The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones

by Daven McQueen

  Aunt Cara stared at the floor. “That’s complicated too.”

  Ethan didn’t understand what was so complicated about telling those women off; he was no stranger to dealing with bullies. But he didn’t press his aunt. Instead, he hunched his shoulders and stared down at his knees. He still felt angry and sad, but tired most of all. Exhausted.

  “I don’t like it here,” he said after a moment. “I don’t understand why I have to be here.”

  “I know, sweetie.” Aunt Cara shook her head. “I know. And I’m so sorry. I wish I could make it different for you.”

  You could have, Ethan thought, if you’d just told your friends that they were wrong. He said, “Wishing doesn’t change things.”

  Aunt Cara looked him in the eyes for once, her eyebrows knit. “You’re right, I suppose. And I am sorry. For everything you heard. Sad to say, that’s just the way it is around here.”

  Ethan was taken aback by her easy complicity but didn’t voice it. Instead, he shrugged. He didn’t speak again until Aunt Cara stood and asked if he’d like a chicken sandwich for lunch. Then he said, “Sure.”

  As she left the room, Ethan called after her, “Aunt Cara? I’m sorry you’re stuck with me.”

  She looked quickly over her shoulder, her expression so sorrowful that Ethan had to look away. “Oh, sweetie, no,” she murmured, fingers rising to her lips. Then she released the door handle, letting it swing quietly shut.

  Four

  True to her word from that first day in the Malt, Juniper Jones did, in fact, see Ethan soon. She strolled into the shop that Monday morning in a flourish of checkered fabric that startled Ethan from his sleepy reverie. He hadn’t slept well the night before, tossing and turning as he ran Aunt Cara’s words over and over in his head. That’s just the way it is around here. And yet this, here, was where his dad sent him to learn the consequences of his actions. This, in his father’s eyes, was what he deserved.

  Shame and fear had weighed heavy on him all night, and now as Juniper approached, he could hardly manage a smile. She didn’t notice—she seemingly started talking before she even walked through the door. By the time she reached the counter, she had finished her sentence. She stared expectantly at Ethan.

  “Come on, Ethan Charlie Harper,” she said, after a second passed without his response. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already.”

  This, despite everything, drew a laugh out of him. Ethan already knew that Juniper Jones would be impossible to forget. He shook his head. “You were talking too fast. What’d you ask?”

  Juniper sighed theatrically. “I asked,” she said, “what the special of the day is.”

  Ethan blinked at her. “Special of the day?”

  “Yeah, you know—the hot new flavor, one day only, get it before it’s gone.” She shaped her voice into that of a radio-commercial broadcaster, throwing out her arms for emphasis.

  “We don’t really do that here.” He pointed up at the menu on the wall behind him. “Those are your options.”

  He was sure that she, a loyal customer, knew this well. Still, she was unfazed. “Sure you do that here,” she insisted. “Look at all these ingredients you’ve got. You could make the best special of the day the world has ever seen.”

  “I don’t really know how I would—”

  Juniper reached across the counter, cutting him off with a hand to his arm. “Try. Please?”

  She looked at him so kindly, so imploringly, that Ethan wondered if she saw through his tired gaze, and knew, somehow, what he had heard in the general store the day before. It was this gentleness that compelled him to nod and murmur, “Yeah, sure.”

  Juniper spun away from him, grinning. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with,” she said.

  Ethan turned to the ingredients behind the counter—the ice cream in frozen tubs, the sprinkles and candy toppings, the soda fountain with its sugary flavors. He glanced once at Juniper, who had moved to examine the jukebox, and shook his head.

  If he was being honest, this request, while ridiculous, was a welcome distraction. As Ethan added all three flavors of ice cream to the blender and topped it off with a splash of Pepsi, then root beer, then 7 Up, he forgot, for a moment, about everything. He watched the blender churn the ingredients together into a muddy grayish brown and thought about which toppings would best complement this concoction.

