A Million Junes

by Emily Henry

  She takes off across the lawn, beelining toward the first Jack’s Tart tree. She scrambles up it, if not gracefully then at least powerfully, and picks through the branches.

  It’s too early in the season, I think. Patches of snow still blanket the grass, and the end of winter nips in the air.

  Bekah shakes a branch, and green pellets tumble down. Her brother takes a few steps closer and wraps his arm around a tree trunk as he watches her rearrange herself in the branches. She moves fearlessly, higher and higher, picking and rustling. Minutes pass.

  Behind us, birds scatter noisily. We spin toward the commotion.

  Eli is coming toward us in angry strides, and little Saul’s eyes rim with white as he looks between his father and the cherry tree. He runs toward Eli, as if to hold him off. “It was just a game,” he pants. Eli rips him out of the way and keeps moving.

  Bekah’s spotted her father from up in the tree. She slides down to the grass, watching him progress toward her. She barely bats an eye when he grabs her arm and drags her toward the woods. Both Sauls lurch out of Eli’s stormy path, and the boy chases him. “It’s not her fault!” he cries helplessly, pulling at his father’s jacket.

  “Completely disrespectful,” Eli growls at Bekah. “If Jack O’Donnell had seen you, you have any idea what he might’ve done? He’d’ve had grounds to shoot you, kid.”

  Bekah writhes against him, huffing angrily. He tosses her over a fallen log and spanks her once. She grits her teeth and stares hard at the mud. Eli spanks her again, and Saul starts to cry. Eli spanks her a third time, and Saul runs at him, pulling at his father’s arms. They scuffle for a second before Eli throws him off.

  “Please,” Saul says.

  The ruddy heat leaves Eli’s face. He straightens, studying Saul for a long beat. He wipes the sweat from his upper lip and jerks his head in the direction of their cabin. His eyes sweep over both twins. “Go home,” he grunts. “Both of you.”

  The boy remains frozen, but Bekah slumps off the log and takes his hand, pulling him away. Eli sighs, resting his fingers on his hips, and watches them move off. He looks back and shakes his head at the cherry tree in the distance.

  This must be Bekah’s memory, because as she moves off, the natural rustle of the woods catch in a kind of loop. Like the woods are doing what she might have expected them to do in her absence: birds trilling in the same unsettling rhythms, her father sighing again and again.

  We hurry away from the nightmarish scene and catch up with the twins. They walk in silence for a long while before Bekah says, “You shouldn’t let him get to you.”

  The boy says nothing, and Bekah adds, “It doesn’t hurt.”

  His voice is small: “He doesn’t do it to hurt you. He does it to embarrass you.”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” she says, matter-of-factly. She stops walking and dips her hand in her pocket, plucking from it two cherries, mostly pink though spotted with green. “You’re a bad lookout,” she says. “But an okay brother.”

  The boy grins, revealing a missing front tooth, and gingerly takes a cherry. “On three?” Bekah says. He matches her gaze and nods. The two of them count to three, then press the still-crunchy cherries into their mouths and bite down, jaws working awkwardly against the not-quite-ripeness. “What do you think?” she says around a mouthful, her face scrunched. “It’s kinda sour.”

  Saul closes his eyes and chews slowly. “Not sour. Bitter.”

  Bekah lets out a bark of laughter and spits her cherry out. “Gross,” she says. “Still worth it though. To say we did.”

  “The last taste,” little Saul says. A crescent of smile passes over his face. He opens his eyes, and his grin cracks all the way open. “The last taste is like honey.”

  “The last taste should always be sweet,” Bekah says solemnly. They start moving again, the crisp leaves crumbling loudly underfoot. Without looking over at him, she says, “Saul?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t need to keep me safe. I’m older than you.”

  “Five minutes,” he says. They’ve reached the end of the woods. They climb the cabin’s stairs and go inside, leaving the world still and noiseless, as if without them it doesn’t exist.

  Whites wait along the edge of the forest, and Saul and I exchange another look. He nods, and we step through.

