The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones

by Daven McQueen

  Ethan felt his body tense at the thought of Noah and Alex. “Why not?”

  “Ethan, don’t be a fool. They’re two young white boys from well-known families in town, and their victims were you, a half-Negro boy, and Juniper, the town loony. Even if the case makes it to court, which I doubt it will, they’ll never be convicted. The whole thing will be written off as a terrible accident, and they’ll go free.”

  “Whatever,” Ethan snapped. He turned away from Juniper’s grave and pushed past Abrams. His tears were gone now, replaced by fire. “See you around.”

  “Ethan,” Abrams said, grabbing the boy’s arm as he passed. Ethan glared over his shoulder, hot coals in his eyes. Abrams stared right back.

  “Those pigs won’t ever end up in jail,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve it. And the guilt of what they did will eat them alive until the day they die.”

  They do deserve it, Ethan thought now, pushing himself into a sitting position next to the brook. In his mind, they deserved to rot in prison for the rest of their lives. But in his heart, he knew that Juniper would not have felt the same way.

  I know they’re terrible, she would have said, but I want to believe that they could become better. No one can be all bad, right?

  And Ethan would have shrugged, not agreeing with her but listening as she described, in elaborate fashion, her ten-part plan to fix them.

  Add it to the list, she’d say.

  Ethan shook his head, wishing, as he often had these past few days, that she were here.

  Sighing heavily, he reached for a stone along the bank and skipped in across the brook. He wondered, picking up another stone, where Noah and Alex were. Probably in their houses, waiting for a trial and a guilty verdict that would never come.

  He wondered, too, where Courtney was; he’d been thinking about her. He’d seen her just a few hours before, when he’d visited Juniper’s grave, and he still wasn’t sure why.

  The late-August sun had been high in the sky as Ethan returned to the cemetery. He rode his bike to the church and left it leaning against the front steps. He took the small envelope and watering can from his basket and circled the building to the cemetery.

  When he reached Juniper’s grave, he dropped to his knees beside it and carefully opened the envelope. Soon grass would grow, but for now there was only fertilized soil. It was the perfect time.

  He did it exactly as Juniper had taught him: he dragged his hand through the dirt, making three long rows; he shook the sunflower seeds carefully out of the envelope until they were all gone, then he covered them with dirt; he lifted the watering can and tipped it over, letting a gentle stream of water pour out.

  When he was done, he stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants, and nodded. “There you go, June,” he said. “Soon you’ll have a garden.” He was just turning to go when he saw a girl ascending the slope. His heart raced.

  But squinting against the sun, Ethan realized that it was Courtney, her head bowed and a bouquet of seven pink roses in her fists. She stared down at the flowers and didn’t seem to notice him.

  “Sunflowers,” Ethan said, as she approached. Courtney looked up quickly, a hand rising to her chest; when recognition registered in her eyes, she did not look at all relieved.

  “Sorry?” she squeaked.

  Ethan shook his head, suddenly wishing he hadn’t spoken because now there was an ocean rising in his chest. “Sunflowers,” he repeated softly. “Her favorite flowers are sunflowers.”

  “Oh.” Courtney shifted uncomfortably. “I just grabbed the first ones I saw at the store, so . . .”

  Her light hair, pulled into a bun, left her face bare, and etched into her features Ethan saw only sadness. Her eyes were puffy, her lips were chapped, and red splotches marred her cheeks. As Ethan watched, she moved awkwardly to the grave and laid down all the roses except one. She seemed to be holding back a sob. Perhaps he should have been angry; this grief was not hers to feel. Instead, Ethan felt only pity.

  “She’d love them anyway,” he said, for some reason wanting to ease her anguish. “She loved all flowers.”

  In response, Courtney flashed the slightest smile of gratitude—but it became a frown almost instantly. She opened her mouth to speak, her bottom lip trembling.

