A Million Junes

by Emily Henry

  “I knoooow.” She matches my hand’s gesture, then reverses down the driveway and points the car toward Twin Gull Dunes. “How are you? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “Or, like, Friday, when you gave me a ride home from school.” My voice shakes, and she eyes me uncertainly.

  “Not real, quality time,” she says.

  “No, definitely not.” I clear the phlegmy rattle from my throat. “Is dropping out still on the table for you? Because I think we should consider that.”

  “Nah,” she says. “The rumor mill suggests that creative writing class is draining Stephen Niequist’s GPA, so I’m pretty much kicking his butt now. Anyway, what’s going on, Junie? You look upset.”

  I chew on my bottom lip and shake my head. I don’t know where to start: Saul, or the memories, or all the indescribable stuff in between. “Hannah.”

  Her eyes flicker to me. “Baby girl. What’s wrong?”

  Saul first. I don’t understand how my heart can be moving so fast and fearfully while my stomach can feel so heavy and tight. “Can you pull over?”

  “Sure.” She swerves to the edge of the craggy asphalt.

  I clear my throat again, bat my eyelashes dry.

  “I need to tell you something because not telling you feels like lying.”

  “Okay,” she says uneasily.

  I blink back the sting in my eyes. “The reason I haven’t wanted to go on those double dates isn’t because I don’t like Nate. And it’s also not totally because of my family’s problems with the Angerts.”

  Her hand flies to her chest. “Oh my god, did I do something?”

  “No! No, Han.” I swallow the tension bunching in my throat. “Okay, so that night at the carnival, when I met Saul, I guess . . . I was pretty into him.”

  Hannah laughs. “Of course you were! He’s beautiful.”

  “Sure,” I say. “But I don’t just mean I noticed he was hot. You know he’s not my type.”

  “He owns deodorant,” she agrees.

  “I was really into him, Hannah. Like into him enough that I didn’t want to be around him because of my family, but also because I knew he was, like, your forever crush. And then you set up that tutoring session, and the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. And I tried not to, because you’re one of the most important people in my life, and I don’t know how you feel, but I don’t know how to turn this off.”

  Hannah drops her forehead onto the steering wheel and lets out a laugh.

  “Hannah, I’m not joking.”

  “Nate and I made out!” she yelps, sitting up. Her entire face turns pink, making her blond hair look pearly in comparison. “Honestly, like, four separate times now. And I was going to tell you, but I was embarrassed, and I wanted to be sure how I felt.”

  “You made out. Four times. With Nate Baars.”

  “Don’t say it like that!”

  “Four times, like, for three minutes each?”

  She gives me a reproachful look.

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “Wooow,” I say. “So . . . not a full moon–induced fluke? You like Nate?”

  She sighs. “I would go so far as to say I really like him.”

  I nod. “And . . . Saul?”

  She snorts. “You were born to have chemistry with dreamy Saul Angert. I have been cursed to fall into Nate Baars’s big, stupid mouth over and over again until I admit I don’t even think it’s that big! Or stupid!”

  “You’re seriously not upset with me?”

  “Frankly, June, I’m annoyed you thought this would be a big deal. Am I so pathetic you thought I’d fall on my sword over you liking someone I’ve barely spoken to? I had—past tense—had a crush on Saul Angert like I had a crush on young James Dean, or Ryan Gosling. It’s the kind of crush you share with the masses. If you called me and were like, Hannah, young James Dean just brought a pizza to my door, do you think I should make out with him? I would be like, If you cut me, do I not bleed? What are you doing calling me at a time like this? Of course I want you to make out with him, and then I want you to call me and tell me everything.”

  I shake my head. “Second of all, Saul was in your MARRY column.”

  “My what?”

  “In your closet.”

  She dissolves into laughter and covers her face with her hands. “Oh my God, June! Damon Salvatore and Gilbert Blythe were on that list! What do you think of me?”

