When Anya used to take Connor and Juni on walks in the woods, she’d always talk to the cedars. She would tell the trees their own birth story, how the red-throated loon had carried the future in her mouth, winged seeds falling out and taking root. Anya told the trees she loved their loyalty in tending the stumps in their grove because, even though the trees themselves may have died, the roots were part of a system that didn’t want to let them go. She said she could hear them breathe, knew their hearts, and because they were witness to love and rain, wind and anger, they held the story of Juniper’s family, of time itself, deep in their graceful limbs.
Juni longed for the familiarity of her own woods, to walk with Connor again and listen to Anya talk to the trees.
Feeling as though she had lived through the longest day of her life, Juni decided to sleep under the stars instead of in the tent. She unrolled her sleeping bag on the soft wild grass and lay on it, hands behind her head. Mason and Gabby stretched their bags out on either side of Juni’s and joined her to watch the sky for shooting stars. Eventually, Dad crunched along the gravel pathway, appeared above Juni and kneeled to kiss her forehead.
“I called the Wilders,” he said. “They’re looking forward to meeting us.”
“You didn’t tell them . . .”
“I didn’t tell them why we were coming, no. I figured you’d want to do that for yourself.”
Juni flipped to her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows so she could look at her dad properly. He was backlit from the porch lights, so she couldn’t see his expression very well. The moonlight only gave her a wrinkled brow and a frown.
“What is it?” she said.
“We can still go back, Juni. These types of things never go the way we hope they will,” Dad said.
“Now you sound like Mom.”
“We can’t have come all this way and not finish what we started, Mr. Creedy,” Gabby said. “We aren’t quitters.”
“Knowing when to quit is as important as knowing when not to quit,” Dad said. “It’s an art, not a science.”
“I’m going to need an example of when it’s okay to quit,” Gabby said.
“You wouldn’t blame Juni for wanting to go home right now, right?” Mason said.
“Of course not!”
“There’s your example.”
Juni was certain Gabby’s head had just exploded.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to say to the Wilders?” Dad said. He’d picked up a pebble and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers.
“A little. But then I thought it should be spontaneous, from my heart. If I try to plan, it will be coming from my brain, which isn’t so reliable when I’m nervous. Especially if my breathing goes funny.”
Juni was specifically thinking of the speech she’d almost given last year on the importance of oral hygiene. Almost, because once she was standing in front of Mr. Humburger’s class, she couldn’t remember a single word of it. Not even the interesting fact Mason had discovered about how a mouth was dirtier than a toilet bowl.
“Well, then. They haven’t got a chance,” Dad said. He kissed Juni on the forehead again and left her to her thoughts.
Soon enough, Gabby was snoring—she could fall asleep anywhere—leaving Juni and Mason to stare at the Milky Way alone, sort of. Juni glanced over at Mason and noticed the curve of his collarbone, the hollow at the center. She wondered if that hollow was deep enough to grow a shallow-rooted plant, like a succulent.
“Why do they call it the Milky Way?” Juni said. “Please don’t tell me they named it after a candy bar.”
Mason snorted. “It could be the ancient Romans are to blame. Or the Greeks. No one knows for sure. But around twenty-five hundred years ago, someone started calling it Via Lactea, which means ‘Road of Milk,’ because of the milky band of stars running through the middle. Not very original, I guess.”
“Like mine. Juniper. I was named after a tree that happened to be there when I started breathing. What would they have named me if I had been next to a pine? I guess Aspen would have been cool.”
“I like Poison Ivy,” Mason said.
“Blackberry.”
“Pinecone!”
They giggled together, both of them pulling the sleeping bags over their heads to muffle the sound. Gabby snorted in her sleep. She was probably drooling.
Once they’d quieted, Mason turned on his side to face Juni, so she turned on her side, too.
“Are you scared?” Mason said. “About tomorrow?”
“Not as much as I thought I’d be.”
Because this was it. The end of her quest. She should have been terrified of what was to come, how she might fail. But it was hard to hang on to the scared feelings with the Milky Way above her, the ancient trees beyond carrying her magic spell away and away.
Juni almost didn’t recognize her own hand as she ran two fingers along Mason’s jawbone, ending at his chin. She touched the fine hairs he’d have to shave off one day, like Dad.
“Okay?” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
Juni leaned forward and touched her lips to his. This went on for minutes, hours, days, and did not feel the way she’d thought it would—dizzying or strange. Those were small words, ordinary words. Pre-kiss words.
Instead, Juni felt a new galaxy form inside of her, as though she’d exploded into a trillion tiny particles of light.
BRAVE AND STRONG
CONNOR’S WATCH WOKE Juni at 6:35. She put her arm under her pillow to muffle the sound, and drifted back to sleep. There, she found a little shack in the woods, a girl sitting by the fire, petting the coarse fur of a young buck. Next thing Juni knew, Dad was beside her. “Time to get a move on.”
Juni, Gabby and Mason each rolled their sleeping bags and got to work with Luca taking the tent apart while Dad stood at the water’s edge. He drank coffee from a large misshapen blue mug, the same cerulean as the deep water of Lake Tahoe. Nathan and Anya were inside making breakfast, the smell of bacon floating in the morning breeze.