  “I talked to Noah and Alex. They didn’t realize—or, well, they didn’t know . . . they thought she could swim,” she finished emptily. “They didn’t mean for her to, well. To die.” She squeaked out the last word like a curse.

  Ethan blinked at her. “That doesn’t change the fact that it happened,” he said. She nodded, agreeing, but didn’t turn to leave.

  There was something else; he could see it in her eyes. She swallowed hard, and he waited.

  “I’m sorry,” she said eventually, though the hollowness of her words made it clear that they were not the ones she wanted to say. “I know it’s not my place, and I know that it will never be enough, but I am. I’m sorry.”

  And before Ethan could respond, she turned and hurried away through the cemetery.

  Perhaps he should have let her go, but something urged him to follow her down the hill and through the gravestones. The cemetery wasn’t large, and it wasn’t long before, from several yards away, Ethan saw Courtney stop at a small grave near the edge of the forest and carefully place the last rose in front of the headstone. Straightening, she glanced quickly left and right and did not seem surprised to find Ethan standing there, watching her. Instead of speaking, she simply let out a breath that it seemed she had been holding for years and hurried away into the trees.

  Once she had gone, Ethan walked slowly to the grave. The stone was small and unevenly cut, not nearly as elaborate as some of the others. The name looked as if it had been etched with a set of keys, and his heart sank for the boy who lay beneath the earth. Courtney’s fresh rose seemed out of place beneath the jagged, familiar letters. Cole Parker.

  He frowned at the grave, wondering why—and wondering, too, if there might be something good inside Courtney, after all.

  Juniper would have loved that. Ethan knew she’d never really hated Courtney. The girl was friends with terrible people, but she’d left flowers for June—and for Cole.

  The thought of them both, two people in Ellison who’d died far too young, made Ethan shake with anger. He hadn’t known Cole, but he knew that the boy hadn’t deserved to die. And Juniper, well, she deserved to live forever.

  Now, in the clearing, Ethan was on his feet and seeing red. He kicked at the grass, leaving a brown smear across his sneakers. He kicked at the water, spraying the bank and himself. And then he screamed. Loudly, angrily, he screamed for Juniper and for Cole and for the girl arrested on the bus and for himself, because none of them deserved the cards they’d been dealt. He emptied his lungs of air and his voice of sound as he stomped blindly around the cove, kicking at the ground. This anger had been building all summer, and now that it was out, he felt like he could tear down the entire forest with his bare hands.

  When the anger at last subsided, Ethan found himself standing in front of the largest hollow, his and Juniper’s hiding place. The home of fairies, like in the very first painting she’d shown him. Choking back a sob, he crawled inside.

  It was dark and cool in here, and Ethan sat cross-legged. If he focused, he could remember what it felt like to sit in here with Juniper, her knees against his, breathing together. As he stared up into the tree’s hollow trunk, the light shifted, sun suddenly coming through a hole in the bark somewhere above him. Immediately, his hiding place was illuminated.

  And all around him, he saw color.

  I have something to show you, she’d said that night. A piece I’ve been working on.

  This must have been what she meant, Ethan realized, craning his neck to take it all in. All around him, painted straight onto the wood, were dozens of images. A redheaded girl drinking
a vanilla milk shake; a dark-skinned boy running through the trees. A movie theater, a jukebox, fireworks. Ethan and Juniper on the lake, on Aunt Cara’s couch, rolling down Alligator Hill.

  She had painted their summer.

  Ethan stared at it all, trying to memorize every single last brushstroke. Tears flowed freely down his face. In the center, right where their bucket list was still taped to the bark, were a few simple words.

  To E. from J. Thank you for everything.

  “She was my best friend,” Ethan had said of Juniper, when his parents asked. Before they’d eaten breakfast that morning, Uncle Robert and Aunt Cara had been out of the room changing Henry and it was just Ethan and his parents. They hadn’t sat around a table like this in years.

  His father asked him, awkwardly, if he was okay. His mother told him, emphatically, that he didn’t need to be. He sensed a fight brewing and looked desperately between.