  Juniper had returned to the counter and now leaned against its metal surface, watching Ethan’s progress. She oohed as he poured the float into a tall glass and spooned two, then three more, scoops of rainbow sprinkles on top. He finished it off with a leaning pile of whipped cream that had already begun to spill over the side of the glass by the time he pushed it toward her across the counter.

  “It looks,” Juniper began, then burst into laughter. Ethan frowned as she leaned close to the drink, squinting at a cluster of sprinkles.

  “It’ll taste better than it looks,” he muttered.

  “We’ll see about that.” Ignoring the straw that Ethan handed her across the counter, Juniper perched in one of the spinning seats and lifted the glass to her lips with both hands. Whipped cream spilled across her nose as she took a long, loud gulp.

  Ethan watched as she set the glass back down on the counter, licking her lips. She nodded thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to him and said, “Ethan Charlie Harper, I’ve gotta say—that is absolutely disgusting.” But even as she pushed the drink back across the counter, she was smiling,

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Really? Try it, I dare you.”

  Rolling his eyes, Ethan stabbed a straw into the drink and took a big gulp—too big, he realized almost instantly, because as soon as the drink touched his tongue, he couldn’t help but spit it back out, straight onto the counter. Juniper leaned away from the splatter, cackling.

  “What did I tell you!” she cried.

  “Yeah, well”—Ethan wrinkled his nose—“at least I don’t have whipped cream all over my face.”

  And Juniper did have whipped cream all over her face: on her cheeks, across her nose, and somehow on her forehead. As she squinted at the countertop, trying to see her reflection in the polished metal, Ethan smirked and passed her a handful of napkins.

  “Thanks,” she said, scrubbing her face clean. Ethan watched as she balled up the damp napkins, amazed by how, even in her gracelessness, she moved with such confidence. He was suddenly aware of how small this town made him feel, so tightly wound, and so he straightened his shoulders.

  “I think I’ll just have a root beer float.” Juniper pushed a quarter across the counter, her eyes bright with laughter.

  “That I can handle,” Ethan said.

  Juniper chatted to him as he made the drink, telling him about her weekend—how she’d tried to read an old book from her aunt’s library, but it was so dusty she couldn’t stop sneezing. Somehow, with her waving hands and impassioned drawl, she made the most mundane incident into a spectacular story. Ethan found himself transfixed even as he scooped ice cream into her float.

  “And what about you?” she asked as he replaced his botched daily special with the new glass. She had concluded her tale by explaining how she had thrown the book across the room and nearly broke a vase that had been passed down from her grandmother. “How was your weekend?”

  Ethan was caught off guard, blinking at her for a moment before answering. “Fine.” He wiped away the milk shake he’d spat out onto the counter.

  Juniper took a long, loud slurp of her float, and Ethan could feel her eyeing him carefully. “Fine?”

  “Fine.”

  She was silent for a moment as Ethan moved to wipe another part of the counter, then said, “And what’s the real answer?” Ethan looked up. Juniper sat with both hands on the glass, the condensation making her palms damp, and gazed at him seriously. “I’m good at a bunch of things, Ethan,
and one of them is knowing when people are trying to bamboozle me. So ’fess up, what happened this weekend?”

  Since the day before, Ethan hadn’t felt like thinking, much less talking, about the incident. But something in Juniper’s face, wide eyed and kind, made him feel like he had to say something. In fact, her stare made him feel like he could say anything.

  “My aunt,” he began, “said some things.” He recounted the whole story, still running the cloth back and forth across the counter. Juniper listened quietly, her float melting beside her, untouched.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Ethan finished. “Anyway, nothing I can do about it.”

  Juniper reached across the counter to put a hand on Ethan’s arm, coaxing his gaze up to her face. “Sure it matters,” she said. “It made you sad.” When Ethan said nothing, she went on, “I’m sorry it happened. People are like that—I’ve seen it around this town before—but that doesn’t make it right.”

  Ethan shrugged. Juniper studied him for a moment, her nose wrinkled in concern. Under the malt shop lights she was bursting with color, too bright for this little room and, Ethan thought, for this whole town. He wondered, as he had since meeting her, how she’d managed to turn out so different from everyone else he’d met in Ellison, and why, of all people, she saw a friend in him.

