My Jasper June

by Laurel Snyder

  “We’re trying,” Mom added. “We really are. And I think we’re getting better, a little. . . .”

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to continue. “Until I met Jasper, I thought I was broken for good. I didn’t seem to be able to talk to anyone anymore, and I thought I wouldn’t ever be happy again, because of Sam. Because it was my fault that he . . .”

  “Oh, honey,” said Mom.

  “But then I realized I wasn’t broken for good. It was like magic. How being with Jasper sort of fixed me. Woke me back up. But it isn’t just me. It’s all of us. It’s like . . . like we were your coffee cup, the four of us, and the cup could hold joy and fun and everything. But when Sam died, that cracked the cup. So now it doesn’t hold anything anymore. We try to put things in it. But everything just . . . dribbles out.”

  “Oh, Leah, no,” said Mom. She looked like she might cry too.

  I nodded. “Yes! And now Jasper is here, and she’s not taking Sam’s place, exactly. But she’s patching the cup. She’s the glue. I know the crack won’t go away, ever. We can’t pretend the cup wasn’t broken. But we can fill it again. Can’t we?”

  “That’s a very wise thing you just said,” said Mom. “A wise thing . . .”

  “Well, maybe if I’m so wise, you should listen to me,” I insisted.

  Dad took a moment before speaking again. “Leah, even if we wanted to, I don’t know how it would work, legally. We might have to go to court. It’s just not a thing people do, to take in some kid off the street.”

  “Then I don’t want to do what people do,” I said. “I want to invent our own way to do things. Maybe she can just have an overnight here, like Tess used to. And then she can have an overnight tomorrow, and the night after that, and the night after that. I bet her sister would let her. It’s better than living on the streets.”

  Dad didn’t say anything, and I knew that meant I was right. But Mom sighed. “You’re going to discover, Leah, that the world is full of sad people, sick people, people with problems. You can’t fix everyone. And it isn’t your fault when you can’t.”

  “I know that, Mom,” I said. “But I’m not trying to fix Jasper. Aren’t you listening to me? We have a room that is just sitting there, empty. That room hurts. It’s not a memory. It’s a hole. And meanwhile, we have this person who could fill it, a person who’s all alone.”

  “It’s true,” said Dad slowly. “That room . . . it’s . . .”

  I waited. To see what he’d say. But he only put one hand over his eyes and fell silent again.

  “No!” I said. “Stop it! It’s too much. The sadness is too much.” I reached up and pulled his hand down, held it. “No more sadness, not like that. Sam is gone and that room is a dusty, horrible shrine. So why not?” I said. “Why not Jasper?”

  Mom was staring at me now. “Leah,” she said. “What happened to your brother—”

  “Sam,” I said. I was done with Mom not being able to say his name. “You mean Sam.”

  “Yes,” said Mom. “What happened to . . . Sam . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can’t go back and fix it. You can’t change what’s already past.”

  I rose to my knees on the bed. “I know that,” I said. I was ready to scream. I felt like they weren’t hearing anything I said. “But I’m not trying to change the past. I’m trying to change the present. For all of us. All you have to do is say yes. You can say yes. It’s like . . . an actual magic word.”

  Then we heard a cough, and we all turned together to find Jasper standing in the doorway in my blue flowered nightgown.

  “Hi,” she said matter-of-factly. She looked different somehow, younger than usual, though her legs were too long for the nightgown.

  “Hello,” Dad replied awkwardly, with a little wave.

  “I rolled up the sleeping bag,” said Jasper. “And I wondered where you wanted me to put it.”

  She sounded brave to me. She sounded like herself. Like a girl who is going to do a hard thing, and is used to doing hard things. But then she put her hands on her hips awkwardly, like she wasn’t sure what to do with them.

  She was scared.

  All around me then, there was a pause. It was like the whole room held its breath. An unbearably long breath. I glanced back and saw that my parents were staring at each other.

  “Please?” I whispered. My voice was shaky in my throat. “Please?”

  My dad reached out, put a hand on my back. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  In the doorway, Jasper shifted from foot to foot.

