“Yeah, great,” Ethan echoed, following her to the door. He was distracted as the ticket taker checked their tickets—first Juniper’s, glancing at it and waving her through, and then Ethan’s, taking it from his hand and staring hard at it for a moment before allowing him to pass. He said something as he returned the ticket to Ethan, but Ethan didn’t catch it and simply nodded.
Juniper was already at the concession stand, making the cashier smile as she watched the popcorn machine in awe. She met Ethan at the doors of their theater a moment later, bag full of popcorn in arm.
“Hey, are you all right, Harper?” she asked, her mouth full of kernels. “You’re being awfully quiet.”
Ethan could think only of the bathroom signs, but he nodded and said, “Yeah, totally fine,” as he followed her into the theater. It was nearly empty, with only a few other people scattered throughout the seats, and Juniper made a beeline for the center.
“I heard this is the best place to sit,” she said in a loud whisper. But just as Ethan was about to follow her into the row, a loud voice behind them called out, “Excuse me! Boy!” and Ethan turned to find himself in the beam of a flashlight. It was the ticket taker, looking stiff and furious in his red uniform vest.
“What’s wrong?” Juniper asked, making her way back to Ethan.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” the man demanded, his beam on Ethan’s chest. “Coloreds up top.” He pointed over his shoulder, where Ethan could make out a sad row of chairs, not even theater seats, lined up across a small balcony. Above it, a white sign labeled the area as Colored Seating.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize—”
“Don’t make excuses to me. Just get up there.”
“Wait a minute.” Juniper held up the hand that wasn’t holding the popcorn, frowning. “He’s with me. Why can’t he sit down here?”
The man, who Ethan saw was barely older than twenty, eyed her warily. “That’s the rules, ma’am. You ought to know better than being out with a colored boy, anyway.”
People were staring now, and Ethan felt his face grow hot. “It’s fine, Juniper.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “He’s my best friend, and I’m going to sit with him. I don’t care what the rules are.”
“Best friend, huh?” the man sneered. “That’s what you call it?”
There was a familiar tilt to the way he held his body, leaning toward Ethan at just the right angle to pounce. He’d seen Samuel Hill do it a million times. He knew what could happen if it escalated.
Panic rising in his chest, Ethan stepped away from the vested man and from Juniper, who still stood tall with the popcorn under her arm. “Look, I’ll just go,” he said. “Sorry about the misunderstanding.” He scurried away before either of them could say anything. Every step toward the door seemed to take a century, and he was nearly shaking by the time he stepped into the light of the lobby. He looked back only when he reached the stairs to the balcony. The ticket taker was standing by the theater doors, glowering. Juniper hadn’t followed.
The balcony was small and dirty; popcorn kernels and dust littered the floor, and the chairs were scratched and wobbly. Still, Ethan took a seat, clenching his hands into fists in his lap and staring straight ahead as the lights dimmed and the movie began. He imagined Juniper in her seat in the middle row, glancing back up at the balcony occasionally, struggling to make him out in the low light. He didn’t try to look for her.
Usually, Ethan loved the movies. He would sit, riveted, taking in every last detail that passed across the big screen. But today, though his eyes never left the screen, he couldn’t seem to follow a single scene. He heard sparse laughter from the audience as if through a wall, and the animated images passed right through his mind. All he could think about was the scene he’d caused, the way the man had dismissed him like a misbehaved child.
It was this, and not the film, that was playing itself in his head when the door to the balcony creaked open and quiet footsteps approached his chair. “Hey,” Juniper whispered, pulling over the seat beside him. “This seat taken?”
Ethan shook his head and she sat. She held out the bag of popcorn and he silently took a handful. Maybe it was just the silence of the theater, but she didn’t press him to speak, didn’t say anything else at all. She just sat beside him, holding the popcorn bag within his reach, and stared ahead at the movie screen until it went dark.
Sixteen
Juniper didn’t say anything until they’d left the theater and walked a block down the street. It was nearly six now, the sun lower in the sky but hot as ever. The streets had emptied since the afternoon, and only a few cars passed as Ethan and Juniper walked.
Finally, at a corner, Juniper stopped. “That was horrible,” she announced, turning to face Ethan. “Absolutely horrible.”
Ethan shrugged. “It’s really not a big deal, Juniper.”
“It is a big deal,” she said. “You’re a person, and you couldn’t do a normal person thing like see a movie with your friend because what? You don’t look like them?”
Her voice was rising now and she paced in a circle on the street corner. Sweat beaded on her nose. Ethan took a step back, worried again that her volume would attract attention. “June, please. I don’t want to talk about it.”
She whirled to face him suddenly, eyes flashing. “Well, why not?” she demanded. “Bad things happen and you say you don’t want to talk about them, so you just sit there and be miserable about it?”
“What else do you expect me to do?”
“Scream!” she shouted. “Throw things! I don’t know, Ethan—be angry. There’s plenty of reason for it.”
Ethan closed his eyes, taking a long breath. He was angry. He had been for as long as he’d been in Alabama, maybe even longer. But he kept the anger locked away in the space between his ribs; held it there tight. He was afraid to see what it would look like if he let it out.