  “Hey,” Juniper said, brightening suddenly. “I think I know something that’ll cheer you up.”

  “You really don’t have to do that, I’m—”

  She held up a hand, leaning across the counter. She said, “I want to tell you about my invincible summer.”

  Ethan remembered the words she’d gushed at him when they first met, about having the perfect summer with him as her sidekick, about the adventures they’d have. She was smiling at him now, wide eyed. Ethan shrugged.

  “Go for it,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “Summer is my favorite season,” she began. “It’s when school is out and the sunflowers are high and the lake is good for boating. There’s so much to do in Ellison that you wouldn’t even guess, especially when it’s so beautiful out. For all my fourteen-almost-fifteen years of life, I’ve wanted to spend a summer exploring it all with someone. But the thing is, I’ve never really had any friends here, except Gus the dock manager, who is old and has a bad knee. And he’s great, but I’ve always wanted a friend my own age.

  “I love this town. I love it with every little bit of me. But people here aren’t always so kind. I guess you’ve noticed.” She smiled ruefully. “When I first saw you here the other day, well, I thought the town probably wouldn’t be so nice to you. And they aren’t so nice to me either. Folks around here think I’m weird. So I figured, you know, it never hurts to have a friend when things are hard. And there’s nothing like an adventure to take your mind off all the bad stuff.”

  She studied her drink. “Anyway,” she said, her voice softer now. “I just wanted you to know that you have someone here on your side. If you want it.”

  For a long moment, Ethan didn’t respond; he simply stared at Juniper Jones with something akin to wonder. She was right: it never hurt to have a friend. In fact, after everything that had happened since he’d arrived in Ellison, a friend felt like an incredible relief. He looked at her in the spinning chair, cheeks flushed and smile small, and saw an earnestness in her eyes that was almost overwhelming. Even if he couldn’t understand why or how, Juniper meant what she’d said.

  Ethan smiled, shyly. “I think that would be nice,” he said.

  “Do you really?” Juniper beamed. “That’s great news. Well, we’ll have to start right away, of course. I have so much to show you. We’ll have to make a list of all my ideas—oh, and your ideas too, if you have any, but I figured you wouldn’t since you’re new here. This is going to be wonderful, Ethan, absolutely wonderful.” She grabbed her float and took a hearty gulp. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

  Ethan laughed as she leapt from her chair and stumbled gracelessly into a table. He pointed to his apron. “Still on shift, remember?”

  “Oh.” Juniper righted herself, smoothing out the front of her gingham skirt. “Fair point. Well, that doesn’t mean I can’t start brainstorming.” She came back to the counter and reached for her float, finishing it in one long swig.

  “Impressive,” Ethan said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I know.” She slid the glass back across the counter, and Ethan caught it before it tumbled off the edge. “Well, then,” Juniper said. “I’ll start thinking, and I’ll see you soon for day one. Deal?”

  When Juniper grinned, it seemed as if rays of sunlight were escaping from between her teeth. She held out her hand and shook Ethan’s with gusto. He smiled, feeling in the curve of his lips the thrill of starting over.

  “Deal.”

  Five

  For the next several days, Ethan ignored Aunt Cara as best he could. She tried to push past it at first, giving him extra servings of food at every meal and trying to make conversation with him about his records.

  “I like Louis Armstrong too,” she told him at one point. “Great on the trumpet.”

  “Cool,” Ethan replied, all the while wondering what made Louis Armstrong, with the brown skin of his cheeks puffed out as he blew into his trumpet, easier to handle than her own nephew.

  He tried to focus, instead, on Juniper Jones. Every day at the malt shop he waited in the morning silence, looking up at every sound as if she might come bursting through the door. When Aunt Cara spoke to him and he didn’t respond, it was in part because of his lingering anger but just as much because of his growing excitement for the adventures that lay ahead.

