by Piper Lennox
I thought of skating on the trail, and cooking together, and any tiny moment between us that resembled anything remotely close to friendship. It made my heart ache, realizing we were right back where we started.
“Maybe things will get better,” I added with a shrug, which made Theo smile with this “you poor, dumb girl” face.
We looked across the bay, and for a second I wished it would swell up and drag me out to the ocean, because I did feel poor and dumb. I envied Van’s disbelief in balance, of some higher power repaying all our acts in kind.
I almost envied his ability to not believe in anything, or anyone, at all.
“Either way, I promised I’d repay him,” I told Theo, but was really telling myself. “So if anyone calls off this deal, it has to be him. Not me.”
We leave the Hamptons as soon as the water tank arrives, along with the part I hope will fix the rear air conditioner. I managed to hunt down the one soul nearby who knows how to install both, at an RV lot near Commack, so I tell Van we’ll be stopping there first thing. “We’ll just have to survive without tap water for sixty minutes. Think you can handle it?”
He gives me a bored kind of glance and doesn’t answer.
As I back out of the driveway, Theo slaps the door and tells us to wait. “Forgot these,” he says, and throws the bottle of antibiotics through the window into my lap.
I’d put them on Van’s nightstand a few days ago, and even swallowed my non-existent pride to leave a note on his pillow with the dosing schedule I knew he’d forget.
Every last pill is still in there.
“Enjoy your pneumonia,” I grit out, practically spiking them towards Van’s chest. “I’m done worrying about you.”
He catches them. I wait for the cruel comment I know is coming.
Instead, though, he stays silent, rolls down his window, and simply tosses the bottle into the grass as we leave.
In the van life community, there’s a joke that’s not really a joke: fix one thing on your vehicle, and another thing will break right after that.
“Coolant tank’s cracked,” Van announces, rejoining me on the side of the road.
We left the RV lot maybe thirty minutes ago. The repairs totaled less than I expected, and didn’t take too long.
And so, stupidly, I’d let myself believe everything was finally working out in my favor.
“Cracked?” I repeat. First the water tank, now this? Times like now, I start doubting karma’s existence.
Van studies me like I’m lit dynamite. I bet he’s afraid I’ll start bawling. So am I. Eloise is crumbling, and I think I’m about to do the same.
I go inside to regroup. Also known as: burying my face in a pillow so I can fall apart in peace.
“Give me a minute before you freak out,” he says, stepping inside.
“What?” I wipe my tears on the sheet and look at him. He’s tapping away at his phone, the determination of his fingers betraying that bored expression on his face.
A few seconds later, he tosses the phone aside and stretches out across the floor, hands behind his head. “Done.”
“What’s done?”
“Tow truck is on the way,” he says, eyes shut, “to take this piece of shit to a mechanic, where we’ll get a cab to my old place in Brooklyn. Wes just wrote back that he’s chill with us staying until the Transit’s fixed.” Slowly, he lifts his head, eyes boring into mine. “So you can stop the waterworks.”
I take some deep breaths and rub my face. “Um...wow. Thank you.”
Van shuts his eyes again and shrugs.
Our night goes well, even if it’s mostly because we’ve got Wes as a buffer. Any bickering we start is swiftly cut short by a joke or throat-clear from him, and reminds me not to let Van get under my skin. Use honey, not vinegar.
By some small miracle, it seems to remind him to do the same.
We order pizza and watch movies before I turn in for the night. The room Wes offers me is some kind of studio, with a wall full of beautiful guitars, recording equipment, and a drum set under the window.
I run my hand carefully over every last instrument and think of the one buried in my bag. The shiniest thing I found in that ruined Sprinter.
The thing I stole from Van, and still haven’t given back.
I didn’t mean to. When I gathered up anything I thought could be saved from the wreckage, I saw the harmonica glimmering in a puddle and pocketed it, fully intending to give it to him once I could clean it properly.
Something stopped me, though, and I’m still not sure what.
I think I just like it too much. It reminds me of that boy he was on the ranch—self-proclaimed as numb and broken, but able to breathe pure emotion through this instrument until its haunting lilt told me exactly what he was feeling.
When Van played his harmonica, I knew he still had happiness, and sadness, and everything in between. It was just buried under a mask he couldn’t let slip.
Before I go to sleep, I dig it out of my bag and run my fingertips over the holes, then the thread-like etching on its cover.
I know I have to give it back. It isn’t mine.
And I’m not a thief.
But I can have this last moment studying it in the moonlight, remembering those early days at the ranch, and convince myself it’s just a hunk of metal. It doesn’t hold my memories of who Van used to be—who he might still be, deep down. Those are burned into my heart, and I couldn’t forget them if I tried.
No matter how much I think I want to.
Eighteen
Around midnight, I wake up on Wes’s couch. My head won’t stop replaying all the shit he gave me for smoking again…and all the grief he gave me over how I’ve treated Juniper. Not that I needed him to tell me either of those things.
All week, I spent daylight hours pretending this was a normal vacation. But the second that sun would set, I’d start looking for her.