  We’re back outside the sunroom, but the grass is cropped, gleaming in the sunlight. A few wisps of cloud sail across the pale sky, and a breeze snakes through the treetops, sending dried-out blots of orange frittering from the branches of yellow birches and plasticky green ironwoods.

  Two elegant coywolves pick across the yard, dropping our shoes at the edge of a pyramid of boots and sandals, then trot into the woods again.

  A peal of laughter draws our attention to the sunroom as a little girl bursts from it: a blur of yellow dress and nearly black curls streaked rust-red by sun. She squeals with delight as her bare feet pound the grass. Saul looks from the little girl to me, comparing us.

  “Watch out for nails and rocks, June-bug,” a man’s voice shouts. A second form careens through the sunroom doors, barreling down the hill in the opposite direction.

  My stomach jerks within me.

  No.

  We can’t be here.

  My eyes judder to the hydrangea that curls wildly up the porch, blooms spread into orbs of blue.

  No.

  Some petals have fallen to the grass at the bush’s base. I know exactly when we are.

  The sunlight is harsh. The dirt has a sharp, acrid scent to it, like the dehydration of summer has boiled the earth down to its essential minerals. The lawn glimmers like sea glass, thirsty, almost translucent. The birdsong rings hollow.

  Any moment but this.

  “I’m gonna beat you, Daddy!” the girl shrieks as she runs, throwing a look of fiery delight over her shoulder at him.

  I remember how it feels to be her right now. Happiness ballooning in her chest as Dad lopes after her, clumsy and powerful like some kind of circus bear, slowing himself to give her a lead.

  The part of his lips. The gap between his front teeth. The crinkle in his sweat-streaked brow.

  Blue hydrangeas bobbing in the wind. Petals falling—one, two, three, one, two, three—in a half dome around the roots.

  We were playing a game. Racing to see who reached O’Dang! first.

  I remember how, when I saw Dad’s gap-toothed grin, those blue flowers, I thought I might burst from happiness. In the moment, I had him, all the way. I didn’t know it was the last moment I would. The last time I would see his living smile ignite, his chest heave with breath, his eyes squinch against the sun.

  DAD. I run. I chase him. Dad, no!

  My child self has already disappeared into the forest, and Dad’s headed in the opposite direction. I try to scream for them to come back. I try to scream for her to follow him.

  If only I had followed him, everything would be different.

  But that wasn’t how we played the game.

  We ran. Two entirely separate directions. Crashed through misty, sun-washed forest. Moving, moving, moving, sometimes in straight lines, sometimes right-left-right-left. But whenever Dad wanted to play, it worked: The woods let us both find our way to the gnarled tree that, at times, simply stopped existing. It was wide as a house, bits of bark peeling away to reveal a supple whiteness underneath.

  Hemlock, Dad thought. Trunk so thick you could lie on the roots like hammocks. Streamers and ribbons were strung around it. Some had been there as long as I could remember; others appeared one day as if from thin air.

  Dad was gone a lot, driving semitrucks cross-country, selling fancy knives from the trunk of his car, delivering soda to vending machines or packages to doorsteps—whatever work he could find that allowed him to travel. Mom said he got restless when he was home too long. Restless when
he was gone too long too.

  He’d be home for a few days or weeks or months in between jobs, and in those days we’d spend sunrise to twilight together, except for the occasional morning when he was out of the house by the time I woke up and still gone when I climbed in bed.

  Whenever he was home, we played this game.

  Whenever he was home, we raced barefoot to O’Dang.

  As I sprint down the slick hillside after him, I remember what he used to say: Can’t get into heaven with your shoes on, June-bug. If we wanna break through the veil in this thin place, we gotta go the way we came into this world: barefoot.

  For eight years, racing Dad to O’Dang! was my favorite thing. For ten, the thought of it has made me sick.

  I know Saul must be chasing me, but I don’t look back. My heart thunders, and my feet hit hard and fast. I scream for Dad so hard it hurts, but I make no sound. He can’t hear me.