  Then, out of nowhere, my mom suddenly said, “Huh!” Like she’d had a new thought.

  “Rach?” asked my dad.

  She turned to him and locked eyes. “Paul,” she said. “Do you remember what you told me when I was scared we weren’t ready to get married, but you wanted to run off to Vegas?”

  Dad’s eyes softened, but they were still fixed on Mom. His voice was low when he said, “I told you we could handle anything if we were together.”

  “That’s right,” said Mom. And it was funny because the moment felt sort of romantic, but her voice was sharp, like she was on a phone call for work. “You weren’t afraid of risks back then. Or messes. You used to throw whole buckets of paint at a canvas and tell me we could worry about the floor later, remember that? You used to take me on road trips without a map or a destination. You used to do all kinds of crazy things. Remember?”

  Dad nodded. “I do,” he said. “And then there was that night on the mountain above Chattanooga . . .” He grinned at her.

  Mom blushed.

  I didn’t say a word. I had said all my words, maybe too many. I knew it wasn’t my turn anymore. So I just watched them stare at each other and wondered what had happened on that mountain. I didn’t think I’d ever know. I probably didn’t want to know.

  “The thing is,” said Mom, “we have done the hardest thing we will ever do, haven’t we? What happened last summer—nothing else will ever be anything like that. So we know you were right. We can do anything, together. Anything at all.”

  Dad nodded.

  All this time Jasper had just been standing there, not saying a word. Watching the story unfold, like we were a play on a stage. Now I looked up at her and tried to make eye contact, but she didn’t seem to notice me. She was set on my mom. Her eyes almost seemed glazed over. I wondered what she was thinking. What she was seeing.

  This is a family, I thought to myself.

  This is people, not ghosts.

  This is us, waking up, no matter what happens next. . . .

  Since nobody was paying attention to me, I closed my eyes.

  I crossed my fingers.

  I held my breath and wished.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw that Mom and Dad had broken their gaze. Mom was glancing briefly around the room, as if taking it all in—the sunlight, the rumpled blankets, the water in its glass on the bedside table. But Dad was looking straight out into the doorway, at Jasper.

  “Please?” I whispered one last time.

  Dad coughed. “I wonder, Jasper—how do you like your eggs?”

  But Mom pulled up her knees under the covers and patted the empty spot on the bed in front of her. “Come on in,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Really?” said Jasper as she stepped forward into the room. “What about?”

  Mom nodded. “It seems we’re having a family meeting,” she said. “You should probably join us.”

  Like Any Other Day

  I was sprawled on the porch, elbows deep in pumpkin guts, when the screen door slammed and I looked up to see my mom, holding out two cans of fizzy water. “I thought you girls might like a cold drink,” she said. “Awfully warm for October. Doesn’t really feel like Halloween, does it?”

  I shook my head and withdrew my hands, scooping out gobs of slimy seeds, and tossed the mess down with a splat on the newspapers spread around me. “Not even a little bit,” I grumbled.

  Across fr
om me, Jasper called out, “Thanks, Rachel! Can I have the lime?”

  “No fair,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans. “Lime’s my favorite.”

  “Sorry, kid,” said Mom as she passed a green can to Jasper and set the cranberry water by my pumpkin. Then she leaned over to look at our pumpkins, frowned, and added, “Wow, these jack-o’-lanterns are going to be quite . . . interesting.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, leaning back to examine my own pumpkin, on which I’d scribbled in black marker the outline of where I was about to start cutting. Three triangles and a toothy grin, just like every other year. “His name is Shady McPumpkinhead,” I said.

  “Of course it is,” said Mom. “Of the Tennessee McPumpkinheads, yes?”

  I glanced over at Jasper’s pumpkin, which was already finished. I had no idea what it was supposed to be. “Where’s his nose?” I asked, tilting my head sideways for a different angle. “And . . . the rest of his face?”

  Jasper tilted her head too. “What makes you assume it’s a boy pumpkin?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “The patriarchy, probably.”