Problem: I couldn’t figure out where the hell she was. Only Theo seemed privy to that info, which pissed me off to no end. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of her, running plates into the kitchen while I was stranded on a pool float, or passing by a window when I was on the stairs to the shore. Always too far for me to get to her in time.
“You were wasted. You tried to kiss me.”
“In your dreams.”
When my blacked-out memories finally returned, I wasn’t even shocked to realize she was telling the truth. Sober Van had enough trouble controlling himself. Drunk Van didn’t stand a chance.
And, even if she would kiss me unprompted, there’s no way she’d spend the night in my bed. She’d have to be invited.
Correction—persuaded. Me asking wouldn’t be enough. Something happened to make her stay.
It wasn’t until I was back in the pool that I remembered getting flipped, feeling scared shitless, and hunting her down. I’d checked my own bedroom first not because I knew she’d find me there, but because, somehow…it made the most sense.
It was where she should’ve been.
I remembered the rest like a series of punches: her giving me my inhaler, then my antibiotic. The scent of her calming my pulse when nothing else would.
Waking up in the middle of the night to find her there, and being so happy I just fell back and smiled.
I’d told her I knew exactly who she was. She told me I was wrong.
I’m starting to think she’s right.
If Juniper wanted to use me, she’s had plenty of opportunities to do it by now. And she hasn’t. In fact, she’s done just the opposite—helping me left and right, even when I make it damn near impossible.
I get up. Bowie, Wes’s dog, whines and flops into the warm groove my ass left on the couch.
As soon as I crack the music room door and whisper, “Hey. You awake?” she sits up and waves me in, no hesitation. Like she was waiting for me.
“Listen....” I push my hand through my hair and let it fall back to my leg, then slip it into my pocket.
My fingers wrap around the pocketknife to get it out, but common sense stops me. Maybe it’s better not to brandish a knife at a girl in the middle of the night without any context.
Then I see something in her hand.
It’s not a knife, but might as well be. It feels like she just gutted me and stabbed me in the back at the same time.
“You stole my harmonica.” I reach for it, but she twists away.
“I didn’t steal it,” she hisses. Her eyes dart to the door behind me. Oh, right. Wes.
Not that I really care if we wake him. But I do take a second, just one, to control my volume.
One second for common sense to step in and say, Give her a chance.
“Then why do you have it?” Scream-whispering’s the best I can do, but good enough: when it dawns on her I’m actually asking, she relaxes and waves me over to the air mattress.
I take the bean bag, instead. She’s sleeping in her usual attire of a T-shirt and cotton shorts, but I can’t stop thinking about our first night in the Hamptons. Seeing her in a bra and panties almost gave me a heart attack I’d have been happy to die from.
But I’m here to give her a chance, and an apology. And nothing else.
“I saw it in your Sprinter and wanted to clean it up, before I gave it back.” She slides the harmonica to me like a jewel. “But, yes, I kept it longer than I meant to, because…well. I’ve got good memories of it.”
In the faint light, I see her blush. “So I guess I did steal it,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
I pick it up and heft it from hand to hand. Just like my boards, she cleaned it better than how it was before.
“Thank you. For giving it back, yeah...but for saving it, too.” Gently, I blow a scale and smile that it still sounds the same. Thank God. “This is what I was trying to save.”
“Really? I figured you were going after your computer and cameras. The expensive stuff.”
I shake my head. “Knew all that was done for. This was all I could think about, when I got to the lake and saw the Sprinter in the water.”
She loops her arms around her knees and clasps her wrist with her hand. “Why didn’t you look for it after they dragged the car out, then?”
“I was so pissed I didn’t even remember,” I laugh, blowing air through my nose. Juniper cringes with a smile.
“Anger will do that, I guess.”
“Yeah. Makes you forget what’s important.” Shifting my jaw, I put the harmonica in my other pocket, then pat the one with her knife. “Got something of yours, while we’re doing this whole confession thing.”
When I pass it to her, her back goes rigid.
“You did take it.”
“By accident,” I’m quick to explain. “I used it to dig some mud out of my shoe treads after that trail we hit, forgot to put it back when I was done. Must’ve slid under my seat or something. It hit my foot when you pulled over today.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when you found it?”
“Wasn’t sure you’d believe me.”
She bites her lip and stares at it again. “I probably wouldn’t have.”
“Which…I’d deserve. Given how I’ve treated you.”
Say it. “Sorry.” It’s not hard.
It is hard. I don’t know why, but apologizing has always been the hardest thing for me to do. It physically hurts, like all my internal organs are wincing in unison.
Mom used to tell me I’d make my life a hundred times harder than it needed to be, if I never learned how to say “sorry.”
“Such a simple word, Sully. It fixes so much more than you think it can.”
When I say it now, spitting it out like sour milk, Juniper just stares.
Then she covers her mouth…and bursts out laughing.
“That actually pained you,” she giggles, catching herself when I kick the air mattress to shift her weight. “Man, I just witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime event. Van Durham-Andresco just apologized to someone. To me.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, shaking out my limbs, “and now I feel like never doing it again.”