  And what if he could? How could I stop what’s already happened? The only reason I’m here to relive this at all is because it already happened. How can I undo this blemish on my memory? My black hole. The grief at my core, sucking everything into it.

  The feeling of getting to that tree, panting and sticky and happy-so-happy. And the fear that set in when the sun started fading and the air cooled and still Dad hadn’t come.

  I chase him into the woods. Tree branches whip and lash at my skin. They feel solid and scraggy against my arms, though I pass through them like a ghost.

  He’s too fast. His gait’s too long. I see slashes of red fabric—his shirt—darting through the forest ahead of me.

  Wild blue hydrangea curls through the woods. Blue petals twirl in the wind, their dry tang cloying in the air. Red and blue. Red and blue. Red and blue.

  “JUNE-BUG?” Dad shouts.

  I follow the voice. I thrash, I claw, I fight through the brush.

  I burst into a clearing, golden light pouring over yellowing grass. Dad stands there, hands resting on his hips as he breathes hard.

  Hydrangea petals spiral through the air. They catch in his hair. They’ll still be there. They’ll still be there when I find him.

  Tears flood my eyes. My throat closes. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, but I’m still mouthing the word—Dad—as I move toward him.

  Something shifts in the trees, and I freeze, a new shock of cold coursing through my veins. A darkness writhes into the clearing.

  Nameless billows toward him. The branches come alive with cheeps and squeaks as birds and squirrels erupt into panic. The trees sway and tremor as every living thing retreats from the dark ghost. Every living thing except my father.

  Dad, I beg.

  He stares at the black thing, tears springing to his eyes. Like he knows. He knows what’s coming.

  Move, Dad! Move! I’m trying to scream. I try to pull at his hand. I can feel his skin, rough and warm, but he doesn’t react. Doesn’t budge. He’s a statue, and I’m not even a breeze.

  Tears roll down his cheeks—how does he know what’s coming?

  “Please.” He’s panting, can’t catch his breath. The darkness closes in on him: hopelessness, fear, claustrophobia, suffocation. I feel it all, and still Dad breathes hard, too hard.

  “You can have me, but leave June alone.”

  My stomach jolts at the sound of my name. The darkness touches him then. He lets out a grunt and sinks to his knees as the thing towers over him. Dad clutches at his arm. His face twists, and eyes flutter against pain. “She’s not like us. She won’t be. I promise you. Just leave her alone.”

  Dad, I sob.

  The thing folds over him. He chokes—a tight, garbled sound. The sound he made as pain surged outward from his heart. Acute myocardial infarction, the doctors would later tell us. I memorized the words, repeated them to myself for weeks, trying to understand how something that sounded so mundane could have beaten my father, the biggest man on earth.

  “Please.” He shuts his eyes tight. They zigzag under his eyelids. “Please show her.”

  I fall onto my knees and wrap my arms around him, right through the darkness and its cold. I try to drag him away. I try to shield him. I try to make myself solid for him. Audible. Dad. Dad. Dad. I say it a hundred times.

  My voice is still lost, but I swear he feels my arms as he slumps forward and passes through them. His eyes search for something—for me?—but I don’t think they see. “Junie,” he chokes. “Jack.”

  I’m so sure he knows I’m there, that I’m holding him, but then, in a small voice, he says, “Dad? Are you there?”

  HELP! I scream as hard as I can. HELP. HELP. HELP.

  My throat feels raw, shredded, and still the only sound is the chatter of robins and gray jays, the distant caw of ring-billed gulls. The world insists it’s a beautiful day, while I sit on my knees, holding my father, blue petals falling around us.

  The light, his being, his Himness, fades from of his eyes. DAD.

  The torque of pain relaxes from his face.

  I know. The second he’s gone, I know. I feel the gap at the core of me, in the world, in the universe. I feel the place he should be, a tattered emptiness.

  And just like that, everything freezes. The whole forest pauses.

  And I know right then it’s because this is where the memory ends. There’s nothing left to it. The man who made it has stopped, ceased. Ended.

