My Jasper June

by Laurel Snyder

  “Oh, that’s not dumb!” said Jasper. “That’s fun. Any idea what you want to paint?”

  “Actually, that’s the part I thought might be cheesy.”

  “Bring on the cheese,” said Jasper.

  “I thought it would be cool if, since we painted that door on your wall, maybe I could have a door too. Almost like . . .”

  “Like the doors connect!” said Jasper right away. “Like a Portkey?”

  “Yes!” I said. “Exactly. Because wouldn’t it be amazing if that was true, if we could actually walk back and forth from the Vine Realm to here? To grab a sandwich or a Popsicle.”

  “Or a shower?” Jasper laughed.

  “Yes! Like you sort of lived here, and the Vine Realm was just another bedroom, with a very long hallway leading to it. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

  “So let’s do it!” said Jasper.

  I ran to get the paint, and for the next hour or two, we worked. Just as she had at her place, Jasper sketched the door and added the knob. Then we painted in silence, happily, until Mom knocked on the door.

  “Oh! Girls,” she said, looking startled. “I didn’t know you’d decided to paint in here.”

  “It’s my room!” I started to argue.

  But I didn’t need to—Mom was smiling. “Hey, hey, no worries, it’s pretty and so creative. You know what? I bet your dad will love it. He used to do murals once upon a time. He might even want to help!”

  I looked back at the mostly finished wall. “Oh, you think?” I said.

  “I’d only suggest that you open a window in here, because of the fumes,” Mom continued. She crossed the room and lifted the window for us.

  After she’d left, Jasper stood for a minute, staring after her. “She’s, like, the kind of mom I dream about, Leah. No lie.” Her voice was a little rough, stuck in her throat.

  “She’s really not so perfect,” I said. “She’s mostly performing for you. I swear.”

  Jasper shook her head. “But even if that’s true, it’s nice that she’s performing. Isn’t it? She’s performing to make you happy. She’s performing love.”

  “I guess. . . .”

  “Anyway,” said Jasper, “she doesn’t have to be perfect to be a good mom. She just has to be here.”

  “But that’s the thing! So often she isn’t here,” I said. “She wanders around not saying anything, except to occasionally nag me. I swear, she’s mostly a ghost mom.”

  Jasper stopped painting and shook her head. “No, Leah. You keep saying that, but it’s just not true. Maybe she’s sad. But she’s not a ghost mom. I have a ghost mom. You can’t hug a ghost. Ghosts don’t make dinner or open the window because of paint fumes. For real.”

  “Maybe there are different kinds of ghost moms,” I said.

  “Stop it!” said Jasper, throwing her paintbrush down. “Stop making your life worse than it is. I’m glad for you that you have a nice mom. You should be glad for you too. You don’t have to relate to everything about me. You really don’t.”

  When she said that, I suddenly knew exactly what she meant. “Oh!” I said. “Oh, wow, you’re right. . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to apologize for,” said Jasper, reaching down to pick her brush back up. “Not a big deal. Just be grateful.”

  “No, I mean, what you just said, about relating. It’s so true. I remember how right after Sam died, people always wanted to tell me about the sad-death-thing that happened to them. But it was usually some dog dying, or a really old grandma. It made me crazy. Because that’s not the same.”

  “Yeah, no, it isn’t,” said Jasper. “Not at all. But it doesn’t have to be. It isn’t a contest, pain. And sometimes, you can’t make it go away no matter what you do. You just have to carry it around, you know?”

  I nodded. “I do know.

  “I know you know,” said Jasper.

  I laughed. “You know something else?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re my best friend. Ever.”

  She smiled. “I know that, silly, and you’re mine. But how will that go down when Tess gets back?”

  “Oh,” I said, realizing how long it had been since I’d really thought about Tess. “Tess.”

  “You never talk about her, but I swear you told me she was your best friend, didn’t you?”

  “She was,” I said. “For a long time. But she just isn’t anymore.”