  After a few days of one-word responses and uninterested stares from Ethan, Aunt Cara eased back. And by then, Ethan’s anger had begun to subside. It was exhausting, he realized, to put energy into hating his aunt on top of everyone else in this town. He only had so much to go around. So he eased back too, allowing their relationship to return to civility.

  If Uncle Robert noticed the tension turned truce, he didn’t mention it. At the end of the week he showed up at the Malt to relieve Ethan from work with an uncomfortable look on his face. After a moment, he cleared his throat. Ethan, who had been watching the door for any sign of Juniper, jumped at the sight of his uncle.

  “So,” Uncle Robert said, coming around the counter to join Ethan, “Cara told me what happened. At the store.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “She didn’t mean anything by it. Those women are nasty gossips. What Cara said—it’s just about keeping up appearances.”

  This didn’t satisfy Ethan, but he was tired of thinking about the incident. So as Uncle Robert looked at him imploringly, Ethan just nodded. Then, with an awkward frown, Uncle Robert reached into his wallet and pulled out two stained, wrinkled dollar bills.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting the bills in Ethan’s direction. In the cramped quarters behind the counter, he couldn’t do much but gingerly take the money from his uncle’s grip. “Just, you know,” Uncle Robert went on. “To apologize. I see you reading those comics all the time. Maybe you could get some more.”

  The older man looked so uncomfortable that Ethan softened. “All right, Uncle Robert,” he said. He took off his apron and hung it on the peg next to the blender. “Thanks. I’ll see you.”

  It took a long moment of standing at the threshold before Ethan was able to coax himself into the general store. When the bell rang and the door closed behind him, Abrams looked up from the counter in surprise.

  “Cara’s nephew,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d see you here again, after last time.”

  Ethan shrugged. “Yeah, well.”

  Thankfully, Abrams didn’t pry any further as Ethan wandered the aisles—and thankfully, the store really was empty this time. No one else came in as Ethan pulled his items from the shelves, though he still felt tense as he app
roached the register.

  “Quite the meal,” Abrams noted with a smirk as he rang up the items: a bag of chips, a box of Oreos, and a bottle of Coke, still frosty from the cooler. “And quite the read.” He nodded his approval at Ethan’s choice of a Captain America comic.

  “All right, son, that will be one dollar and sixty-four cents.” Abrams stuck the bills that Ethan handed him into the drawer and passed back a quarter, a dime, a penny, and a paper bag of his items.

  “Thank you.” Ethan nodded at the man, happy to be making it out of the store unscathed. “Have a nice day.”

  “And you as well,” Abrams replied. He waited until Ethan’s hand was on the door before adding, “Glad to have you in the store, of course. But for your own sake, I’d try to avoid this place if you can.”

  “Right,” Ethan said. He wasn’t planning to frequent the six-aisle general store. “Thanks for the tip.”

  Outside, the humidity was stifling. Ethan felt sweat seeping into the handle of the bag as it swung in his grip. Dust stormed around his ankles in small tornadoes, and he coughed when the occasional stray speck tickled his nose. As usual, the dirty clouds remained unsettled.

  The sun was relentless, but when he made it out of town, the trees provided some relief. The leaves left crisscrossed shadows on the road, and somewhere in the distance birds called back and forth. Perhaps for the first time since arriving in Ellison, Ethan felt his muscles relax. In moments like this, just him and the trees, he could almost forget where he was.

  He was about halfway back to Aunt Cara’s house, lost in thought, when he heard the sudden rustle of branches and nearly jumped out of his skin. A moment later, three kids who were a little older than him emerged from one of the forest paths. The girl, a brunet, lifted her skirt to step over a bush. She linked arms with one of the boys, a tall, stocky blond. The other boy was dark haired and lanky, and he followed the couple with crossed arms and a sharklike grin.

  They were evidently in the middle of a conversation, but when they noticed Ethan standing quite conspicuously in the center of the road, they all halted in their tracks. Surprise crossed their faces, but almost immediately, the blond boy’s lips twisted into a sharp leer.