  I push on his chest. I try to hold his head back and breathe into his mouth. I sob but make no sound. The birds are silent now; there is no such thing as sound here anymore. Even Nameless is frozen there, its coldness rendered neutral. There is no temperature, no feel to the air or smell or breeze.

  Hands press against my shoulders and try to drag me away, but I can’t stand. I can’t leave. I can barely see because I’m crying so hard, because the impossibly motionless sun is aflame, because what is there to see when your whole world dies in front of you?

  Saul wraps himself around me. He lifts me. My head falls into his chest. Tears and snot dampen the long-sleeved shirt he wore to hide his tattoos from Mom back in another world.

  I wanted to forget this feeling forever. The feeling of being ripped into two people: the you of before and the one you’ll always be once you know what it is to lose something.

  Saul carries me through the woods, jogging me up in his arms every few yards. When we get to the hill, he can’t bear it any longer. He sets me on the grass and touches my teary cheeks. He mouths something and pulls my forehead against his throat, smoothing my hair. He pulls away, looks hard into my eyes, and squeezes my neck.

  You’re going to be okay, he silently promises. It’s over, June.

  I close my eyes against more tears, our hands twined together like old roots as we walk back to the sunroom. There’s nothing else to do.

  This moment is over. There’s nothing left for us here.

  Seventeen

  I tell Saul I need to be alone. I beg him to leave. I tell him I never want to see him again. I tell him I need him to go, over and over, until he gives in. He slinks through the back door.

  I sit in the sunroom until my face is placid, then tell Mom and Toddy I don’t feel well and go upstairs.

  They believe me—I don’t look well.

  I climb into bed and pray for sleep, for darkness to hide me. For time to stretch out while my eyes are closed so that when they next open, centuries will have passed and nothing will hurt like it does now.

  Is this a sign? Punishment for spending time with Saul?

  The words he said in the forest replay in my mind: You can have me, but leave June alone. Nameless wasn’t just an omen. It killed Dad. Did it kill Bekah too?

  Eventually, I fall into an agitated sleep.

  “No,” I wake myself a dozen times saying. “No, no. Please, no.”

  Don’t let him be dead. Don’t let that moment have ha
ppened. Wash it from my mind.

  • • •

  In the morning, I wake to a text from Hannah: Need beach. Will die soon from calc overdose. Send help.

  I weakly push my covers away and sit up to glare at Feathers. She’s been here all night, sorrowful and glistening, but her presence doesn’t comfort me. It reminds me of the darkness wrapped around Dad in the woods. “It killed him,” I whisper.

  Feathers slumps, recedes into the wall.

  My body’s sore from crying. The precise moment the life left Dad’s body is imprinted on my retinas in a way that feels permanent. I can’t tell Mom what’s happening; even if she’d believe me, I couldn’t give her that burden. I need Hannah. And not the way our friendship has been lately, with gaps and secrets. I need her as my best friend. Immediately, I text her, then go to my dresser and sift through my drawers.

  Fifteen minutes, she replies, then, (read as: thirty).

  I pull on a pair of jeans, a crop top, and a long crocheted sweater and grab my sun hat and purse from the hook on the wall. All the while, there’s the feeling that I’ve forgotten something.

  I remember this sensation, from when I was eight. For seconds, you forget. Like walking into a room and having no idea what you came for, your mind blanks. You know there’s something you should be thinking about, because lately your only job has been to think about it.

  But then—ping—it’s back. You’ll always remember.

  I put on a pair of brown sandals then check for Whites before stepping into the hall. Part of me wants to look for a memory to overshadow last night’s, some clue to understanding Dad’s strange words. The majority hopes I never see a White again.

  I tell Mom and Toddy where I’m going, give them both a kiss on the cheek, and step out onto the porch to wait. It’s a balmy fifty degrees, and the sun’s starting to haul itself over the trees—ping. Dad’s dead.

  The Subaru rumbles up the drive, and Hannah waves her arms dramatically from the driver’s seat. “You’re aliiiiive,” I cry as I plop down beside her and offer my pre-kissed fingers.

  Ping! Dad’s not.