For the first time ever, Juni felt shy around Mason, felt her face burn when he came close. She was sweaty and awkward and generally flustered in a way she’d never been before. Not even when she forgot her entire speech on oral hygiene. She supposed this was the price a person paid for exploding a new galaxy.
“Okay, what is going on?” Gabby finally demanded as she shoved her pillow into the back of the Caprice. “Did I miss something? Did you draw on my face again?”
“No!” Juni and Mason both shrieked at the very same time.
Juni hadn’t thought about Gabby’s reaction, and had a moment of pure terror when she realized this might change everything. The way Gabby felt about being with them. The way Juni and Mason were with each other. Would he want to kiss her now every single time they were alone? Would he stop telling her all about his dorky discoveries? Because how could you go on and on for fifteen minutes about bacteria and then expect a person to want to kiss you?
Gabby’s eyes widened, almost as wide as the time she saw Bill Nye the Science Guy at Fisherman’s Wharf.
“My people! You finally did it!” she yelled, and smashed them into a hug.
Everything would be okay. Different, but okay.
They went inside and ate piles of pancakes, eggs and bacon, and when they had finished cleaning the dishes, Anya walked Juni to the water, where they watched shallow waves lap against the shore.
“I’m going to stay behind,” Anya said.
Juni nodded. Until that morning, Juni thought all she really wanted was for Dad to show up and be himself again, to understand what Juni needed and to help her. Now that he was here, trying, Juni realized she wanted something much different. The opposite, actually.
Juni wanted to do the rest of this on her own. With her friends. She wanted to prove she was brave and strong
, if only to herself.
She glanced toward the house. Dad stood behind the deck railing talking to Luca. “Do you think he’ll let me go on my own?”
“You might be surprised.”
“What did you say to him? I thought for sure he was going to make us go home,” Juni said.
“I told him he wasn’t the only one suffering, and that we all had to find our own way with this, including you,” Anya said. “Then I told him that if he didn’t let you have this dog, I was moving out.”
Juni laughed. “But it’s your house!”
“Pfft. Maybe I would have kicked him out, then. He could go live in a tree.”
Anya put her arm around Juni’s shoulders, and they watched as powerboats whizzed around in the distance, the soft buzz of their engines sounding like flying insects.
Dad appeared beside them. “What are you two conspiring about?”
“I’m going to let you two talk this through.” Anya kissed Juni’s cheek and walked down the sandy beach, the lake’s small waves erasing her footprints as she went.
Juni took a deep breath. “I want to do this by myself, Dad. I want to be able to finish what I started on my own. Well, on our own. With my friends.”
He nudged a small rock with his toe. “You do, huh?”
“I’m not mad or anything,” Juni said. Even though as she said it, she realized it wasn’t true. She was mad. For having to watch her dad disappear into the woods, her mom burrow under the covers every day. To watch the life she’d known turn into one she didn’t.
“I let you down,” Dad said.
Juni didn’t say anything. Because of course he had. They both stared at the lake, the mountains, the puffy clouds inching along on the breeze high above.
“You didn’t let me down. You left me alone,” Juni finally said.
Dad closed his eyes.
Juni took her dad’s arm and leaned into him. They were quiet for a time.
“We’ll wait for you,” Dad said. “Right here.”
The whole time Connor had been missing, Juni had wanted her dad to show up. Now, by staying behind, that was exactly what he was doing.
Life was so strange.
THE WATCH
IT WAS A THREE-HOUR trip from South Lake Tahoe, and Luca drove past the WELCOME TO MAMMOTH LAKES, POP. 8,132 sign at just past noon.
“They named it Mammoth for an overconfident mining company in 1878, not the mammal,” Mason said. “They added the word Lakes because there are about a hundred lakes around here, all scooped out by glaciers. The company really thought they’d bring in tons of gold and silver, but they didn’t.”
Mason leaned his head against the window. Gabby picked at her cuticles. Juni had asked Luca to stop playing music, preferring the silence. Anya didn’t listen to music in the car, was always saying her mind was busy enough and didn’t need a soundtrack. Juni knew just what she meant.
Instead, Juni listened to the natural sounds around her—wind blowing through the half-open windows, tires whooshing against the hot asphalt road. After a while, Juni closed her eyes and swore she could hear when the car went from sunshine into the shade of the trees. She could hear the wide bends in the road, the painted lines under the tires.
When she was tired of listening, she looked at Captain Wilder’s Facebook posts again. Pictures of his kids. Elsie with his kids. Elsie playing fetch at one of the hundred lakes nearby.
Preparing herself.
She wrapped her hand around the antler bone necklace, thinking of her tasks. They’d completed the magic spell. Soon, Elsie would be returned to her rightful owner. The only task left was the sacrifice. Juni still had no idea what that might be, but believed she’d know it when the time was right.
The houses grew farther and farther apart until, eventually, Luca turned into a long driveway, a two-story house with redwood siding at the end of it. The house had a big grassy yard in front and an American flag hanging perfectly still beside the front door. It was another hot, dry mountain day.
From the looks of it, every Wilder was in the front yard playing with Elsie.