  Now I crumble into laughter too. For the first time in twenty-four hours, the knot in my stomach loosens.

  Hannah reaches across the center console and threads her fingers through mine. “You cannot imagine how loved and special it makes me feel that you were worried about this,” she says. “I mean, it also sort of makes me feel like a choad. But mostly it makes me miss you, June.”

  I kiss my fingers, and she kisses hers; we press them together, promising to get through anything, to still be best friends on the other side. “Forever,” I say.

  “Always,” she agrees. She restarts the car but doesn’t pull back onto the road right away. “Is this what had you all upset?”

  Ping!

  “Um.” My voice wrenches upward, and I close my eyes. “Well. I also saw my Dad die?”

  “What?”

  “The Whites showed me,” I say. I close my eyes for a long moment, until I’m steady enough to say the rest. “It wasn’t a heart attack—at least not just a heart attack. Nameless killed him.”

  “Oh my God. June,” she says.

  “It was terrible, Han.” My voice shudders. “Dad was there, and then Nameless wrapped around him, and it was like suddenly he wasn’t himself anymore. It was just his body, and I knew he was gone. I felt him leave.”

  “Oh, baby girl.” Hannah folds me into her arms.

  “They showed us some of Saul’s sister’s memories too,” I murmur into her hair, and she sits back. “And some that belonged to strangers.”

  Her mouth quivers open, and her throat bobs. “Maybe the memories aren’t at your house because they happened there but because of where your house is. On the thin place.”

  “Like they’re coming back from . . . heaven?”

  Hannah shrugs. “From somewhere. But there’s no way you’d find your Dad’s and Bekah’s memories randomly, at least not more than once. Something must be bringing those memories to you specifically, right?”

  When I finish telling her what I heard Dad say to Nameless, Hannah slumps in her seat, chewing on her lip. “June.” She hesitates for a second. “If your dad is sending you these Whites, maybe . . .” She swallows hard, shaking her head. “Maybe it’s a warning.”

  My stomach jerks within me. My vision splotches, and I dig my fingernails harder into my skin. What if Nameless killed both Dad and Bekah? What if they’re trying to warn us that Saul and I are next? “Maybe,” I whisper.

  Hannah reaches across the car and pulls my hand into hers. “What do we do, June?”

  I shake my head. I can think of only one thing, a thing I’m not sure I’m capable of doing again: going back into the Whites.

  “I don’t know yet,” I answer.

  “Well,” Hannah says. “In the meantime, let’s get our asses to the beach, lie in the sunlight, and smother you with love.” She tries to smile. “You’ll get through this, June. You shouldn’t have to, but you will.”

  Eighteen

  LIKE the first time I lost Dad, I’m surprised how quickly the white-hot pain fades into a gnawing ache. I’ve put ten years between me and that day, but today I feel eight again: mixed up, afraid of the world that once made me feel so loved, so safe.

  The gaps of forgetting shorten until most of the time, a world without Dad is my new reality. Again.

  All day at the beach, Hannah lets me talk things out. Tell stories about Dad that m
ake me almost happy, slip back into crying, panic over the darkness that lurks in the woods, wander toward conversation about Saul and Nate and school.

  I swear off the Whites then decide I have to keep investigating them a dozen times over.

  Hannah’s there with me as I settle into the rhythm of grief.

  When I get home that night, I still haven’t made a decision about the Whites. I ignore the swarms in the windows and try to focus on my writing assignment.

  I start, strike, and rewrite another one of Dad’s stories, about the day he proposed to Mom. But thinking about the rich timbre of his laugh, the way he always leaned in when he told this story, the moments when he’d pause for dramatic effect—recalling each of these details makes me feel as if another nail is being driven through me, pinning me to the ground.

  Like I’ll never feel anything again except this invisible weight crushing my every inch.

  Long after I’ve climbed into bed, my phone buzzes with an e-mail from Saul: June.