  “Please don’t,” he said. “Not now.”

  Chastened, his parents looked down at the table. Then, after a moment, his dad said, “Tell us about her.”

  Ethan had opened his mouth to respond, but realized it was an incredibly difficult question. There were so many things he could say about Juniper Jones—that she loved dancing to Elvis, that she had the best green thumb of everyone he’d ever known, that her heart was probably the size of the entire world—but none of them seemed like enough.

  So: “She was my best friend,” he began. He told them about their invincible summer. About meeting her in the malt shop that day, rowing at the lake, climbing the tallest tree in Alabama, planting a garden, going to Montgomery. His mom nodded, tears in her eyes, remembering her brief evening with Juniper. He told them about Juniper’s compassion and patience and kindness; how she stood up for him and cared for him and saw the good in him even when no one else did. And he told them how, with every last fiber in her being, she wanted things to change.

  “She’s the reason,” he had finished. He’d looked at his parents across the table, at the covered breakfast plates between them. “The whole reason I made it through this summer. She showed me that people can be good and there can be hope, even when it hurts.”

  And it was true, he thought now, taking one last look at the painted hollow as the sun moved again and eased him back into darkness. The images were seared into his memory, and would be forever. When he closed his eyes, he saw only color.

  Ethan suddenly realized that he was crying, but for the first time since that night on the lake, he wasn’t consumed by sorrow. He pressed a hand to his lips and his shoulders shook and tears ran down his cheeks, but he was also laughing, because Juniper was here. He felt her presence here, in this tiny cove, in this painted tree trunk, in the forest air. The brook babbled, and in the trickling sound, he swore he heard her laughter.

  “I’ll never stop missing you, Starfish,” he promised, staring up into the hollow. He imagined her in here when the light was just right, painting furiously with a brush in each hand. “Never ever in my whole life.” He was certain that she could hear every word. As an afterthought, he added, softly, “But thank you. This summer really was invincible.”

  Finally, he felt that he could leave. He had bags to load and a floor to sweep and a chicken sandwich to scarf down before he got into his dad’s car for five days of driving. He had good-byes to say to his mom, who’d promised she would visit soon. He had a conversation to stumble through with his father about all the things he didn’t understand about Ethan, and needed to. But he felt like he could do that now.

  And so, with a deep breath, Ethan slipped out of the hollow. He gave it one last glance, seeing Juniper everywhere he looked. And then he ran. Over the brook, through the forest, past the lake, down the path—he ran. When Aunt Cara’s house came into view down the road, he slowed to a stop, resting his hands on his knees. Juniper’s smile burned behind his eyes as he turned and surveyed the cloud of dirt behind him. It lingered in the air for a moment, then, like a sigh, settled gently back down to the earth. All was still.

  June 2015

  In many ways, Ellison, Alabama has changed. The roads are paved, for one thing, and the population has risen to just over seventeen thousand. Downtown has more than one intersection and features both a McDonald’s and a Starbucks. On the lake, a company rents out kayaks and paddleboards to summer tourists—because now there are tourists. Uncle Robert and Aunt Cara’s house is different too: when they died, Ethan’s cousin Henry moved in with his wife, Hannah, and they completely redecorated. Now, there’s a sixty-four inch flat screen and stainless steel kitchen appliances.

  The church, though, is just as Ethan remembers it: small, house shaped, and white, with a clapboard roof and a simple steeple topped with a cross. He arrives at the funeral several minutes late and sits in a pew near the back just as a man steps up to the podium and begins a eulogy. Ethan half listens, all the while keeping his eyes on the closed casket in front of the altar, which is topped by an elaborate flower arrangement and pictures of the deceased. It makes his heart contract. This is not a grand funeral by any means; it seems that most of the attendees are townspeople who hardly knew the man in the casket, and even the pastor looks disinterested. But it is far better than what Juniper had received.

