“How is it not—” She paused. “Know what? Never mind. I’m being unfair.”
“June,” Ethan began, but she held up a hand.
“Really,” she insisted. “This isn’t about me. I should know better than to expect anyone to wanna stick around. Anyway, no use thinking about all that now, right?” She pushed herself to her feet and picked up her half-filled glass. Her lips curled back into a small smile. “Back in a flash. I’m gonna get some more lemonade.”
“How high did you say it was?”
Ethan craned his neck to stare up at the towering hickory tree. Juniper sidled up beside him, shielding her eyes with one hand.
“A hundred and twenty feet,” she said. “It’s a doozy.” She walked in a circle around the thick trunk, thoughtfully eyeing the lowest hanging branches.
“Wow.” Ethan whistled. “And remind me again—why is it called Big Red? I’m pretty sure this thing’s not a redwood.”
“It definitely isn’t,” Juniper agreed. “There’s this old town story, though—sort of a legend—about how it got its name. See, back like a hundred and something years ago when Ellison was founded, there weren’t a lot of people living west of the Mississippi yet. So people didn’t know the trees out west real well. Anyway, two guys from town were out exploring and they found this tree, and they saw how tall it was, and one of them said to the other, ‘Say, this is one heck of a tree,’ and the other one replied, ‘Sure is, wonder what kind,’ and the first one had a cousin or uncle or someone who’d been to California, where there are redwoods, and so he said, ‘You know, I heard that there are these real huge trees called redwoods in California. I betcha it’s one of those.’ And so they called it Big Red, and that’s the name it’s kept to this day.”
She let out a breath, and Ethan fought back a smile. She had provided a very animated re-enactment of the scene, complete with ridiculous voices and robotic arm movements.
“Anyway,” she continued, rubbing her hands together in preparation, “that old legend doesn’t matter. Today, we just have to climb.”
“Right,” Ethan agreed, nodding. “Just climb.”
Juniper took a deep breath, licked her lips, and took a few long paces back. With her eye on the nearest branch, she sprinted forward, launched herself into the air, and missed completely, collapsing to the ground with a surprised grunt. Ethan stared at her for a moment as she sat in silence and stared dazedly at the ground, then burst suddenly into laughter.
“June,” he gasped, “you missed by a mile! Come on, you can do better than that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d never climbed a tree in your life.”
Juniper pursed her lips, getting to her feet and dusting off the seat of her blue jeans. “Well, you see,” she began, offering Ethan a sheepish smile. “That’s kind of—sort of—a little bit the case. I have no idea how tree climbing works.”
Ethan gaped at her, thoroughly appalled. “So, let me get this straight. You, a girl from a forest lake town, not only can’t swim, but have also never climbed a tree?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Juniper Jones. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who makes less and less sense the longer I know you.”
“Good.” Juniper grinned widely, her teeth uneven between her rose petal lips. “Making sense is for nerds and grown-ups. I am way more interesting.”
“And you also can’t climb a tree,” Ethan reminded her. He held out his arms. “All right, come on. I’ll give you a boost.”
He squatted down beneath the branch, lacing his fingers into a secure foothold. Juniper looked at him dubiously.
“I just—I just step on?”
“You just step on. What, are you chicken?”
“I am not chicken.” Juniper stuck out her tongue, then put one hand on Ethan’s shoulder and one foot in his outstretched hands. Grunting with effort, Ethan stood, raising Juniper high enough to climb onto the branch easily. She shrieked the whole two seconds up and scrambled hurriedly onto the tree. With a quick running start and a lucky leap, Ethan pulled himself up beside her.
“There you go,” he said, smiling at her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Not at all. Let’s keep going.” She got to her feet, her arms spread as she teetered precariously on the branch. Thankfully, the branches were fairly close together, good for climbing, so she found a handhold above her and stepped up to the next level. And the next one, and the next. Soon, Ethan was staring up at her from ten feet below.