  Jasper laughed. “Look, I refuse to be boxed in by your conventional holiday customs,” she said. “My jack-o’-lantern is an abstract expression of autumn.”

  “A protest pumpkin, eh?” said Mom.

  Jasper nodded. “Why not?”

  “No reason,” said Mom, turning. “You rage against the machine all you want. I’m going inside to start dinner. We’re having garlic chicken.”

  The minute she was gone, Jasper grinned and whispered at me, “Garlic chicken with extra garlic!”

  “Don’t say I never warned you!”

  “Truth!” said Jasper, cracking open her fizzy water.

  I picked up my knife and stared at my pumpkin, trying to decide where to start cutting. “I can’t wait for you to see Halloween in Ormewood,” I said. “Trick-or-treating on Woodland is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It’s almost a festival. They block the street off and literally thousands of kids show up.”

  “Literally thousands?”

  “No, I really mean it. Literally literally. Like, actually thousands. Andy, around the corner, keeps track each year of how much candy he gives out. Last year he ran out after twelve hundred pieces.”

  “You don’t say . . . ,” said Jasper. Then she seemed to drift off a little, like she was thinking about something.

  “I do say,” I insisted, and shoved the knife into Shady McPumpkinhead’s face, chopped out an eye with three quick movements.

  Then Jasper cleared her throat and said, “Hey . . . Leah?”

  I looked up. “Yeah?”

  “Well,” she said. “It’s just . . . I was thinking that maybe I could . . . invite my sister to come over, bring her kids to trick-or-treat. What do you think?”

  “Oh!” I said, laying down my knife. “That . . . would be awesome. I bet Dad would make some of his special apple cider soda, and—”

  Jasper rolled her eyes. “Be real, Leah,” she said. “It will not be awesome. It’s almost certain to be awkward. But I miss her, and I was thinking how it’s strange you haven’t met her yet. So I thought . . . maybe it was a good time. And the kids will have a blast. If it’s like you say, a festival?”

  The truth was that sometimes I managed to forget all about Jasper’s family. She’d slid so neatly into our house that it was easy to avoid thinking about all the hard stuff. The same way I could sometimes now, for a little while, avoid thinking about Sam. My brain got full of homework and chores and other things. I’d laugh and talk and be distracted for hours at a time. And then, in bed at night, Sam would come back with a whoosh. Like he was sitting there on the foot of my bed, waiting for me when the lights went out. Sometimes at night I still cried, alone. But I knew how to play the sad game now. And my therapist said that was a fine thing to do. I wondered if Jasper cried too, when she was alone. Maybe in the shower, where we couldn’t hear her over the water.

  Anyway, of course Jasper’s sister should come over for Halloween. And maybe her mom too. I knew she talked to them both, and that things were a little better. But she hadn’t really told me much about any of that. And I didn’t ask. I figured Mom and Dad were involved. Some days the three of them got into the car and were gone for a few hours, and I knew that was how it should be. I trusted that things were okay. Or at least they were better. It was nice, after a summer of carrying secrets, to let someone else guard them for a while. To trust. I felt lighter.

  Jasper started messing around with her phone then, texting someone really fast, so I took a sip of my soda and turned my attention back to Shady McPumpkinhead. Nobody said anything for a few minutes. I finished carving his mouth and decided to give him some ears.

  But suddenly I heard Jasper say, “Ew, gross!” and I looked up from my jack-o’-lantern, to see that Mr. Face had silently joined us on the porch. He was sitting politely on the mat, a mouse between his teeth.

  “Oh!” I said.

  He held the creature delicately, like always. Only this time, since I was sitting on the ground, he was basically at eye level. After a moment, he turned his head, to look at Jasper the same way. Then, ever so gently, he laid his precious bundle on the mat, turned, and ran off.

  Jasper shuddered. “Ugh, trick or treat, Mr. Face!” she said as she stretched a long leg, to nudge at the mouse with her foot, kick him off the porch.

  But I reached out and grabbed her leg, stopped her. “No, wait,” I said.

  “Why?” she said. “It’s gross.”

  “Just because,” I said. “I know it seems gross, but it’s not. I don’t think so, anyway. Just wait. And watch.”

