Juniper Lemon's Happiness Index

by Julie Israel

  Even though I looked up the lines from the falls, found the e. e. cummings poem they belong to, and matched the handwriting on the bridge to the one in the yearbook—what does it mean? (What are we going to do?) All I have to go on, as ever, is “You” and “Me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Cam? Even if it was someone younger, a girl, I don’t care—couldn’t you tell me? I’m your sister!” I realize I am wringing fistfuls of grass but I don’t let go; I dig tighter, clinging to their physical texture, angry that something so wispy is all I have to hold on to.

  I stand and grip my head in my hands, walk away; snarl and pace back and kick at one of the flower arrangements. The vase topples over, taking another two with it.

  I accuse, through the tears, “Didn’t I keep your secrets? Didn’t you trust me? Didn’t you know I would love you no matter w—”

  That’s when I see it: a scrap of paper sticking out from one of the spilled arrangements.

  White lilies.

  Not the ones that I brought.

  I stoop, pick the scrap from a mess of petals and stems, unfold it in a tangle of fingers and read:

  C,

  I will carry You always.

  Love,

  Me

  Reminders

  What matters:

  Camilla and YOU loved each other. A lot.

  YOU still cares about her.

  What doesn’t:

  Not delivering the letter

  My own disappointment at not being able to deliver the letter

  Not knowing who YOU is

  That I just missed him—again

  That YOU has been around town, in all likelihood seen my Message horses, and chosen not to contact me

  That I can never be sure

  - 247 -

  Around noon two days later, I’m walking through 3 Hall for the art studio, where I’ve been taking refuge during lunches since the Shaker, when I pass Morgan Malloy putting something up on a bulletin board—the same where Nate and I found Cam’s memorial notice back in September, and where I have since added a Camilla Was Here print. Morgan’s flier, something about Yearbook, is perilously close to the red ink Dala horse I’ve worked hard to keep visible—so I keep my head down and say nothing, figuring that if she doesn’t see me, she can’t raise a squawk about it.

  But she notices me, anyway.

  “Hey,” Morgan says once I’ve passed her. I don’t turn around. “This board is for school announcements and activities. You know—things that concern the living?”

  There is a loud paper rip.

  I turn to see the Camilla print in her hand, torn. She didn’t even bother to take the tack out—just pulled it off.

  “Oh.” Morgan frowns in mock pity from me to the split paper. “But if you’re worried about honoring your holier-than-thou half, Juni, don’t be. Principal Wu wants a line in the yearbook, so I was thinking a nice footnote: in loving memory of—”

  But that’s as far as she gets.

  Because that is when I storm back and deck her.

  ∞

  After school, I’m shipped directly from in-school suspension to detention. For once Brand is absent; it’s just me, Mrs. Davies, and the Amazing Power Snore.

  And at five minutes and seventeen seconds past the time the bell rings, when Mrs. Davies again transforms into a roaring slumberjack, I slip from the room undetected.

  I am restless. I’m on edge. I’ve been pent-up, angry, brooding in chairs since lunch, and now that I am on my feet and prowling the halls I feel unstoppable: both powerful and powerless to stop the chaos crashing through me.

  My phone buzzes. Nate again.

  I rip the battery out and smother it inside my backpack.

  They say grief comes in stages: Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. And lastly, if you follow that model, Acceptance. This has not been my experience at all. Yes, there have been episodes, even periods of each, but the “stages” don’t present themselves in any order. They are not chronological like the days of the week; they cannot be quantified and arranged like teaspoons from smallest to largest. For me it’s been more like cards, a trick game Camie used to play when we were little: Smoke or Fire. In it, the “dealer” holds up a deck at an unsuspecting player and tells them to call out the suit of each card they display, “smoke” for black and “fire” for red—except, on the first “fire,” the dealer launches the deck at them.

  Grief is like that: One minute you think you know the rules and it’s one card, one emotion at a time; the next, the deck explodes all around you.

  Boom.

  Now I realize one can’t really trash what is, by definition, trash to begin with. But sometimes you just need to destroy things.

  So I storm to the dumpsters. And there, without the safety of my gloves or rubber boots, I throw one open and hit OBLITERATE.

  I thrash and I tear and I kick and I hurl and I bludgeon. Some of the sacks aren’t tied very well and spill their guts across the concrete, spewing food and wrappers and sprays of unidentified liquids. I punt the items that drop out: Good-bye, half-eaten Hot Pocket. So long, fugly poster board. Au revoir, shitty crapsack of essays.

  Finally, exhausted and bespattered with what I think are ketchup and Mountain Dew, I scream and pound a flurry of punches straight into the dumpster. At first I don’t even feel it. Then the backs of my fingers sting. Then they numb again.

  ∞

  When I get home Dad does not ask me “What’s the score?” “When’s the parade?” or “How many cookies with dinner?” He says, “Your vice principal called.”

  Me: (freezing guiltily halfway up the stairs) “Uh, what?”

  Dad: “I spoke with Mr. Rosen about an hour ago. He tells me you’ve received both in-school suspension and detention today for attacking another student.”

