That’s what Jess was to me. I was the ground; she was the rain. I wasn’t anything until she woke me up.
We met the summer after ninth grade. We went to the same high school, so I knew of her; maybe she knew of me. I had seen her in the hallways, usually alone. But we never talked until we showed up at the same YMCA day camp. It was full of athletes, girls who would try out for soccer and field hockey come autumn, girls who liked to run. I had never run a mile of my own volition in my life. The first day, I sat on the grass beside the field, holding my ankle as if I had rolled it, eating a bag of pretzels.
Jess came up from behind me and sat down beside me. She squinted out at the soccer field, where the blue team had just scored a goal. “Soccer is the worst,” she said.
“Yeah. Well,” I amended, “sports are the worst.”
“Correct,” she said. She looked at me sideways. “Can I have a pretzel?”
“Yeah.” I held the bag out to her. She took one and placed it on her tongue, carefully, like a communion wafer.
At the time, her dark-brown hair hung loose halfway down her back. Six months later, I would sit behind her in a chair in her kitchen and cut it into a horrible bob that her mom would insist she get professionally corrected. But that first day, she had to keep tucking it behind her ears because she refused to wear it in a ponytail, even though the air was already sweltering. She was wearing purple shorts that would have been several fingers too short for our school’s dress code, and a tiny amethyst sparkled from her nose.
We ate the bag of pretzels together in silence. On the field, the red team scored two goals in quick succession. After I had taken the last pretzel, Jess crumpled up the bag and stuffed it into her pocket. She turned toward me and squinted.
“My name is Jess,” she said, sticking out her hand in an awkward motion.
“June,” I said. I shook her hand. I had to reach across my body to do it. It was the second or third time I had ever shaken anyone’s hand in my life. “Short for Jessica?”
“Technically, yes,” she said. “But really, no. Just Jess.”
I nodded. “I’m just June.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “You look summery. Do you wanna go over there and climb one of the magnolias?”
The magnolias stood in a line at the edge of the soccer field. In front of them was a small white sign that said DO NOT CLIMB.
“We’re not supposed to,” I pointed out.
“Hmm,” she said. “But it’s very hot out is the thing.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s true,” I admitted.
“So let’s go.”
When we were discovered an hour later, hidden halfway up the magnolia in the cool green light, we had become irrevocably best friends.
Jess liked to say she corrupted me. Or she’d call me her student, her protégé. She’d do it while flinging one arm around me and reaching the other up to play with her hair. It was always to impress someone else; she never said it when we were alone. “Have you met my beautiful pupil, June?” she would say to the boy, because it was always a boy. “I’ve taught her so much. Haven’t I, June?”
I would nod and provide one of a few tried and tested responses. “And yet there’s so much to learn,” I’d say sometimes, or maybe, “She’s a very good teacher,” or maybe I’d just smile, looking away or down at my shoes.
It was a good routine. Not the words so much, which were an absolute cliché, but the delivery. We always looked mysterious. At least I thought we probably looked mysterious, which was what mattered to me. And it always ended with the boy’s attention focused on Jess, which was what mattered to her.
It was a good routine because it was true; the best things always are. Before I met Jess, I had never kissed a boy or gotten anything pierced or taken even a sip of alcohol. I cursed, but rarely and timidly. By the end of that summer, I had started dating my first boyfriend—Jess’s neighbor’s cousin—made out with him exactly six times, and broken up with him when he went home to Indiana at the end of the summer. I had gotten two ear piercings, one of which would close within months. I cursed like a sailor. And I drank everything Jess could find for us, squeezing my eyes shut and bracing for the burn as I swallowed it down. One day that August, when the two of us were drunk and sunburned at the pool near her house, she said I had graduated.
I thought then that we were worldly—otherworldly. That we were the two most badass girls who’d ever stepped foot into any room, that we had broken all the rules there were to break. I was sure of it, even if I wouldn’t have said it aloud.
Later, though, Jess started seeing Patrick, and things changed. Mostly, we just hung out with him and his best friend Ethan, but sometimes we ran into his or his brother’s other friends at shows or when we were driving around on the weekends. And I knew for sure that I was wrong about me and Jess. We were not worldly. There were more rules to break, thousands more that Jess and I would never touch. Drugs I didn’t know the names of and didn’t understand. Getting into cars while wasted and high. I left those meetings knowing I had been a good girl at heart the whole time.
I never tried to explain this to my parents: how much worse it could have been.
But they wouldn’t have understood it. If anything, it would have made them worry more. So I let them think I was a delinquent, and alone together with Jess, we detailed the ways in which we were good. We don’t smoke, she said, leaving off the fact that it was only because smoke made her sick to her stomach. We don’t do drugs, I said, leaving off the fact that we had tried a few. We don’t steal, she said. We’ve never hurt anyone, I said. We’re still in our right minds, she said. And we always will be.
We always talked like that after we got in trouble. We’d sit somewhere holding hands and figure out a way to make the punishment better.
“At least we’re together,” we said until, this last time, we weren’t.