  “Watch what?” she asked, staring at me, baffled. “A dead mouse?”

  “You’ll see,” I said.

  And then the little brown mouse slowly uncurled himself, like I knew he would. He sat up on his haunches and gave a quick shake, as if waking from a nap. He brushed his whiskers lightly with his paws, and then he peered up at each of us briefly before he scampered off the mat, across the porch, down the stairs, and into the azaleas. We followed him with our eyes until he was gone.

  Jasper shook her head. “Whoa. Did you see that?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “How did you know that was going to happen?”

  “I’ve seen it before,” I said.

  Jasper’s eyes were wide. “Seriously?” she said. “That’s more than weird. That’s . . . impossible. It’s like . . . actual magic. I almost don’t believe it happened.”

  “Maybe it is magic,” I said. “Or maybe he’s just a really lucky mouse. You know, it’s funny, how once you see something unbelievable happen a few times, it stops being so unbelievable.”

  Jasper didn’t answer me. She just sat there for a second, holding her can of soda, and for once I couldn’t read her face. She looked thoughtful. I wondered what she was thinking, sitting like that for so long.

  “What?” I said finally. “What is it?”

  Jasper shook her head gently. “Nothing,” she said. “Or . . . not nothing. I just—I feel lucky. You know?”

  I nodded. I smiled. “I do know,” I said. And that was true.

  Jasper pushed herself up to standing. “You know what would make this day absolutely perfect?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Ice cream!” she said.

  “Oh, indeed!” I replied. “Ice cream is the best idea!” And it was. Ice cream suddenly sounded just right. It was still hot in the sunshine. “Maybe we could share a banana split.”

  “Perfect!”

  Then Jasper reached down a hand to me, and I grabbed on. She pulled me up, and we ran inside to wash our hands. In no time at all, we were back on the porch, with the screen door slamming. We took off down the steps and headed for Morelli’s and a banana split to share.

  Just like on any other day, we shuffled through the dry leaves and faded grass of autumn. Just like on any other day, we talked and laughed as we hurri
ed along. Just like on any other day, the sky was big and blue above us, and the pavement was cracked beneath our feet. All around us, the world was full of things—lights and shadows and air and wind and noises and cars moving and trees growing and kudzu vining and cats pouncing and everyone living their lives. The world was so big and so full, and that was just fine.

  But most of it didn’t concern us.

  Not me and Jasper.

  Not right now.

  Acknowledgments

  When I was eight, my cousin Scott died. We weren’t terribly close, but we were exactly the same age, and his death was a huge shock to me. It was my first encounter with the death of a child—always a terrible disruption in the order of things. I was frightened and confused. I had so many questions, but what I quickly discovered was that nobody could (or would) answer them.

  A few years later, when I was about Jasper’s age, I discovered that I had several friends who were living on their own, without parents. Somehow, they were feeding themselves, keeping their houses (mostly) clean, and managing to get to school. As shocking as that was, I never considered reporting any of these situations to an adult. The kid code was clear to me—even when I was concerned for my friends, my job was to keep quiet, and show up with groceries or petty cash when I could.

  I’m still not exactly sure why these two sets of memories converged as they did in My Jasper June. I know that I wanted to write about the dangers of silence and the secrets kids keep. I wanted to write about pain and how friendship—real friendship—can ease that pain. Above all, I wanted to write about how strong kids can be, and about how grown-ups often underestimate their experiences. I wanted to tell a story about how sometimes kids step in and do the work their parents can’t, for each other. And, in doing so, create their own chosen families.

  This book went through many drafts and incarnations, and I had to dwell in some dark memories to write it. While I don’t want to reveal anything identifiable about people who value their privacy, I need to acknowledge them here. I’m so thankful to the friends I had in those years—the kids who opened their lives and homes to me when we were young. Who made themselves vulnerable, and taught me to do the same. Life wasn’t always pretty as we fumbled along together, but we made it through (on a steady diet of ramen), and I’m very grateful to those folks. I hope they know what they meant to me.