  My blood turns to lava as I stare at it. I type a reply, Saul, but don’t send it. Instead I stare until my phone light fades, then tap it back on and stare some more.

  June.

  Even if I’m not risking Hannah’s friendship, the way I’m starting to feel about Saul is risking something. My whole life Dad told me to stay away from the Angerts, that Bad Things happen when we cross paths. It scares me how easy it’s been to ignore all that since I met Saul.

  But after what I saw yesterday, it’s harder.

  I close the message and think again of Dad’s story, focus on it.

  He’d been traveling a lot, and most recently he’d been in New Mexico when he saw smoke coming from a rounded summit to his north. He pulled his car over and left it on the scrubby side of the road as he wandered toward the stacks of soot, with nothing but the box of dried cherries he’d brought from home. He always took them when he traveled, partly because he could taste the sunlight on the lake in every bite and partly because, if he got a tickle in his throat or ache in his belly, he could swallow a few and wake up feeling good as new.

  When he reached the bottom of the hill, everything was engulfed. The fire had raced quickly along the arms of dehydrated ponderosa pines to attack both cities at the base of the mountain. An overworked team of firefighters rushed around, trying to evacuate homes before the flames could stretch any farther, but there weren’t enough of them. Dad set his box of cherries on a rock and dove in to help, ushering families to cars and buses. They worked tirelessly through the night, emptying the cities. Whenever they pulled a woman from a collapsed house, or dragged cats and dogs from flaming top floors, Dad returned to his box of cherries and gave a Jack’s Tart to the injured, one bite miraculously healing their burns.

  By morning they’d evacuated three hundred houses, and not a single person had died. Everyone was exhausted, ready to sleep when the bleary tangerine sun came up, but Dad had given out all his cherries and was tired in a different way, the kind that’s run out of Home. So he got in his car and drove straight through the next day and night.

  When he finally got there, he found Mom sitting at the kitchen table. Seeing her there made him homesick, even though he was back, like he realized right then how much time he’d lost with her and their farmhouse on the hill and had to catch up on all the missing it he’d forgotten to do while away.

  Here’s the thing about Dad, about all the Jacks: They’re lake people, sponges. They have adventurous spirits but get restless when they’re away from the water too long. Like Jonathan Alroy O’Donnell and his grandson Jack the First and great-grandson Jack II, Dad wanted to see the world, but he had to do it in spurts because he felt so wrong when he couldn’t go stand at the edge of the lake and look out at the familiar way the sunlight bounced on its wriggling back. The cherries let him take the taste of home with him, but eventually, cherries got eaten and Jacks had to go home once again.

  When Dad got back to Five Fingers and saw Mom at that table, the first thing he wanted to do was gather her in his arms and take her to the lake, so he could see his two loves side by side. It didn’t matter that it was late January and the whole town was heaped in snow.

  They climbed in his truck and drove to the falls, which had fully frozen over, turning the whole cave into a shimmering hall of ice. There, Dad got down on one knee and told Mom he would love her in warmth and cold, that she’d be as beautiful to him when she was old and cracking as she was when she was young and verdant; he would find something to love about her in every season of life, and he would always, always come home.

  I loved the story as a kid. Dad told it to me all the time, and sometimes I asked Mom to too. She’d smile and say, “There are always at least two versions of everything, June. I’ve forgotten my own because I love your daddy’s so much.”

  My daddy.

  I start to cry.

  Feathers wriggles at the foot of my bed, mourning or warning me or maybe simply being.

  • • •

  On Monday, the rest of the class turns in their poems to Ms. deGeest while I sit there empty-handed. When the bell rings and everyone files out of the room, I hang back, watching Ms. deGeest clean the board.

  “I have a question,” I say, and she turns around, swiping her hands together like she always does.

  “All right. What’s up, Junior?”

  “I couldn’t write it,” I say. “I had an idea for a story, and I swear I tried, but I got stuck.”

  “You didn’t turn anything in?”

  “I was wondering if I could have an extension.”