“Would you look at that, you’re a regular monkey,” he remarked. Juniper looked down, first with a grin—then her gaze strayed past Ethan to the faraway ground, and he could’ve sworn that she turned nearly the same color as the leaves on the tree.
“Ethan,” she said meekly, her eyes wide. “We have a problem. I think—I think I’m afraid of heights.”
“Oh God.” Ethan stood and climbed as quickly as he could to where Juniper sat, straddling a thick branch and hugging the trunk for dear life. “Come on,” he said, attempting to peel her arm away from the bark. “Come on, let’s climb down.”
But Juniper shook her head fiercely. “No,” she snapped. “I’m not coming down. I’m going to climb this tree if it kills me. Which”—she glanced down again and gulped—“it very well might.”
“June,” Ethan started, but she cut him off.
“Don’t ‘June’ me. I’m climbing this tree, Ethan Charlie Harper, with or without you.”
After a moment of hesitation, Ethan found a hold above his head and reached his free hand out to Juniper. “Well, then,” he said with a sideways smile, glancing skyward. “What are we waiting for?”
They didn’t make it all the way up the tree. At about the three-fourths point, Juniper made the mistake of looking down and promptly vomited onto the branches, only narrowly missing Ethan’s head.
“I think we should stop here,” she croaked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Ethan nodded, and, climbing to a sturdy branch closer to her, stood up and surveyed the view.
“Whoa,” he murmured. “June, you have to see this.” He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and scanned the treetops. Beside him, he heard Juniper pushing herself to her feet.
She gasped. They hadn’t climbed all the way up, but they were still above the rest of the forest. For miles they could see only a carpet of green—and just in the distance, faintly outlined against the afternoon sun, were the buildings of some faraway city.
“Incredible,” Juniper whispered, her voice wobbling slightly.
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed, turning just in time to see the sun hit her eyelashes and turn them gold. “Yeah, sure is.”
“Do you realize,” Juniper said, as they pedaled away from the Malt, “that if we check another thing off the list today, we’ll be a whole quarter of the way through? How crazy is that?”
Ethan raised an eyebrow, swerving to avoid a pothole. “You’ve been keeping track?”
“Of course. I go back to the clearing every day after our adventures and check another one off the list. And we’re almost half of halfway there. At this rate, we’ll definitely finish before you have to go home. And if we don’t, well, I’ll just get Noah to hold you hostage in town until we do.”
She shrugged, grinning that crinkle-eyed grin.
“Then we’d better get going,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “What do you say today I teach you how to swim?”
Juniper waved her hand dismissively and shook her head. “We can do that anytime. I actually have something else in mind.” With a sudden skid of dust, she made a sharp right onto a side lane. “Follow me,” she called over her shoulder. “We’re going to Alligator Hill.”
That was the first time Ethan had properly seen Alligator Hill in broad daylight. As they rolled their bikes to its base, he looked at the giant slope and thought there was no way anything could actual
ly be so green.
“Come on,” Juniper piped, laying her bike carefully in the grass and beginning the trek to the top. Ethan followed. Clovers bowed beneath his feet, leaving a vague impression of footsteps up the side of the hill.
When she reached the top, Juniper was panting heavily. She stood still for a moment, her arms wide and her face turned up to the sun. Unlike everywhere else in the town, there seemed to be a cool breeze up here. And no dust. With every breath he took, Ethan felt only fresh air.
“All right, then,” Juniper said, softly for once, almost reverently. “Let’s get started.”
She dropped suddenly to the ground and sat cross-legged. She nodded at Ethan, and he did the same.
For a long moment she said nothing, and simply stared at some point over his shoulder. He glanced back and saw nothing but treetops. “June,” he tried, “are we—”
Juniper shook her head and blinked as if awakening from a trance. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I just get lost up here. Anyway.” In typical Juniper Jones fashion, she clapped her hands twice. “This is the one thing on our list that I’ve actually done before, but everyone who comes to this town needs to do it at least once. I think you’ll love it.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “And this is . . .”