  “You don’t miss her?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. Tess is like family. We’ll still see each other. That’s how Ormewood is. But when Sam died, things changed between us. I was thinking, all year, that everyone else had changed, and that was hard for me. But now I’m thinking maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve changed. And maybe that’s okay.”

  “Really okay?”

  I nodded. “Really okay.”

  And it was, so we went back to painting the leaves on the wall in comfortable silence.

  At last, the mural was finished, and we stood back to look at it. It was even nicer than the door in the real Vine Realm. I guessed we’d learned something from our many hours of painting, gotten better as we went along. There were purple morning glories entwined with the leaves, and Jasper had painted amazing butterflies and ladybugs all over the kudzu leaves. The late-afternoon light that shone in through the open window made the whole thing come alive.

  “Wow,” I said. “It’s really great!”

  Jasper nodded. “It really is!” she said. “Maybe I want to be an artist.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  Jasper sniffed the air, which was now perfumed with the smell of something rich and meaty, but as full of garlic as promised. “God, whatever your mom is making sure smells good. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t said no to dinner.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I’ll bring you some, I promise. Whatever it is.”

  She sighed. “Thanks. But I guess I should head out. You know, since my mom is expecting me for family dinner?”

  I laughed. “Okay,” I said. “But before you go, there was one more thing I wanted to tell you.”

  Jasper raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s probably no big deal, but I saw a guy hanging around the entrance to the Vine Realm earlier, when I stopped by to look for you. And he kind of . . . spooked me.”

  “Spooked you how?”

  “I don’t know. He just gave me a bad feeling. He had tattoos, and a funny tooth. I waited for him to leave before I headed up to your house, and he did leave after a while. But I still thought you should know. And be careful. He might come back.”

  Jasper didn’t move for a moment, but then she shrugged. “Eh. There have to be other people who know about the place. When I first moved in, I cleared out a bunch of cigarette butts and a pair of gross pants. Like, gross gross. But nobody’s come in since I’ve been there. I’m not worried.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  It didn’t feel totally okay, but I guessed there wasn’t much to be done. And like Jasper had said, sometimes you couldn’t make the bad feeling go away. Sometimes you just had to carry it. If Jasper could carry it, I could carry it too.

  A Change in the Weather

  That night I lay in bed and stared at the new door on my wall. My portal to the Vine Realm. The room smelled faintly of paint, and there were still streaks in the winding lines of green we’d painted that glistened, as though wet, in the yellow light from the front porch on the other side of my window. I stared at the vines and wondered whether Jasper was staring at the vines on her wall too. I liked the idea that we were staring at the same thing.

  Outside, it was raining again, and the sound of the rain was soft and even, whispering against the trees and drumming on the roof. Just the right kind of rain. Only I couldn’t help thinking about Jasper’s leaky roof and the buckets on the floor of her kitchen. I hoped she was safe and dry. I tried hard not to think about the man on Sam’s rock. I tried hard not to think about the door that didn’t lock. I tried hard not to imagine a face at Jasper
’s window, peering down at her. A tooth, blinking in the moonlight. I couldn’t seem to stop imagining bad things. I turned over and buried my head in the pillow, but that didn’t help. I flipped back over again and stared at the portal.

  Suddenly, I sat up. It was too hard not to see the pictures I didn’t want to see. I shook my head, but the pictures were still there. I checked my phone. It wasn’t really that late. Only about ten. But it felt later. I climbed down out of bed and walked to the door of my room, peered out. I heard voices, faint voices.

  Down the hall I padded in bare feet, past the bathroom. At the end of the hallway, I stood at the kitchen door. There was light coming from the crack underneath it. I listened, waiting. Hoping to eavesdrop on something serious. Something about me. I always sort of assumed that when my parents were talking in hushed voices, it was about me.

  But it wasn’t, not this time.

  They were just talking to each other. About their boring days. Like regular married people.