“Don’t be like that, you big baby.” Juniper bites her smile and drops the pocketknife into her luggage. “Apology accepted. But before we let all this go under the bridge, I want to talk about what happened between me and Theo. That is to say, not a thing.” Anger flashes in her eyes when she turns back to me. “I have no idea why you think we slept together.”
“Uh, because you hugged him,” I spit, voice rising again, “and said all that shit about ‘I feel so much better, thank you, it’s nice to get treated nice,’ and he was all, ‘You need more, you know where to find me, screw Van, I guess.’” Awful impressions, but my point gets across just fine.
“I was talking about the shower I’d just taken.”
My mouth snaps shut.
Unfortunately, its latch is broken.
“Well...what about that whole ‘treated nice’ thing? And his ‘you need more’ crap, huh?”
Juniper’s eyes scan me from head to toe, like she can’t believe I even remember how to breathe on my own.
“The ‘more,’” she says, biting each word, “was referring to the lavender body wash he gave me.”
“Lavender body wash. Right.”
“The kind,” she says, scream-whispering over me, “he got for his insomnia, and that he thought would help me relax, because he could clearly see my drama with you was taking a serious toll.”
My brain doesn’t know what to process first: that Theo uses lavender goddamn body wash for insomnia…or what I already knew—that I hurt Juniper with how I acted.
That’s another lesson my mom tried so hard to impart. Anger feels really good in the moment.
When it ends, though, and you’re left to survey your destruction? It stops feeling so good.
In my semi-stunned silence, she sits back, palms spread on the mattress behind her. “As for him treating me nice, I meant that literally, not as some...innuendo. Theo was friendly to me, yeah, but that’s all it was. Friendship.”
Before I can scoff and pick this apart, Juniper sniffs. Damn it.
“This week’s been really hard, Van. I needed a friend.” She blinks and measures her breaths. “A Durham who...didn’t hate me. Anyone who didn’t hate me, really.”
I shut my eyes. This truth is going to hurt more than the apology, because I didn’t just lie to her about it. I lied to myself.
“I don’t hate you,” I whisper.
When I open my eyes, she’s giving me this look like she doesn’t even recognize me.
But she’s relieved. The hurt that was there before—that I put there—is gone, and it makes something in me hurt a little less, too.
Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about Juniper Summers. I know she drives me crazy sometimes, and that I find her infuriatingly attractive both because and in spite of that.
I know I’ve already started forgiving her for what she did to my car and possessions, but that I still haven’t forgiven her for everything she did before. I’m not sure I can. That’s not for a lack of trying on her part. Just another broken thing about me.
“And I’m sorry for that too,” I add. This apology hurts less. Maybe practice makes perfect. “Assuming you and Theo were...you know.”
“I’m sorry I assumed you stole my stuff.”
“Verdict’s still out on the pillowcase and charging block,” I point out, and she smiles, looking embarrassed. So am I.
I’ve picked some petty fights with her during this trip, turning everything into a battle that’s just not worth the aftermath. Even when I win, I feel like I lose.
But right now, when we’re both raising our white flags? It’s weird…but this finally feels like a real victory.
We stay through dinnertime the next day, when she gets the call that the Transit is road-worthy (or at least, road-legal) once more. She drives until we’re out of New York, now aimed for Colorado and whatever decent trails we find along the way.
“Switc
h?” she yawns when we stop for gas. “I’m tired.”
“Sure.”
Five minutes down the road, I see the string lights come on in the rearview. “Hey, you said you needed to sleep.”
“No,” she calls, “I said I was tired.” She waves the book in her hands and kicks off her shoes, smirking to herself. “Tired of driving.”
“Hustled me good,” I cluck, smiling when she laughs.
Whether it’s being back on the road or our convo at Wes’s place last night, I don’t know. I kind of don’t care.
It’s just nice for things to be...well. Nice.
Before I fell asleep I was, ironically, reading a book about dream symbolism, and not a very good one.
Besides the fact it contradicts itself constantly, doesn’t make much practical sense, and reads like some cut-rate self-help book…there’s no way it could decipher the dream I have tonight. One I haven’t had in years.
In it, I’m at the dinner table. Mother passes me a plate with butter and asks how my lessons went.
I tell her I sewed a new dress, then got a ruler across my hands because the hem was too short. “The instructor didn’t believe me that it wasn’t done on purpose.”
“You need to be careful, Jessie,” Mother sighs.
I stare at her. “Juni.”
Suddenly, another chair appears across from me. A man with hair down to his collar and a full beard, but no actual face, sits.
He takes the third plate of food Mother always prepares for no one to eat, that I’m supposed to scrape into the compost bin after dinner.
“You can’t eat that,” I tell him. He uses my fork to eat it, anyway.
“It’s your job to feed him now,” Mother says numbly. She wipes her mouth with the good linen napkins meant for company, clears her dishes, and vanishes.
“Mother,” I call, but can’t rise from my chair to follow. “Mother, don’t leave me with him.”
“She’s doing what’s expected.” The man puts his hand on mine.