* * *
I have never been an early riser. Almost no one in my family is; except for Candace, the lone inexplicable morning person, all of us could happily wake up at ten every day. But I was awake hours before sunrise on January 4, my first day as a student at St. Anne’s, and no matter how many times I visualized relaxing each part of my body, I couldn’t fall back asleep.
I texted Jess. you up? No response. It was 5:30. If she was keeping to her normal schedule, she’d wake up at 6:45 or 7:00 to slide into school just in time for first bell at 7:30. Here, the bell didn’t ring until 8:00. If this place even had bells. I didn’t know.
I padded into the kitchen and flipped on the light switch before realizing I also didn’t know how to make coffee here. At home, we had a normal coffeepot that made enough for me and my parents to have a cup or two every morning. But Oma’s mechanism of choice was a French press, nestled in a corner of the counter. I had never used one of those.
I felt shaky with nervousness. The first day of a brand-new school, and I was going to have to get through it without coffee. Without my brother and sister. And without Jess.
I heated a cup of water in the kettle on the stove, stirred some honey into it, and sat in the big blue chair under a blanket. In the black of the early morning, the floor-to-ceiling window was more like a mirror. I could feel the chill bleeding in through the glass. If the sun had been above the horizon, I could have seen St. Anne’s from where I was sitting. It was inescapable, visible from every window in the apartment, pressed right up against the river’s edge.
I had looked at it enough to visualize it even in the dark: a series of clean, redbrick two-story buildings with gray slate roofs, stretching maybe half a mile along the road that ran beside the river. On the side facing the road, there were small grassy gardens with magnolias and oaks that approximated college quads. (The website had a photo of girls studying there that might as well have been a stock image, but I found it oddly compelling nonetheless.) The whole thing
was surrounded by a low brick wall, setting it apart from the rest of the tiny town.
I had only stepped foot on campus once. Apart from that, the closest I had come was holding Bryan’s hand as he walked, as if on a balance beam, atop the brick wall on our way to the antique store my parents liked.
Oma had offered to take me on a tour, but I said no. Starting January 2, I had seen the students trickling back in. Some had piled out of St. Anne’s vans fresh from the Richmond or DC airports; others, like me, arrived with their parents and siblings in cars that departed lighter than they’d come. All of them, unlike me, entered the dorms shrieking with delight to see their friends. It was bad enough being the granddaughter of a teacher. Worse if the first time they saw me was wandering the halls with Oma, lost, bewildered, and small.
I texted Jess again: miss you. No response. It was still barely six. Maybe her mom would make her get up early and she would text me back before school. Probably not. It unsettled me to think of us on different schedules.
I heard a rustling behind me and turned too quickly, splashing water on my hands and cursing. Oma stood a few yards away in her old-fashioned robe, head cocked and smiling. Ellie walked in behind her, yawning, and lay down on her dog bed.
“I thought I was going to have to pull you out of bed by your hair,” Oma said. She leaned on the edge of the couch. “Your parents warned me about your sleeping habits.”
“They’re normal sleeping habits,” I said, a tad too defensive.
“I am a big fan of mornings. Especially first day of school mornings. Something about them. And of course with you here, it’s extra special.”
“I was going to make coffee,” I offered. “But I didn’t want to wake you up. And I don’t know how to do a French press.”
“Oh, I’ll show you.” She got up and started toward the kitchen, then turned back, brow furrowed. “I forgot. Do you want breakfast? I never eat it, but I tell all my girls they should.”
I shook my head. The first day of junior year, Jess had picked me up and we’d gotten McDonald’s together, barely making it to school on time. The day had been too hot, the air yellow and alive, and I couldn’t remember anything tasting as good as our biscuits had tasted. No second-semester first-day breakfast could match that memory.
“Well, that’s probably for the best. I’m out of eggs,” Oma said, going to the kitchen. I heard the grinding of the coffee beans start and then stop. “We can go grocery shopping tomorrow. You can tell me what you like.”
I sipped from the cup of sweet water. It had cooled down, and it tasted like nothing at all. I looked at my reflection in the window and tried to imagine myself on the campus.
My one visit before today had been to the garden. Every teacher at St. Anne’s was required to run an extracurricular activity in addition to teaching. This was nothing new to my grandmother. At past schools, she had been in charge of literary magazines, community service organizations, and once, with disastrous results, a volleyball team. As an experienced teacher, she was used to getting her pick of after-school clubs. But when she accepted the job at St. Anne’s eight years ago, the only option open was gardening.
As Oma told it, she had never had a green thumb, but she was game to try anything. So she checked out some books from the school library, spent the summer at garden stores, and, in the fall, greeted the five girls in the Garden Club with an abundance of theoretical knowledge and absolutely no practical skill.
It took two years before their first twelve-by-twelve-foot plot grew enough to harvest. But as of this year, the Garden Club membership hadn’t dipped into the single digits in many semesters, and they had eight plots. Oma could have retired years ago, but she had stayed, and I thought the club was probably a big part of that. Apparently, she was popular among the girls of St. Anne’s.
I was not planning on joining the Garden Club. The closest I came to gardening was caring for my cactus, who was named Rosemary. I had received her as a birthday gift from Candace a few years ago. “Because you’re very spiky,” my sister had said, not even ten and already a smart-ass.
