A Million Junes

by Emily Henry

  I turn to another scene. The same green couch. The same bespectacled man asks Dad, “Are you a haunted man, Jack?”

  Dad regards him. “I’m trying to change.”

  “And do you believe you can?”

  “I’m cursed. We all are.”

  “We?”

  “Jacks,” he says. “My grandfather, my father, me.”

  “And you have a new baby at home,” the therapist confirms. “Do you think she’s cursed?”

  “She’s different,” Dad says.

  “How?”

  “She’s how things were before.”

  “Before?”

  “The curse.”

  The man sets his notepad aside and leans his forearms on his knees. “And what exactly is this curse?”

  Dad’s eyes flicker up. “Darkness.”

  “Darkness?”

  “Inside of us,” Dad says. “It watches us. It tempts us.”

  “What does it tempt you to do?”

  “To end it.”

  The man straightens, but his face stays placid. “To end your life?”

  Dad regards him. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Then tell me what it is.”

  “It shows us . . .” Dad’s eyebrows pinch. “It shows us the things that hurt us. Over and over again. And then it takes the thing we love most.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It poisons us,” he says. “And the people we love.”

  “And what do you think will happen if you end it?”

  Dad’s great shoulders shrug. “It will be satisfied. It will go away.”

  “What is this it, Jack?”

  “It’s Nameless.”

  “Jack, what do you think happens to Léa if you die? To your daughter?”

  He drops his face into his cracked hands and starts to cry. “I don’t want to leave. But the ghosts in that house—the ghosts won’t leave me alone.”

  I don’t know if I can take seeing any more. My heart feels cracked in half, but I have to keep going until I understand. Until I can fix this.

  I turn toward a memory of a foggy morning on our hill, one of the earliest moments yet. My grandfather looks strong and limber. Dad is very small, one curl swooping down in the middle of his forehead. Together they carry tin buckets out to the hens. They stop at the coop, scattering the feed in the grass. Jack II’s great form crouches as he reaches his hands out. A hen comes toward him, trusting and calm. He sweeps her up, lifts her to his ear, closing his eyes to better hear the goop-goop-goop of her heart.

  The boy watches, and Jack II beckons his son forward, and the boy shuffles through the mud. He presses his ears to the speckled feathers, the tiny gasp that escapes his mouth making Jack II’s smile grow.

  “I used to think you could hear the whole world—even outer space—in the beat of a chicken’s heart. That you could taste the sun itself in a cherry.” Jack II sets the hen down and straightens. “It’s strange how the smallest things and the biggest are so alike.”

  Dad gazes up at him. “Like you and me.”

  Jack II shakes his head, rustles his son’s hair. “No. You’re different. You won’t turn out like me.” Jack II seems to fade then, his eyes going vacant, his body becoming somehow less solid. He turns and goes inside.

  I find my father young and old. In pain and ecstasy. Alone and with arms folded around Mom, holding me on his hip, whispering stories I’m too young to understand.

  “When you were born, the sun cried,” he whispers. “The lake danced. The dirt in Five Fingers sung, and all the coywolves stayed up past morning, hollering at the sky. The whole world rejoiced because you were finally in it.”

  In that moment, I find him.

  The magic man who could talk roots into spreading.

  The haunted man who ran from the people he loved.

  My father, the sun, who warmed everything he touched. Who fought for us and for his place in the world.

  The grass plot I’m standing on unfurls like a rug rolled out on top of the hundreds of scenes, vanishing them to make way for my own yard, my own hill encircled by magic forest.

  My house is nowhere in sight. Nothing but sunlight and grass and pine needles.

  Nothing with fingers or toes or eyes, apart from the three sleeping animals in the middle of the hill. A coyote curled up with a wolf, a yin and yang of red and gray fur, a robin resting on the wolf’s snout. Their eyes are shut lightly as they nap beneath the cloudless sky.

  In the distance, I see a flicker of color: a strawberry-haired girl watching me.