  “So then,” Mom was saying, “the guy who is supposed to be bagging the groceries turns to me and says, ‘Hey, does this look funny to you?’ And he shows me a picture on his phone of his dog. But the dog—get this—has two tails.”

  “That had to be some kind of joke,” said Dad. “Right? Some trick? He’s just trying to get a reaction. Has to be . . .”

  Mom laughed. “Who knows . . . the world is so strange!”

  Then Dad took a sniff, and I knew exactly what it was. Wine. He’d always done that, stuck his nose in his wineglass and inhaled before taking a sip. Mom teased him about it. She thought it was pretentious. But I hadn’t heard the sound in a long time. I couldn’t remember the last time my parents had just sat with a bottle of wine, together, and no TV.

  “I don’t know, Paul,” said Mom. “He looked utterly convinced. I told him to see a vet. And then stop bagging groceries and start his own web channel, for bizarre animal deformities.”

  Dad laughed. “You’re so gullible, Rach.”

  “Yeah, well, life’s more fun that way.”

  Then there was a long pause in the conversation. So I knocked lightly on the door. One, two, three knocks, before I stepped into the room, and did that thing where I rubbed my eyes, so it looked like I was just waking up from having fallen asleep. I didn’t want them to know I’d been listening. They were sitting together at the kitchen table, but not across from each other. Beside each other. Close. Her head was on his shoulder.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re up . . .”

  “Hey!” they called out in unison, smiling. It didn’t feel totally natural, the moment. It didn’t feel totally right. But they both looked glad to see me.

  So I smiled too. And when I opened my mouth, what came out was “Mom, I just wanted to . . . thank you.”

  Mom put her glass down. “For what?”

  “For being so nice to Jasper today,” I said.

  “Oh, honey, of course!”

  “I haven’t had a new friend in a long time. I don’t know if you know this, but Tess and I aren’t . . . the same. As before. Did you know she went to camp, my camp?”

  My mom’s eyes looked tender as she nodded. “I did know, honey. I probably should have talked to you about it. It was a strange decision, I thought. I told Bev so. We spoke about it after you ran into her a few weeks ago. She was concerned for you. But I wasn’t sure what to say to you, so I didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay. But mostly I’m okay because of Jasper. And I guess I was nervous about her meeting you, but she had a lot of fun with you today. It made me feel really . . .”

  Mom nodded.

  Dad didn’t move.

  For some reason, it took me a moment to finish the sentence. “Happy.”

  Mom blinked a bunch of times, like she had something in her eye. “Well, it made me happy too, Leah. I really liked Jasper. She seems genuinely lovely.”

  “She is!” I said. “I’ve never had a friend like her. She’s special.”

  “I could tell,” said Mom. “She seems mature for her age, and she seems to love you.”

  That word should have made me squirm, but it didn’t. I loved Jasper too. I nodded. “Well, anyway, thank you.”

  “Next time she comes over, she should stay for dinner. So Dad can meet her too.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “Well, I guess that was all I wanted to say.” It wasn’t, of course. Things felt so soft and safe in the kitchen, better than they had in a long time, and I wanted to spill everything that was inside me. I wanted to tell them about Jasper, and her mother, and her sister. I wanted help for her, and also, I think, I just didn’t want to carry the secret alone. But I didn’t say any of that. I couldn’t. I’d made a promise, and so I only said, “Good night.”

  “Good night, Leah,” said Mom, as Dad took the last sip of his wine and rose to set the glass on the counter.

  In that moment, the air felt electric. The kitchen windows filled with blinding light. The hairs on my arms buzzed, and a split second later, the house shuddered with a massive crash of thunder. I gasped and looked around at Mom and Dad, who both looked alarmed too. Somewhere nearby, I heard branches breaking.

  And then the lights blinked off and the room was totally, totally dark.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  “It’s okay, Leah.” Dad’s voice was certain, soothing. “Probably just a limb hit a power line. But it feels like that was right over the house. Let’s wait a sec and see if the lights come back on.”