“Easy.” She flopped back into the grass, limbs askew. “We’re going to roll down Alligator Hill. And I promise you, it is the best hill roll that you will ever have. Lie down.”
With some trepidation, Ethan lowered himself carefully into the grass. As much as he was questioning the sensibility of rolling down this very steep hill, he had to admit that the grass was incredibly soft. He curled his fingers through it and squinted up at the sun.
“Are you ready?” Juniper asked, nudging him with her foot. “You’re going first.”
“I—what?”
“Oh, don’t be a baby. You’ll be fine, I promise.”
Nodding slowly, Ethan inched closer to the edge, where the calmly-sloping top dipped suddenly into nothingness. “You sure about this, Juniper?” he asked, his voice thick with doubt.
“As sure as I am that root beer floats are the best drinks ever known to man.”
“Fair enough.” And before he could hesitate, he flipped over onto his side and took off rolling down the hill.
There was something about rolling down hills that all kids, and anyone who has been a kid, could attest to: no matter how hard you tried to keep your mouth shut so that grass didn’t fly in, you couldn’t help but laugh. It bubbled out of your lips in golden spurts, and maybe you got a few daisies caught between your teeth, but in the moment, it just didn’t seem to matter.
That was how Ethan felt as he rolled down Alligator Hill, locked in a tunnel of green, his heart racing ecstatically in his chest in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. When he reached the bottom, he was dizzy and panting and suddenly, inexplicably happy.
He lay there at the base, one hand on his chest and the other fiddling with the blades of grass beneath him. His eyes were closed, and he could have drifted off to sleep just then—but before he could, a shrieking orange tornado hurtled down the hill. Juniper’s ponytail whipped furiously and her pink checkered dress was tangled in her legs. Ethan snorted, so amused by the strange sight that he forgot to scramble out of the way and Juniper rammed right into him.
“Ow!” he cried as her elbow caught him in the stomach.
Juniper leapt to her feet, then, with a dizzy stumble, fell immediately back to the ground.
“Ethan,” she gasped, shaking her head, “you’re supposed to move.” He glared at her from where he lay.
Sighing, she offered him a hand and pulled him into a sitting position. He pressed a hand to his stomach as she eyed him eagerly.
“Well?” she demanded. “Wasn’t that just a blast?”
“I’m not sure if my stomach hurts more from the spinning or from your incredibly bony elbow,” Ethan muttered.
Juniper rolled her eyes. “Please, you had fun. Just like I knew you would.” Shaking a few blades of grass out of her hair, she jumped up again, pulling Ethan with her. He felt the ground tilt beneath him just a little bit more.
“Come on,” she beckoned eagerly, squeezing his hand. “Let’s do it again.”
She took off running up Alligator Hill and Ethan watched, stupefied, as she sprinted straight into the sun.
Twelve
Juniper was sitting across the counter of the Malt in what Ethan had come to think of as typical Juniper fashion. Her hair curled loose and long down her back, falling over her shoulders every now and then as she leaned forward to take a sip from her vanilla milk shake (she had finally gotten over her milk shake overload and couldn’t get enough of the vanilla). Her hands were damp with the icy sweat slipping down the side of the glass, and she hummed along with the song blasting from the jukebox while swinging her feet against her stool to a completely different rhythm. Ethan glanced at her out of the corner of his eye every now and then as he wiped the counter or flipped another page in his comic book.
It was still quiet in the mornings, minus the occasional primary school kid who would run into the shop flushed and clutching a quarter, breathlessly reciting their order to Ethan before they could even look at him. And Juniper, of course, was a regular customer, always insisting on paying no matter how often Ethan said that her drinks were on the house.
Today was a Tuesday, and the two of them sat in companionable silence, sweating in the seemingly airless shop as the minute hand on the clock inched toward one o’clock at a snail-like pace. Every few minutes Juniper would ask for the time and Ethan would mumble a response before wiping a new layer of sweat from his forehead. By the time Uncle Robert arrived, Ethan’s shirt was clinging to his back.