Elsie. There she was, golden and magnificent. Chasing after a red ball and bringing it back to an older man with white hair. Juni recognized him from Captain Wilder’s pictures as Mrs. Wilder’s father.
When they parked the Caprice, Elsie stopped her frolicking and sat at the heels of the older man. She was very still, like the flag.
“You ready for this?” Luca said. He turned off the engine.
“Ready,” Juni said.
They got out of the car, Mason and Gabby each taking one of Juni’s hands. Juni stood tall and pushed her shoulders back. They walked forward as the whole of the Wilder family watched. The smallest Wilder girl held on to her mom. She had a halo of blond ringlets lit by the sun.
“Glad you’re here,” Captain Wilder said. He was shorter than Juni had imagined, with wide shoulders and muscled arms, a tattoo of a single red rose on his right shoulder.
Elsie stood, alert, and then turned around in a circle, tail wagging. She barked and sat again. She looked at the older man, whining. He finally said, “Go on, girl. Easy, though.”
Elsie took off at a run. Straight for Juni.
Juni kneeled down as Elsie reached her, almost knocking her over. She wagged her long golden tail and made little whiny barking sounds, as though she were Juni’s long-lost friend and they’d finally been reunited after a snowstorm and a trip through the desert and a journey into outer space and back.
At first, Juni didn’t understand. She wasn’t much of a dog person, preferring Anya’s cats. Dogs didn’t particularly like her, either.
Then Juni understood as Elsie nuzzled against Connor’s watch.
The watch was Elsie’s long-lost friend. Maybe she smelled Connor in the fabric band. Who could ever know?
No one moved or talked, and Juni took her time petting her long golden hair, and whispering into Elsie’s ears, You’re a good girl. You did a good job. Mason took pictures of the two of them with Connor’s phone, Captain Wilder with his own. Afterward, introductions were made, including instructions to call Mrs. Wilder’s dad Pops.
They all walked to a large deck overlooking a creek and were offered a big pile of finger sandwiches on a green plastic platter. There was a bowl of potato chips and a bowl of fruit, but Juni wasn’t hungry.
The youngest Wilder girl, Gertie, cried softly, trying to hide it. She was eight or nine years old. Juni wondered if she knew about Connor, that Juni was Connor’s sister, and it was all too much for her.
“So,” Pops said as he poured lemonade into small plastic cups. “Why don’t you tell us a little bit about Lake Almanor. I’ve wanted to go there since I was a young man, but never found myself that far north.”
Juni found she couldn’t talk about small things.
“Thanks for this nice lunch, but we didn’t come all this way just to visit,” she said.
“Have you had a change of heart?” Captain Wilder said.
“I always wanted to bring Elsie home. I’ve been bothering my parents since we found out . . . about Connor. It’s what Connor wanted for Elsie, too.”
Gertie pushed away from the table and went inside. The oldest girl, Jessica, went after her. The middle girl, the one who was exactly Juni’s age, Jocelyn, sat staring into her lap.
That’s when Juni realized they weren’t just upset about Connor. They were upset because they thought Juni had come to take their dog away.
Juni swallowed over the lump growing in her throat.
The Wilders loved Elsie, and Elsie loved them back. Juni was a stranger to her, and even though she knew Elsie would come to love her, because of course she would, now that Juni was here, it didn’t feel like the right thing to do anymore.
And then it hit her.
This was meant to be her sacrifice.
Juni was suddenly overcome with the need to leave. She didn’t know why she’d come at all, actually, what she’d been thinking. It felt like a plan made by another girl a long time ago. A girl living in a fairy tale once upon a time.
She pushed her chair away from the table, almost knocking it over, and turned to Luca. “Just take me home.”
* * *
Before they loaded into the Caprice for the trip back to Alice’s house, Pops took Juni aside.
“You are extraordinarily brave,” he said. His eyes were a blue-gray color, like old jeans.
“I’m a cat person,” Juni said, and smiled. She didn’t want them feeling any worse than they probably already did.
Pops smiled back. “Give them a little time to get used to the idea. Maybe we can share Elsie. We can have a dog-custody agreement.”
“We live six hours away.”
“I for one would be happy to drive to Lake Almanor. You can take me fishing.”
“That’s really nice of you,” Juni said.
“It’s what we do for family. Elsie is family, and now, by extension, so are you.”
Juni felt a numbness creeping over her. She’d come all this way only to leave Elsie behind. She glanced around, for a buck, maybe, to show himself to her again. She clung tightly to the antler bone so she might feel Connor’s radio signal. She wildly hoped the quest itself, even if she didn’t bring home the prize, might be enough to break the curse.
But maybe Juni had been fooling herself from the start.
We are only as cursed as we believe ourselves to be.
“I’ve got to go,” Juni said, her chest getting tight.
Pops took her hands in his and gave a firm squeeze. “It isn’t over,” he said.
But it was for Juni.
NOTIFICATIONS
AFTER A COUPLE of hours in the car, with the only sound being the tires rolling over the asphalt road, Luca’s phone gave out another bing!
“Look. Captain Wilder posted our pictures,” Gabby said.
Brave in the Woods Page 13