  “Who are you?” My voice comes out. I’m no longer in the realm of memory but rather in the thin place.

  She starts to walk away. When I try to follow, the threshold of the forest spits me back into my room from my closet.

  Twenty-Six

  WHEN I’m leaving that night for homecoming, I stop by the living room and stick Shadow and Grayson each with a kiss.

  “Ew!” Grayson groans. “Stop!”

  “You’re a brat, and I love you,” I tell him. “Shadow, you’re not a brat, and I love you.”

  “You have germs,” Grayson says. “Germs make people sick, and I don’t want to be sick, because you can die if you’re sick.”

  “I don’t think most germs are as scary as you think,” I tell him. “But I won’t give you any more germs, if you don’t want, even though I’m not sick.”

  It seems ridiculous to head out for a school dance in light of an unbroken curse on my lineage, but after everything I saw today, I feel fragile. I want this night with Hannah, and I don’t want to let the curse steal it from me.

  Nothing sounds better tonight than living my small life well.

  I slip into the sunroom, where Mom’s reading with her legs stretched over Toddy, who’s watching a movie on his tablet.

  “Hey.” Mom looks up. Toddy takes out his earbuds. “You guys and Dad are and were the best parents in the universe.”

  They exchange a look. “You need some money for tonight, Junie?” Toddy asks. He’s not joking. That’s legitimately how spoiled we are: A compliment leads to an offer of cold, hard cash.

  “No. I was just thinking about how lucky I am.”

  How I never would’ve described any of my parents as haunted. How all three of them have always looked at me, made me feel their love.

  Mom closes her book. “We’re lucky.”

  “So far you have been, yeah,” I agree. “But when Grayson’s old enough to go to homecoming, and he mentions how great you are, you might want to consider what he’s going to buy with the cash you immediately offer him.”

  Mom chuckles, but Toddy’s already somewhat small eyes narrow. “Oh shoot, Léa. You should’ve told me not all kids turn out like June before you roped me into two more.”

  Mom shrugs. “I was as naïve as you, and Shadow’s angelic disposition certainly didn’t help.”

  “Have fun, Junie,” Toddy says.

  “You staying at Hannah’s?” Mom asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Be safe, Junior.”

  “Love you.”

  I meet Hannah in the driveway, toss my bags in the back, and climb in. She offers me her kissed fingers. “Hey,” she says gently.

  I bypass our usual greeting and wrap her in a hug. “Thanks.”

  “For?”

  “Being you.”

  “Anytime,” she says. “Unless Adele has a sudden vacancy and I’m able to be her. Then I’m out of here.”

  I pull back. “You were right, Han. The memories aren’t the whole story. But hearing about Dad from Mom and Toddy isn’t the same as knowing him. And every time I step through a White, I get a chance to know him a little more. And it wrecks me to see him, and a lot of what I learn hurts, but I can’t explain to you how lit
tle that matters. Because for the first time, I’m starting to really know him. To understand who he was, the good and bad. And I guess I’m just realizing that hurting someone doesn’t mean you don’t love them, and being mad at someone doesn’t mean you stop loving them.”

  She studies me for a long beat, her mouth small. “It’s different,” she says quietly. “I know what you’re saying, but it’s different with your dad than mine.”

  “I know,” I agree. “And it’s not up to me whether you should forgive your dad, or if he can be trusted to come back into your life, but if you ever want to try, I just want you to know I’ll be there. I’ll hold your hand when you call, go with you to Colorado, whatever. Anything. Or if you want to fly out there and toilet paper his house, I’ll do that too.”

  Hannah leans across the console to pull me into another hug. “Don’t you ever leave me, June O’Donnell,” she whispers into my hair.

  “Never,” I say fiercely.

  “We have to break that curse.”

  “We will,” I try to promise.

  • • •

  Despite the fact that Hannah and I are allegedly each other’s dates, Nate and Stephen meet us at Hannah’s in a hunter green sedan, our chariot to the dance.