  Me: “Does he.”

  Dad: “Says you gave a senior a bloody nose. That it’s the second time you’ve attacked this girl this year.”

  Me: “Strawberry milk is not—oh. I guess there was some tackling.”

  Dad: “And that one more outburst like that could result in your suspension for the rest of the semester.”

  That wipes any cleverness from my face.

  Dad says, “You want to tell me what’s going on here, Juniper?”

  I turn to face him.

  It’s the first time I’ve looked Dad full in the face in weeks. I am surprised to see the unkempt state of his hair, how gray it suddenly looks, the white salted in with a few days’ stubble. His eyes are strained, foreign somehow.

  “Are you mad?”

  He considers me a measure. After a few restless, circling paces, he sighs and haggardly sits at the bottom of the stairs. I hesitate, then join him. He gives me a small smile.

  “To be honest, Juniper . . .” His tired eyes search mine. “I’m actually a little relieved.”

  Relieved?

  “You’ve excelled in all of your classes this year, done a tremendous amount of work with Booster, and stayed after school more often than not for those activities. You’ve been working yourself to the ground.”

  “So?”

  “So your mother and I—Juni, I know we haven’t been good at communicating lately, but we’re both concerned about you.”

  I blink at him. “You are?”

  He nods. “I know you and Camilla weren’t . . . on great terms at the time of the accident. And I admire that you’ve done so much for those around you since then—I’m proud of your club work and volunteering. But . . . you can’t just throw yourself at causes in the hopes that they’ll make up for something you can’t fix. It isn’t fair. If you hold yourself to a standard you can never attain, what can the pressure do but build until you blow a gasket? I’m just glad you didn’t hurt yourself or suffer some kind of breakdown.”


  No need to mention the Ceramic Rampage.

  Or my little trashcapade this afternoon.

  I bite my lip. “About my long club hours . . .”

  “I know, Juniper.”

  “You do?”

  Dad’s smile, though worn, is not without warmth. “As textbook as it sounds, and as sick as you probably are of hearing it, we really are all dealing with your sister’s death in different ways—and yes, sometimes we butt heads about it, but we’re all still adjusting and need to respect one another’s needs. I understand if you prefer to spend time away from home right now.”

  “Dad . . .”

  Smoke or fire.

  The cards erupt in my chest: gratitude, guilt, remorse. A sense of hope that even though things are broken right now, even though they can never be whole again, maybe they can be okay.

  I sink into his arms, find him waiting. Tears fall before I even feel them.

  “I’m sorry,” I squeeze out.

  “You don’t have to be.”

  Dad cradles me, quieting, and when we part he plants a kiss on my forehead.

  Then, with a sniff-sniff and a double take: “Is that Sriracha in your hair?”

  ∞

  A long shower and a change of clothes later I am back, parking in the gravel lot of Oak Hills Cemetery. I need a place to unwind, to settle, to think. There’s nothing I can do about Morgan’s dedication—but I guess it won’t do any harm to Camie’s memory, and it may even do some good. What I need to figure out now is what I can still do for Cam.

  If anything.

  As I’m starting up the path through the headstones, my phone buzzes in my pocket.

  Nate.

  I push IGNORE and turn my phone off.

  When I get to Camilla’s grave, I see that the flowers from her birthday are already turning. Some, I realize—a few singles that were left without water—have actually been removed. For some reason, this infuriates me. It’s like Camilla’s been robbed of something (again). And how devastating, how miserably lonesome is it to think how few days a year, in the years to come, my sister will be visited and graced with any tribute at all. I feel suddenly like a jerk for not bringing something myself today, not even picking any of the wildflowers on my way up for her.

  I think, not for the first time: She didn’t deserve this.

  She didn’t fucking deserve this.

  “Juniper?”

  I halt cold. That sounded like—

  “Nate?”

  I whip around and find him standing on the path behind me. He is holding his hands together, gripping something. Nervous.

  He steps toward me. “Your dad said I’d find you here.”

  His hands come apart.

  In one of them is 65.

  ∞

  My whole body goes leaden.

  “Brand said you knew something,” I whisper. “I didn’t want to believe him.”

  “Brand was right.”

  Nate stops in front of me and holds out the card. I reach for it with trembling hands.

  “You had it?” Despite my granite body, I feel fainter than a breath of fog.

  Nate nods.

  “How? When?”

  He draws a breath through his nose. “The Club Fair,” he says. “When we bumped into each other, we—”

  “Switched copies of Great Expectations. Oh my god.”

  I see it again: the mess of books, some of them not mine; “wintergreen” on a box of Tic Tacs; picking it up before I’d finished stacking everything; Brand popping balloons, jeering—

  I picked up the wrong book.

  “You’ve had this since the beginning of the year?”

  Nod.

  “You read it?”

  Wince.

  Of course he did.

  “Why . . .” The questions are bubbling up faster than I can ask them. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  Nate inhales sharply. “I tried, but—Juniper, it’s . . .”

  “Try me.”