  “You don’t have to go,” were Henry’s first words when he opened his front door and found his cousin standing on the porch, suitcase in hand. “You don’t owe him anything.”

  Ethan replied, “I know.” And smiled. “It’s difficult to explain, but it’s something I need to do.”

  He still feels that now, as the service ends and he rises on shaky legs. A lot was left unfinished sixty years ago. He watches as six men carry the casket down the nave and out the front doors. People begin to spill from the pews to join the procession, but Ethan lingers for a moment, watching them pass. A few do a double take when they see him, surprised even now by the shade of his skin. But then they just look away.

  It’s not that everything is fixed now—not here in Ellison, or at home in Arcadia, or anywhere else in the world. But it’s better in so many ways, and always changing. And the fight that Ethan’s mother instilled in him at her kitchen table all those years ago is the same fight he found in his wife, Eleanor, and the same that they passed down to their children, and then their grandchildren. The revolution is a fire set to burn for generations. Ethan feels this fire even now, as he follows the slow procession and his knees groan in protest. He can hardly believe that once he ran through this town with ease.

  “Gets harder every year, doesn’t it?” someone jokes, and it takes Ethan a moment to realize that the comment is directed at him. He looks up to see a woman with short gray hair and brown eyes set into wrinkled cheeks. She grips the arm of a middle-aged man in one hand and a handkerchief in the other—as Ethan examines her face, she dabs delicately at the corners of her eyes.

  Rather than responding, Ethan tilts his head and frowns curiously at her. “Are you his wife?” he asks.

  “Ex-wife,” she corrects, smiling wryly. “We split up decades ago. This is our son, Robin.” The man, who has his father’s blond hair but not his beady eyes, murmurs a polite greeting.

  “Nice to meet you.” Ethan nods at them both. He continues walking, realizing only when the woman stares at him that he hasn’t explained his own reason for being here. He purses his lips and says, after a pause, “I knew him in high school. I haven’t seen him in sixty years.”

  It is enough of an answer for the woman and her son, and they say nothing more.

  When they reach the grave, Ethan remains at the edge of the crowd and watches silently as the casket is lowered into the earth. There are few tears shed: no woman rushes forward, gasping for breath as her husband is put to rest; no grown children kneel beside the grave and wail a final good-bye to their father. Noah O’Neil’s burial is grossly starved for love.

  And though he has every reason not to, Ethan
feels the slightest bit of pity for this man who, after seventy-seven years of life, was only human enough to earn some halfhearted eulogies and a few bouquets left on his grave. Juniper would have felt sorry for him. But then again, Juniper would have been here if not for him.

  The last scoop of dirt is shoveled onto the grave, and, one by one, the apathetic mourners pay their final respects. Noah’s ex-wife is one of the last people to walk back to the church, and she nods at Ethan as she passes. He remains where he is. Just as he did sixty years ago, he lingers beside the freshly dug grave. And just as she did sixty years ago, a woman passes the stragglers and makes her way toward Ethan. This time, he is expecting her. She is much older now—they both are—but her face is still familiar. There are no pink roses in her hands.

  “Hi, Courtney,” Ethan says. She looks tired; her shoulders slump beneath her black shawl and her gray-brown hair hangs limp around her face. Wire-framed glasses perch on her nose.

  Still, she manages to smile.

  “It’s been a long time,” she says. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  Ethan looks long and hard at the grave, letting himself accept that the monster who killed his best friend is finally gone. “Maybe I shouldn’t have,” he murmurs eventually. “But I think I needed to see this through.”

  Courtney nods. “Yeah. So did I.” She sighs and steps next to Ethan, her eyes on the engraving. “It’s so strange that he’s gone,” she says. “I haven’t seen him in ten years, you know—not since our fiftieth high school reunion—and when I got the invitation to the funeral, I almost wanted to ignore it. But I knew I couldn’t, there’s too much history. And I thought you’d want to know too.” She glances up at him, squinting slightly. “But, like I said, I wasn’t sure you’d come.”