Uncle Robert grunted a hello to Juniper and Ethan, shifting a full brown paper bag out from under his arm and onto the counter. “For you and your aunt,” he said to Juniper. “Cara asked me to bring it for you. There’re some pies in there, I think, maybe some chicken.”
Juniper grinned, peering into the bag. “That’s so kind, Mr. Shay! Tell her thank you very much.”
“Don’t think she just did this out of the goodness of her heart,” Uncle Robert teased. “You’ve just been ’round our house so much gushing about her cooking that she wanted to show off her skills a little more.”
“Whatever the reason, I’ll take it,” Juniper said. “In fact, I think I’m going to run these home right now. Ethan, can we postpone our snail race an hour or two?”
Next on the summer list was to pick snails from a particularly damp area by the lake and race them across a big rock. Juniper claimed she had already scoped out the options and selected her champion.
“Actually,” Ethan said, as he hung up his apron, “what if I come with you? You’ve been to Aunt Cara and Uncle Robert’s house a bunch of times, but I’ve never seen yours.”
Ethan was surprised to see Juniper’s smile falter. She glanced quickly at the bag of food, then back at Ethan, as if wondering how quickly she could grab the bag and run.
“I mean, unless you don’t want to, I guess,” Ethan added. “Like, no pressure. It’s just that we’ve been friends for almost two months and I still don’t know where you live.”
If Uncle Robert was listening to this conversation, he gave no indication. His focus was on the freezer he was cleaning out, as he always did, because Ethan had yet to master the proper technique. Juniper watched Uncle Robert wipe the icy walls for a long moment before she responded.
“Yeah, okay. Sure.” She nodded too quickly. “Yeah, you can come over for a little while. But just a little while—I still have a snail race to win.”
Ethan smiled. “Deal.”
When they slipped out the back door of the malt shop, Ethan felt anticipation building in his stomach. It had been weeks, and though Juniper talked nonstop, she never seemed to talk abou
t herself. For all that Ethan knew about her personality, he hardly knew anything about her history. He knew she lived with her aunt, and Uncle Robert had once alluded to her parents passing away, but the circumstances were unclear. He’d never seen her aunt or heard the woman mentioned in any detail. And though Ethan wasn’t one to pry, he was curious about the past of this redheaded girl who seemed to live in her own world.
He was buzzing with excitement as he mounted his bike, but Juniper was uncharacteristically subdued. She set the food gently into her basket and silently adjusted her yellow skirt so it swished beneath her like cotton rays of sunshine.
“All right,” she said. “This ride is a bit of a long one, just so you know. I live a little out of the way.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ethan assured. “Look at me. I’m practically Superman. I can handle it.”
Finally cracking a smile, she rolled her eyes.
Ethan couldn’t help but notice that she pedaled unnaturally slow the entire way there. Usually, Juniper was like a rocket on her bike; she went careening through the forest paths as if she was being chased by a wild animal, especially when she had a destination in mind. Today, she moved along at a leisurely pace, glancing back every now and then as if she thought Ethan would suddenly no longer be riding at her tail. As if she almost hoped that he wouldn’t be.
She had been telling the truth though: it was a pretty long ride. They passed the houses nestled in the trees close to downtown—those people who actually had neighbors—before finding their way to a significantly less populated area. The trees seemed denser here, as if they sensed the lack of inhabitants and were slowly closing in. The way the branches sulked overhead, blotting out the sunlight, made the hairs on Ethan’s arms stand on end.
“This way,” Juniper called, after they had been riding for about fifteen minutes. She made a sharp left onto a skinny, almost invisible path. If she hadn’t given the signal, Ethan would have pedaled right past it. The path they ended up on was bumpy and incredibly narrow; too thin to fit even a small car. It didn’t seem possible that there could be a house all the way out here.
The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones Page 12