  He slips his hands into his pockets.

  “I—” With a shaky exhale, he looks away from me. “I wanted you to like me.”

  My pulse redoubles. All my former theories swarm my head: that Nate is YOU; that he isn’t YOU but has some kind of crush on me; that Nate has withheld and been hiding something all along.

  I wait for elaboration.

  “I wanted you . . . to forgive me.”

  I turn my head. This I wasn’t expecting.

  “Forgive you?” A wave of cold engulfs my stomach. “For what?”

  He braces his lips together. A now or never kind of look.

  “Remember . . . when we were baking at your house?”

  Nod.

  “Remember . . . how your mom reacted when she heard my name?”

  I knew it, I knew there was something weird about that.

  Nate exhales. “My guess is that she read the obituary.”

  The numbness spreads to my throat. “What obituary?”

  “For Aaron,” says Nate. “Chamberlain.”

  Aaron Chamb—

  The boy in the baking soda.

  The other driver.

  Nate hesitates, then adds, “My stepbrother.”

  My knees waver.

  “Stepbrother.” My lips feel stupid and blue.

  “Yeah.”

  Nate swallows and watches me. He looks concerned, but afraid to comfort me, like I’m too fragile or might regain myself and strike him across the face.

  “Okay.” I flex my hands—not in anger, but to ground and steady myself. “Okay,” I say again. “You’re his stepbrother. But that isn’t your fault, Nate—family’s not something you can control. I wouldn’t hold something like that agains—”

  “You don’t understand. The night it happened, Juniper . . .” He clenches his jaw. “The night it happened, we were having a party. His dad was gone for the Fourth and Aaron said to come, see old friends.

  “Aaron was . . .” Nate looks at the ground. “Could be an animal when it came to parties. He got louder, more animated. Sometimes aggressive. And at this party . . .” A lump moves in his throat.

  “I went upstairs at one point to use the bathroom. It was late, almost two thirty. On my way back, I heard something shatter—it sounded like in his room. I went to investigate and—” His brow contorts. “Aaron was standing over this girl, blocking her mouth with his hand. I yelled at him to stop, and he didn’t, so I rushed him.

  “I was more sober than he was, and after a few swings I pinned him down. The girl grabbed her shirt and ran. I was so furious, I was shaking. I told him to get out, out, I’d call the cops myself if I had to, and I guess he decided I wasn’t bluffing, ’cause he got in his car, and . . .”

  Nate doesn’t finish the sentence. He can’t. He just stares at her grave, at the hollow letters CAMILLA ALEXIS LEMON.

  Slowly he drags his miserable gaze up to me. In it, I see agonies I recognize: the wrench of loss.

  Guilt.

  He chokes out, almost without sound, “I’m sorry.”

  My neck goes hot and my hands shake, whitening as they curl into fists.

  Camilla is dead because of him.

  Because of him.

  Because of him.

  A second truth rips through me like a hurricane:

  And because of me.

  I swing.

  Nate flinches, but the blow doesn’t land—when my fist hits his sternum it is empty, spent, and instead of trying again I fall against him, into his chest.

  Nate’s arms wrap around me and hold tight.

  We both cry.

  - 248 -

  During lunch the next day I go to the art studio. The Secret Board is waiting for me behind the shelf in the loft, an artifact kept
safe in its hiding place. I lay it out on the table and look over its pieces: the weathered Life Savers wrapper; Angela’s letters to Leo and Oscar; Kody’s scribbled-out card; Sponge’s poem to Derrick. A hole in the board, a last vacancy waiting for an occupant, stares out at me the way only something unfinished can.

  In my hand is the returned 65.

  With a brush, I spread glue across its back and affix the Index, a contribution from me and Nate both. And just like that the last gap is patched. I may never have all the cards in my Index again, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’ve completed a thing that means something.

  “You wanted to show me something?”

  My breath catches. I turn to find Brand in the doorway, one foot in, one out, tentative like he isn’t sure he’s really welcome. I didn’t think he’d come. When I texted yesterday to tell him that I finally talked to Nate, and wanted to show him something up in the studio sometime, he didn’t answer.

  But here he is.

  “Yeah,” I finally manage. I gesture at the finished project on the table, and with a wary air, he enters.

  “What is this?” He looks the board over. Quickly his eyes fall on the Life Savers wrapper. “Is that—?”

  “I took it.”

  His brow furrows. Instead of demanding why or lashing out, though, Brand just looks over the other pieces, identifying the ones he knows—and then comes to the centerpiece. He might not recognize it, but I can tell by the way his face changes as he reads that he knows it for what it is.

  “This?” he asks, pointing. “This is what had you digging through dumpsters?”

  I nod.

  He looks at 65 again. At me.

  His features soften. “She knew you loved her, Juniper.”

  I know, a part of me answers him, but another demands, How?

  How can you know that?

  When I stare at the floor, he changes the subject. “So you talked to Nate.”

  I swallow the tightness away. “Yeah.”

  “And what was his . . .” Brand shifts weight. “What did he say?”