  We all stood still, in the absolute darkness, waiting. Outside, the storm sounded much louder now. Rain pummeled the window, and the panes shook from giant gusts of wind that seemed to have come out of nowhere—blowing hard, then softer, then harder again. After a minute, I heard a chair scrape against the tile.

  “Mom?” I said. “Dad?”

  “Right here, kiddo.” A hand fell on my shoulder.

  Then I heard the gas jets on the stove flare on, and Mom was lighting a candle that she’d found somewhere and walking it over to me, putting her arm on my shoulder too.

  “Why don’t we all just go to bed now?” said Mom in a soft voice. “It’s late, and Dad and I have work in the morning. The lights are sure to come back sooner or later.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Sure,” said Dad. “Just let me check and make sure there isn’t a tornado watch first.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled around in it, and for once it made me feel better to see that. “Nope,” he said after a minute. “It just looks like a really bad storm. Maybe it’ll pass quickly.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Mom. “Now bedtime.”

  So that was how all three of us walked down the hall together. Mom was on my right and Dad was on my left, and they both kept their hands on my shoulders. Connected that way, the three of us stumbled in the darkness, with our candle, until we reached my room.

  Then they were tucking me into bed, both of them. Patting my head, like I was little again, but I didn’t complain. I only said, “Good night.”

  “Sweet dreams,” said Mom.

  “The sweetest,” said Dad.

  Then they shuffled out with the candle, back to the hallway, and off to bed. Together. Arm in arm. I lay there under my covers and watched them go as the room turned to pitch. I snuggled down under the blanket and closed my eyes. I tried to sleep.

  But with the power off, there was no air-conditioning, and the room quickly got hot and stuffy. Outside, the storm didn’t let up. It got worse and worse as I tossed and turned, kicked off my covers. Thunder growled overhead, and wind whipped the house, spattering the window beside my bed with bullets of rain. Now and then, I heard the cracking sound of branches breaking above the house, followed by the thunk of wood hitting the roof; and each time lightning split the sky, it was so bright I could see it through my eyelids, no matter how tightly I squeezed them shut. Then, somewhere close by, a cat started yowling, and I realized I hadn’t seen Mr. Face all day.


  I sat up and stared through the window, searching. It was hard to make out anything at all. The clouds blocked the stars and moon, and even the streetlights were dead. But things were definitely happening out there. I could feel them. There was so much going on in the sky and the air and the trees. I heard the cat again, screaming.

  So I climbed out of bed. I raised the window, and the screen too. I stuck my head out. “Mr. Face?” I shouted into the blowing wind, as rain needled my tired eyes. Even here, under the overhang of the porch, the rain was falling sharp and quick, nearly sideways.

  “Mr. Face!” I didn’t want to wake my parents, but I doubted anyone, including the stupid cat, could hear my call over the wild thunder and the windy night. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”

  No luck.

  I thought again about Jasper, alone in her house. I hoped her solar battery had lasted this long. Maybe for once she had light, while I was in darkness. I tried to imagine her cozy, under the blue blanket, with lights twinkling around her. Maybe she had fallen asleep before the storm got so bad. Maybe she could sleep through it.

  But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t not think of the man. With his bottle and his gun. I couldn’t not picture his tooth. I couldn’t not see him in my mind, standing in the creek, peering curiously up into the Vine Realm.

  I stood at the window, thinking. If I were a homeless man who’d discovered a nice little overhang, a safe embankment, and a well-trodden path into a hidden place. If I were sleeping outside, and it began to crash and rain terribly hard on a dark night, where would I go?

  I looked at the sky beyond the porch, into the empty blank space above. I listened to all the sounds of the storm—the cracking and thunder and the wind, and the rain itself, beating against the tin roof of the carport like a shower of coins. The streets would be flooding. Which meant the creek would be high.

  I stood up, walked to the center of the room. Probably she was fine. Probably I was imagining things. Even if the man did find the house, maybe he was nice, just a guy looking for a dry place to hole up. Maybe Jasper was sharing her pickles with him.