When he opened his eyes again, Juniper was silent, standing there on the sidewalk and watching him with tired eyes. “Thing is, I know I don’t get it,” she said. “I’ll never really get it. But we’re about to go see your mom, and she’ll get it. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to tell me you’re angry, but I know you are, deep down somewhere. And I’m just hoping that maybe you’ll think about telling her.”
She was looking at him more earnestly than Ethan had ever seen her, her eyes at once gentle and fierce. He could tell, in that single gaze, how much she cared. And he knew that she was right—that however long it had been since they’d seen each other, however infrequently they spoke, his mom would understand.
He sighed. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”
Juniper stepped forward and hugged Ethan so quickly that he was barely sure it had happened. Then she nodded. “No time to waste then,” she said. “Your mom’s expecting us for dinner. Do you have the map?”
They made it to the apartment twenty minutes later, after several wrong turns and a few instances of Juniper being distracted by a baby or a dog. It was an unassuming building, three stories of brick—underwhelming, Ethan thought. It looked like any old person might live here.
“This is it,” Ethan said, staring up at it from the sidewalk. Beside him, Juniper nodded.
“How do you feel?”
“Nervous. Excited. Scared.”
“Sounds about right.” She held out a hand. “Well, I’m here no matter what. Let’s go.”
He took her hand and together they went up the steps to the small porch. There was a doorbell with his mother’s unit printed beneath it: #2. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the button.
It was silent for a few seconds, then quick footsteps approached the door. When it swung open, Ethan found himself facing a girl a bit younger than him. Her dark curls were a halo around her head, and a pair of large, wire-frame glasses balanced on her nose. She took one squinty look at Ethan and ran back inside,
yelling, “Auntie, he’s here!”
Ethan and Juniper looked at each other, then back at the open door. Through it, they could see a set of narrow stairs.
“Well,” Juniper said after a moment. “Should we go inside?”
Just then, a woman appeared at the stairs and hurried down them. She had tight curls pulled into a bun at the base of her neck, heavily lashed eyes, and a crooked smile. Now, with her standing right in front of him, Ethan wondered how he had ever managed to forget her face.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. He hesitated in the doorway and so did she. It was only after a moment that she opened her arms, and after another that he stepped into them. He was taller than her now and he bent to press his face against her shoulder.
“Hi, sweetheart.” She stepped back to look at him, her eyes crinkling. “You’ve really grown.” Her accent was thick and smooth, stretching out every syllable. “And you must be Juniper.”
Juniper stuck out a hand and Ethan’s mother shook it. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “Juniper Jones. Nice to meet you, uh—”
“Ms. Phillips is fine, honey.”
“Then nice to meet you, Ms. Phillips.”
Ethan and Juniper followed Ethan’s mom up one flight of stairs and through an open door to their right. The apartment began with a short hallway that opened up to a living room and kitchen. To the right was another hall where two closed doors faced each other. It was a small space, and crowded with furniture, but tidy. The little girl who had greeted them now sat on the couch, staring owlishly at the grainy television by the window.
“Ethan, this is your cousin, Ramona. Ramona, this is Ethan and his friend Juniper.”
“Cousin?” Ethan echoed.
“Hi,” said Ramona, not looking up.
“My sister’s daughter,” his mom explained. “She’s—how old are you, Mona?”
“Twelve and a half.”
“Twelve and a half,” she repeated. “Right. Well, go ahead, take a seat—dinner’s almost ready.” She gestured to a small dining table in the corner of the kitchen. “How does beef brisket with mashed potatoes and green beans sound to y’all?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Juniper said earnestly, slipping into one of the seats. Ethan sat beside her. Ramona finally turned from the TV set for a moment, scrutinizing Ethan and Juniper before jumping off the couch and pattering off toward one of the bedrooms.
“Mona, dinner in five!”
“I know!” the girl called, already gone.
Ethan’s mom shook her head, returning to a pot on the stove and stirring it a few times. Ethan watched her quietly. He felt a nervous energy from her, much like his own, and thought that maybe she was stirring to avoid an awkward silence.
“I didn’t know I had a cousin,” he said eventually.
Still at the stove, his mother chuckled. “Neither did I, till last year. My older sister had been gone in New York City for over a decade, moved back out of the blue with a husband and child in tow. They live here, too, but both of them work nights, so I watch Mona.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Ethan said. There was a lot he didn’t know about his mother, he realized. He tried to take stock: he knew that she grew up in Montgomery, trained to be a nurse, then moved to Arcadia when she met his dad. Her dad died when she was in high school, and her mom passed when Ethan was only five—he just barely remembered his mom leaving home for a few days to attend the funeral. But with just about everything else, he was left to fill in the blanks. He was young when she left, and their phone calls had been so brief, so infrequent, that he’d never had time to ask. He didn’t even know where to begin.
“Two,” she corrected. “A younger one, too, living out in Mississippi.” He tried to imagine two more women with his mother’s pointed chin and crooked smile.