  “I don’t give extensions.”

  “Okay, well, will you at least read it when I do turn it in? I can take the zero—I don’t care.”

  She’s silent for a beat, her posture reminiscent of a hunting cat. “You shouldn’t be okay with zeroes, Junior.”

  “Are you telling me to beg?”

  “I’m telling you to do the work. I’ll give you an extension this once, but here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to talk to the office and get your enrollment in this class re-designated as an independent study with me. You’ll come here for both your study halls, so I know you’re taking this seriously. And if you show up for the rest of the semester, I’m going to do two things: First, I’m going to write you an amazing recommendation letter that will at least partially explain your poor grades. Second, I’m going to talk to the principal about continuing your independent study into next semester. I’ll use two of my planning periods each week to meet with you, and the other three you’ll work silently in this room or the library. If you stop showing up, physically or mentally, I’ll retract my recommendation, and I won’t feel bad about it. Does that work for you?”

  I stare, unsure what to say. I’m not going to college? No letter of recommendation can make up for grades like mine? I want my study halls to be study halls? Those are the things I would’ve said before this class, but that’s not what comes out.

  “That works.”

  She flashes a straight white smile. “Good. Close the door on your way out.”

  • • •

  I’m distracted all night while I help Mom and Toddy cook dinner. While we’re eating, Mom interrupts Grayson’s dramatic retelling of a game they played at school to ask whether I’m feeling okay, and Toddy pushes back his chair to come feel my forehead.

  “A little warm there, Junie,” he says.

  “I think I’ll go lie down,” I say.

  “Do you feel sick?”

  “A little.” It’s true. The thought of venturing back into memory nauseates me even as it pulls on me. What are the odds I’ll see That Day again? Despite that risk, I need to see him. I need to understand what he knew about Nameless that Saul and I are missing.

  Leave June alone. She’s not like us. She won’t be. I promise you. Leave her alone.

  Sh
ivers snake down my spine, and Mom reaches across the dinner table, worried, and touches my arm. “Take some ibuprofen, baby,” she says. “It will help with the fever.”

  Upstairs, I slip my shoes off outside my bedroom, but there aren’t any Whites in the doorway.

  I scan the other doors at my disposal: Mom and Toddy’s, Grayson and Shadow’s, the bathroom—there, one lone White. I close the door to my bedroom so Mom and Toddy will think I’m sleeping if they check on me, then reach my hand out and let the White skate over me. It settles on my skin, and as it dissolves, I step into the bathroom.

  The effect is immediate.

  I’m downstairs in the dining room again, as though the hallways in my house got tangled and spit me out at the table. In this version of the dining room, it’s late at night and the pink ghost ripples in the corner.

  Dressed in pajamas and a long sweater, Mom sits at the table, her hand resting on the green corded phone she and Dad kept for posterity’s sake well into my childhood. Her soft waves hang in a loose ponytail, and her eyes look puffy and wet. The wrinkles I’m used to seeing around her lips and eyes have vanished, and her cheeks are soft and round.

  She stands and paces. Feathers follows her as she disappears around the corner into the sunroom. Everything stops, as it did in the forest—the crickets and cicadas falling silent, the whirring fan freezing. The drapes blowing inward from the moonlit windows pause. This memory is over.

  A new White bobs against the doorframe Mom passed through.

  I cup it, letting it take me through the doorway to another moment. I’m instantly back in the kitchen, seeing the exact same thing as before, only Mom’s clothes are different and her hair hangs over her shoulders.

  Again she stands and paces. Followed by Feathers, she turns and walks through the back door, pausing the memory. Again a single White waits for me.

  I clasp it and follow.

  I blink and find myself back at the entrance to the dining room.

  The cycle repeats four more times, and every time I snap back into place beside the worn kitchen table, Mom looks more tired, her eyes a little pinker and puffier until finally she’s sleeping with her head down against a place mat when there’s a commotion down the hall.