  “Giiirls!” Nate calls from the driver’s side window, through which he’s squeezed the top half of his body.

  “Don’t you feel like you should be throwing eggs at him?” I ask Hannah.

  She gives me a reproachful purse of her lips and smooths her vintage baby blue minidress. “June, be nice.”

  The car stops, and Nate hops out to open the door for us, making a big show of bowing and offering his hand. “He thinks I’m weird,” I mumble.

  “Hey, Hannah. Hey, Junior,” Stephen says from the passenger seat, giving us a tight smile in the imperfectly angled rearview mirror.

  “Hey, Stephen,” I offer. Hannah says nothing, her primal sense of academic competition taking over her body. Stephen seems simultaneously amused and annoyed.

  Fifteen minutes later we park and follow the droves of students into the school to the gym. There’s a vague Under the Sea theme, which mostly means we’re all wearing various shades of blue, though some of the girls Hannah and I used to hang out with are in coconut bras and grass skirts, arguing fervently with Principal Michaelson, who’s literally holding out a handful of Five Fingers High School Bears T-shirts and begging them to put them on.

  I half-expect Hannah to ditch me and Stephen for Nate, but instead she grabs my hand and leads me down the bleacher stairs to the refreshments table on the floor of the gym.

  We fill our cups with punch and shuffle to a dark recess to spike it with Dad’s flask—though it seems someone’s already beaten us to the punch, ha-ha-ha. Soon Hannah and I are on the basketball court, underneath the flare of strobe lights and tangle of blue streamers and metallic fish cutouts, dancing wildly with a crowd of kids who act like we never grew apart, screaming, “Han! June!” over the sound and pushing through bodies to give us sweaty hugs, cranberry juice and something sharper on their breath.

  It’s not our usual scene, but we’re both determined to commit to the concept of homecoming like we never have before. Eventually we manage to reconnect with Stephen and Nate in the sea of bodies, and soon Hannah and her non-boyfriend are making out in the middle of the dance floor, where they’re safe from the flashlights the chaperones keep shining into the crowd as they circle, hunting for contraband and breaking up the more ferociously grinding dance partners.

  “Want water?” Stephen shouts.

  I look back to let Hannah know where we’re going, but decide not to interrupt. I take Stephen’s hand to keep from getting separated on our way out. We fill new cups at the Rubbermaid jug and sit on the bottom bleacher. I chug my water, then flip my head upside down to pull my hair into a sweaty knot.

  “I like your jumpsuit,” Stephen says, leaning back. “Comfy yet sophisticated.”

  “Thanks.” I touch the dark blue halter straps. “So you like my jumpsuit, but you still hate my best friend?”

  Stephen rolls his eyes. “I’ve already told you I like Hannah.”

  “Then why do you seem sulky?”

  He laughs. “I had a date—first time in all four years I had a date for a school dance. Then Hannah decides she doesn’t want to go with Nate after all, so he talks me into canceling with Thomas so we could go stag together one last time, and somehow I didn’t think that would end with the two of them cannibalizing each other on the dance floor while I hang out with someone who’s—no offense—not even really my friend.”

  “No offense taken,” I say. “It does suck. Senior year’s just weird, you know?”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know—your defenses are down, you’re more open to new people and things, and that means you might start falling in love with something or someone new, and you kinda feel like you have to devote as much time as you can to it until it’s too late, but you’re also trying to cram all your time with the stuff you already love and don’t want to leave.”

  Stephen studies me for a long moment. “I wish I were more like you, like ‘lake people.’ There’s nothing here I don’t want to leave.”

  “Seriously?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t get along great with my parents. I hate winter. My sister’s already at school in Ohio, and Nate’s my only close friend. I spend most of my time studying, and we’re so far away from the rest of the world that there’s still hardly anyone out of the closet at our school. I can date, like, two people publicly and another six who won’t be seen in public with me because they haven’t told their friends or family yet. Aside from that, I’m not particularly into camping, kayaking, rock climbing, or getting drunk and eating fried food, so there’s not a whole lot for me to do when I’m not drowning in schoolwork.”