For a moment, watching his mother open the oven and pull out a pan of green beans, he caught a glimpse of what life might have been like if she’d never gone away. He would sit at the kitchen table in the morning before school, chatting with her as she made breakfast and the twins chased each other through the house. She would ask him about his friends, his current favorite record, and she would share her own in turn. There would be nothing they didn’t know about each other. She would send him off to the bus with a packed lunch and a kiss on the nose.
The image faded. Here he was again, in this cramped kitchen, waiting for a dinner cooked by someone he hadn’t spent real time with in years. Juniper sat behind him, eagerly inhaling the smells. When Ethan’s mother placed the dishes in the center of the table, Juniper grinned.
“Thanks so much, Ms. Phillips,” she said. “This looks delicious.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Oh, my pleasure.” Leaning toward the living room, she called, “Mona, dinner!” and there was the sound of a door creaking, followed by footsteps. Mona rocketed around the corner and all but leapt into a seat. Ethan’s mom took the fourth chair and began dishing the food onto each of their plates.
Ethan moved slowly—while Juniper rushed to shovel brisket into her mouth, he had hardly reached for his knife. His mother busied herself with Ramona’s plate, but he could feel her watching him out of the corner of her eye.
“So, Juniper, how did you and Ethan meet?” she asked, cutting into her own food.
Juniper swallowed a hefty bite of mashed potatoes. “Ethan’s been working at the malt shop, and I love root beer floats. I went in one day for a float and saw Ethan working there and decided right then and there that we were going to be best friends. See, I had this plan for a whole invincible summer, but of course I couldn’t do it all by myself. And who better, I thought, than my new best friend?”
“I see.” Ethan’s mom smiled slightly. “Now, I haven’t been to Ellison in—oh, two decades, almost. But I can’t imagine many other folks in town feel the way you do.”
“No, I wouldn’t say so.” For a moment, Juniper’s face grew somber, but she quickly brightened. “It’s all right, though, Ms. Phillips, because I’m looking out for him. I protect him against all the bullies in town.”
Ethan rolled his eyes, taking a bite of his food. His mother, though, straightened. “People are bothering you, Ethan?”
“It’s fine, Mom. Really.”
Juniper scoffed, her mouth full. “Fine? Ethan, you don’t have to pretend.” She gave him the same imploring look as she had on the street corner.
“Okay,” he said, looking down at his plate. “It’s not fine. At all.”
“I see,” his mother said again, and that was all. After a beat of silence, she changed the subject, asking about what had been on their list for an invincible summer, telling them about a painting Ramona had made that week—filling the space with inconsequential chatter. Ethan was grateful for the interlude. He let Juniper do most of the talking and focused on eating his food, one bite at a time. For a little while, he let himself tuck the movie theater and the bathrooms away in his mind. He thought only about the meal in front of him and his mother across from him.
By the time their plates were empty, Juniper had, in predictably hilarious fashion, laid out their entire summer plan in great detail and described each of her favorite places in Ellison at least twice over. She even got Ramona to laugh a few times.
“Ramona,” Ethan’s mom said, after the plates were cleared and the table wiped down. “Weren’t you saying you were a little stuck on the new puzzle you’ve been doing?”
Ramona nodded. “It’s a picture of a big train.”
“Juniper, you said you’re an artist—I’ll bet you have a great eye for puzzles. Why don’t you go see if you can help her?”
Noting the gravity in Ethan’s mother’s voice, Juniper paused for a moment. She glanced quickly at Ethan, who immediately felt panic well in his chest—he realized now that as angry as he was, and as much as he wanted to express that, he was also scared
. It felt as though if he told his mother everything, it would all be real, once and for all.
“Of course,” Juniper said belatedly, standing up from the table. “I’ll bet that puzzle is no match for a Ramona and Juniper duo.” She gave Ethan an encouraging nod as she passed him, following Ramona through the living room and down the hall. A moment later, he heard a door close gently.
“Ethan,” his mother said. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard his name said so tenderly. He looked down at his hands, pressed flat against the table.
“I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it,” he said hoarsely, though part of him wanted nothing more than to let the words spill out.
“Okay,” she said gently. “You don’t have to talk right now. I will.” She reached across the table and placed her hands over his. “I spoke to your father. Right after you called, in fact—I was so furious that I called him without thinking.”
She laughed a little, and Ethan struggled to imagine his talking parents on the phone—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard them have a conversation.
“What did he say?” he asked.
“Everything there was to say, I guess. He told me about the fight, the suspension, the plan to send you to Ellison—all of it.” She sighed. “And I just kept wondering, what were you thinking?”
“Mom, it wasn’t my fault. Samuel Hill said—”
“No, honey, not you.” She smiled. “Your father. I asked him what he was thinking, sending you there. He said he thought it would teach you a lesson. For all that that man cares—and he cares deeply—he never learned what it means to raise a black child.”
Ethan blinked. “You’re not mad at me? For punching Sam?”
His mother laughed. “I remember Sam from your kindergarten class. He was always nasty, even then. I wouldn’t be surprised if he said something that deserved a fist in the nose. And while I don’t love the idea of you getting into fights,” she went on, raising an eyebrow, “sometimes you need to be angry. A lot of the time, these days, you need to be angry.”
The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones Page 17