking for the latest Green Day album.”

He laughs, surprised, and eyes me more closely. “Hey, I’ve seen you before. You were in here the other day, with the blond girl, right?”

“Yeah, that was me.” I pause and clear my throat. “Is your brother around?”

“Jake?” He rubs his chin. “He’s not working today. But I think he’s at home.”

“Oh,” I say, deflated. Too bad I was an idiot and never got his phone number. I could’ve saved myself a pointless bus trip. “Um. Could you tell me where that is?”

His amused grin widens. “We live upstairs. Second level. There’s a side entrance outside, but it’s locked. Let me lend you my key.”

“Really?” I watch as he scrounges around in his back pocket. “I mean, thanks.”

“No problem. Just drop it back off before you go,” he says, procuring a brass key. “And if he puts on Bowie’s early stuff and starts sweet-talking, dammit, you run. You run as fast as you can.”

He winks at me, and I blush as I realize what he’s implying. Rather than try to explain myself, I push out the door and walk around to the side of the building. The door there has a lock that sticks a little, but I lean my shoulder against it until it pops open, and a narrow staircase leads up to another wooden door. I pause for a moment before knocking.

A minute passes—no answer. I knock again, more persistently. Footsteps pad toward the door, a lock turns and the door opens to reveal Jake. He’s bleary-eyed, shirtless and holding an open jar of peanut butter, a spoon stuck in his mouth. Somehow, he still makes it look attractive. He blinks a few times and pulls out the spoon with a loud popping noise.

Okay, maybe not so attractive.

“That’s disgusting,” I say.

“Nice to see you, too,” he says through a mouthful of peanut butter.

I lean to the left and try to peer around him. “Can I come in?”

He sticks the spoon back into the jar and sighs. “You’re not going to go away until I say yes, are you?”

“Nope.”

He turns and walks back into the apartment, but leaves the door open, which I take as my cue to follow. The apartment has dark walls and thick brown carpet. The furniture is sparse—a ratty couch, a coffee table and a television in one corner. Shelves are built into the wall, only one of them filled with books, the rest used to house vinyl records and CDs and cassettes.

Jake flops down on the scratchy sofa and props his bare feet up on the table. “So how’d you get in?” he asks.

“Your brother gave me a key,” I explain, sidestepping the huge-ass stereo system stacked on the floor. “He seems cool.”

“Eli? Yeah. He’s not bad.”

“It must be cool to live above his store.”

“It’s not his store,” he says. “He
wishes.
He’s just the manager. The guy who owns it, Don, retired a few years back. Lives in Petoskey now. Eli looks after the place for him, apartment included.”

“Oh.” I look around again. “It’s. Um. Charming.”

“It’s a shithole,” he says, “but I’ve lived in worse.” He sets the peanut butter jar on the coffee table. “Is that what you’re here for? To admire the decor? Or is it something else?”

Okay. Time to cut to the chase. “So…the answer is yes.”

“Yes…what?” he asks.

“Yes, you can come with us to California.”

“I’m honored.” He looks skeptical. “You came all the way here to tell me that?”

“It’s not like I have your phone number,” I remind him. “Anyway, we want to leave on Friday.”

“For California?”

“No, for the mall.” I roll my eyes. Something about Jake incites a lot of eye-rolling on my part, I’ve noticed.
“Yes,
California. What else would I be talking about?”

“Friday.” He rolls the word over on his tongue like he’s testing it out. “Okay, I think that’s doable.”

Well, that was easier than I’d thought it’d be.

“Is Eli going to be okay with you just taking off?” I ask.

“I’ll tell him I’m going to visit friends or something.” He shrugs and scratches at his stomach—still shirtless. Still making things totally awkward. For me, anyway; Jake seems obliviously unaware of his half-naked state. “He doesn’t ask too many questions. It’s not like he can call the cops—I’m eighteen now.”

I nod curtly. “Good.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Your parents. Are they gonna freak?”

“My mother might. I don’t know what she’ll do.”

Have a meltdown, probably. But she’ll be okay. Aunt
Helen will be there. She’s better at picking up the pieces than I’ll ever be.

“Here’s what you have to do,” Jake says. “You have to write a note. Let her know you left on your own. Otherwise she’ll probably assume you’ve been kidnapped or some shit. And if she
does
call the cops, they treat runaway cases way different than abductions. They have to wait at least twenty-four hours before releasing the hounds, anyway.”

“Wow. Your precise and in-depth knowledge of the legal ramifications is very helpful. And somewhat unsettling.”

We go over the specifics of Friday’s departure: I’ll write a note beforehand, lie and say I’m spending the night at Laney’s. Mom and Aunt Helen already said they’re going to be at some church knitting-slash-study-group thing, so the house will be clear. I’ll meet Jake outside around seven o’clock. If something goes wrong, I’ll call or text him to let him know. We’ll swing over to Laney’s, pick her up and hit the road. Easy enough—or so I hope.

As we outline the plans, the knot in my stomach winds tighter and tighter. This isn’t some vague scheme anymore; it’s becoming more and more concrete. We’re going to do this.

“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” I say out loud. I don’t mean just this—the trip to California—but everything that has changed in my life over the past two weeks. Automatically I feel stupid, knowing that Jake will probably scoff or whip up some cutting retort in return.

But instead he says, “Yeah, I know,” in a quiet sort of voice. His expression changes. There’s something there—definitely not pity. Not even sympathy, exactly. Understanding? Maybe.