  “I do not understand how you’re best friends with Nate Baars.”

  Stephen shrugs and gulps more water. “Nate talks a lot, but he’s also a good listener. And he cares about hearing what his friends care about. I’ll miss him a lot, but not enough to stay.”

  “Hm.” I think of what deGeest said about Saul, how eventually he’ll move on from here and that I should too. Before her class, I’d never even thought about college. I’d never thought about leaving Five Fingers for more than a couple of months, and when I imagined those trips, it wasn’t libraries and science labs I saw.

  All those days I spent sitting at the edge of the driveway, waiting for Dad to come back, I told myself the same kind of epic stories Dad told about his time away. I gave myself shiny reasons why the man I loved more than anything in the world would leave me.

  And when he was gone, I told myself I’d be like him. That I’d be cunning and fearless and wild, and I would never be far from him.

  No matter how mad I am at him, I don’t know how to handle wanting something different from what he had. I don’t want to hurt the people I love like he hurt me and Mom, but I don’t want to lose any more of him than I already have.

  Maybe the thing Jacks really have in common, apart from the curse, is that we’re all trying to correct the mistakes of our fathers.

  But how did we get this way, cursed and Angert-hating?

  “Look, I don’t want to ditch you,” Stephen says, “but I kind of want to salvage my last chance to take a real date to homecoming.”

  I glance around. “Is your date here? It’s, like, eleven—the dance is almost over.”

  Stephen shakes his head. “No, but he only lives a couple of blocks from here, and rumor has it you can dance anywhere. Can you tell Nate I had to go?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you convince him I’m not mad at him?”

  “No, because I think you are.”

  Stephen stands. “Think maybe you’re projecting? Have a good night, Junior.”

  A
s he climbs the stairs to the school’s lobby, I fish my phone out of my chiffon pocket and search for a new message that’s not there. The music fades out, the lights brighten, and Hannah and Nate come staggering toward me, yelping about how badly their feet hurt. At the far end of the gym, I notice a woman in a svelte black dress, her white-blond hair slicked into a bun with one stray wave framing her face. All done-up, Ms. deGeest looks more like an adult. A super beautiful one. I fight a twinge of jealousy and embarrassment about our last conversation. Her eyes fix on me, and I look away.

  “Where’s Stephen?” Nate asks.

  “He had to go. He’s not mad at you.”

  “Huh.” Nate nods. “Okay. Well, you know what we need?”

  Hannah looks up from under the curve of his arm draped over her shoulders. “What?”

  “A fourth person to camp out with. Any ideas, Junior?” He practically winks, and Hannah grabs my phone off my lap and starts typing.

  “Hey, Han,” I say. “Maybe if you taught me how to type, I could send my own texts.”

  “This is faster!” Hannah chimes. “Let’s go!”

  On our way out, I glance back at Ms. deGeest. I swear she’s still watching us. I shove my phone back into my pocket.

  In the parking lot, Hannah’s smile glows as bright as the moon, and Nate is nearly charming. In the car, he keeps grabbing Hannah’s hand across the console, grinning almost madly.

  We swing by Nate’s house first and go through the gate to the basement door. We change into the sweats we brought, then pack Nate’s tents, sleeping bags, a lantern, and a couple of flashlights in the trunk while Hannah calls her mom to tell her we got back to my house okay. Her mom believes her, because when has Hannah ever lied before? We’re throwing the last few bags in the trunk when Saul pulls up and gets out of his car, looking too clean, too good.

  “Hey, man,” Nate calls.

  Saul nods and drops his backpack into the trunk but keeps a sweatshirt folded in his arms. “Hannah, June.”

  “Glad you could make it,” Hannah says.