I rolled my eyes, but I set Rosemary on my bedroom windowsill in the sun and watered her every week or two, just like the internet said, and she grew. Not very much, not very quickly, but still—growth. She was a tiny miracle. On hard days, when I’d gotten a B or my parents had yelled at me or Jess had been in a bad mood, I liked to open my window, feel the air on my face, and just look at her. I’m very spiky, I would think to Rosemary. That’s not such a bad thing, I’d imagine her retorting.
“June?” Oma called from the kitchen.
I got up to join her. The lights in there were harsh and bright, and after looking out at the dark river for so long, I squinted.
“This is the French press,” she said, nodding to the machine in front of her.
“I know what it is.” I leaned on the counter. “I just don’t know how to use it.”
“Don’t be snippy. I’m just telling you where things are. The kettle stays on the stove, and the coffee is in the pantry, top shelf. Grinder is here. You grind the beans first, which I’ve done, and then you boil some water, which I’m doing now…”
I watched and listened as she walked me through measuring the water, letting it cool, measuring the beans, and waiting. We stood there for a minute. I hopped up on the counter to sit, which drew a startled look from Oma.
“Should I not…” I trailed off and scooted to the edge of the counter, ready to slide off.
“No, no,” she said, waving a hand. She laughed a little. “It’s just that I don’t think anyone has ever sat there before. I’m too old, I guess.”
“You’re not that old.”
“Old enough.”
A shrill timer went off, and I bumped my head against the edge of the cabinet. I rubbed it as I looked down at the old-fashioned little egg timer on the counter, jumping and jittering as it rang. Who used a physical timer?
Oma, apparently. Unbothered, she switched it off and slowly pressed the coffee.
“And see, now, you just pour it from here into a cup…” She poured until it barely reached the brim and stepped back, satisfied. “Exactly the right amount.”
“There’s only one cup,” I pointed out.
“Oh, sugar.” She frowned. “Well, that’s true.”
“I don’t need any,” I said, though I desperately wanted it.
“I can tell that you do. Well, I’ll take this one, and it’ll be good practice for you to try to make a cup yourself. I’m going to go shower and get dressed.” With that, she picked up the mug and left me alone with the grinds and the mysterious glass mechanism.
I struggled through the French press process as the shower came on in the master bedroom. After five minutes, I was rewarded with a cup of coffee: too thin and tasting mostly of water, but better than nothing. I wrapped my hands around it and brought it to my new bedroom, where I set it on the bedside table and sent Jess a picture with the caption this coffee is the worst.
Again, no response.
And then, her name and why the fuck are you up so EARLY
I felt a grin splitting my face. couldn’t sleep, I responded quickly. I hate that I’m not there.
meeeeeee toooooo, came the instant response. I imagined her bleary-eyed in bed or having just gotten up, stumbling around trying to find an outfit in the dark. As if she was reading my mind, she said, tell me what you’re wearing today. I texted her a picture of the outfit hanging on my closet door: black leggings and a long gray sweater.
you need to make much more of an impact than that, she said. those girls don’t know you like I do. they don’t know you’re a star.
what are you wearing? I asked her.
I looked at my outfit again. A dress felt like too much for the first day, and besides, it was so cold that I would’ve had to wear the leggings underneath it anyway. I didn’t
want to seem like I was trying too hard.
oh, you know. probably my gray sweater and leggings.
I laughed aloud. you’re the best, I told her.
no, you. now I gotta shower. talk to you later beautiful
The water shut off in Oma’s bathroom. I took a sip of my coffee. It had gone cold. Eleanor Roosevelt padded into my room, jumped on the bed beside me, licked her lips, and yawned. Beautiful, said the word on my screen. I touched my face, trying to feel the beauty there.
Three
It was dark as Oma and I walked from the entrance of the condos to the parking lot. The path was only really wide enough for one, so I walked on the grass, frost crunching under my boots. It was still nighttime, or at least it felt like it, gray light just starting to harden the air around us and cast its reflection on the river. I shivered. My torso was warm enough, but I had forgotten my gloves, and there was a hole in the sole of my left boot.
Oma exhaled heavily, her breath crystallizing in front of her. “It gets warmer,” she said, as if defending northern Virginia. I did not feel that sentence merited a response. Oma didn’t speak up again.
I had started a distance tracker on my phone as soon as we stepped through the front door of the condominium, and when we finally reached the classroom building, I stopped it: half a mile, eleven minutes. It had felt much longer in the cold and silence. I tried to imagine walking it every day for the next semester, instead of Jess picking me up in her cozy car filled with empty sour-candy bags. It made me want to melt straight down into the earth.
But I didn’t have that option. Instead, Oma opened the door, and I stepped gratefully into the heat. I looked around as I shrugged off my coat. We were in a foyer with an administrative office and a few overstuffed chairs. In front of me, an enormous bulletin board was covered in colorful paper and pictures of smiling girls. I took a few steps forward to look down the hallways to the right and left. Doors, some open to classrooms and some still closed, alternated with lockers all the way down both halls. The lockers were mounted halfway up the wall, leaving a space underneath them with hooks for backpacks. At the ends, stairways led up to the second floor.
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