Juniper Lemon's Happiness Index

by Julie Israel

  It dawns on me that until just a moment ago, Brand didn’t know what 65 said or why Nate kept it, either. That maybe he had thought Nate had some kind of crush on me.

  I smile a little despite myself.

  I tell him what Nate told me: about the party and Aaron; that he felt Camie’s blood was on his hands; how, when he found my card, Nate saw a way to atone by helping me grieve for her.

  Brand studies me. “You’re not—mad at him.”

  “Mad?”

  How could I be mad? I understand perfectly the need to make up for a thing you can never fix. Nate couldn’t know what would happen when he told Aaron to get lost. He’s only human. And as much as the guilt-worn hole in my heart disagrees, so am I.

  “No,” I manage.

  “Are you . . . mad at me? For not telling you he had it before?” Brand nods at 65. “I saw it in the book you dropped way back at the Club Fair. I didn’t know what it was then, but—”

  “Wait—you saw Nate pick it up?”

  Nod.

  “And you never said anything until just now?”

  His eyes move away.

  “Jerkface!”

  I shove him, only half in jest. Brand grins a little, apologetically, and I’m not sorry.

  I’ve missed that damn smirk of his.

  “Why the hell not?”

  The smile vanishes. Brand’s lips press in as if concealing a secret.

  “What?” I demand.

  He makes a pained face. “It’s cheesy as fuck.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I . . .” With an exhale, Brand roughs up the back of his hair. “I wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

  “Y—?” Now I feel my face change: screwing up in disbelief.

  Did I intimidate Brand Sayers?

  “Why?”

  “Tell me you wouldn’t be intrigued by some sexy rebel who climbed up on your stage and outsang you at a gig.”

  “And you couldn’t have asked me out like a normal person.”

  “Well, when? You’re a junior, I’m a senior—it’s not like we had classes together. When you said you’d lost your card, I saw an opportunity, and . . .” He lifts his shoulders. “Okay, yeah. I milked it.”

  “And after? When I wasn’t looking?”

  “I couldn’t tell you after. Then you’d know I’d been holding out on you.”

  “So?”

  “So you’d be pissed! You’d have stopped talking to me.”

  “Would I? You know, I seem to recall someone lecturing me about assumptions that concern other people. Something like ‘You Can’t Go Around Assuming—’”

  Brand holds up his hands. “All right, all right.” He looks behind him, finds the table and sits on it like he’s just run a marathon. “You got me.”

  I watch him exhale and kick his feet in the air. After a moment, I sit down beside him.

  “Why were you so adamant about me not helping other people? Kody was fine, but then with Angela and Sponge—”

  “Sponge is gay,” Brand reminds me. “He didn’t need your matchmaking services.”

  I feel my mouth make an O. “You knew.”

  Brand’s nostrils flare in defense—but then he just looks down and nods.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Same reason I didn’t want you matchmaking for Angela: ’cause you were starting to make a habit of ‘helping’ people when you learned their secrets, and what if I was next on your radar? I didn’t want you ‘fixing’ my problems. I figured if you saw your efforts crash and burn once—”

  “I wouldn’t go crying to social services when I saw that your dad had hurt you?”

  Brand grimaces. “Yeah.”

  For a moment we both stare ahead in silence.

  “I’m not sorry somebody did,” I say quietly.

  “I know.” I feel Brand look at me, so I cautiously lift my eyes back to his. “And I also know it wasn’t you now, so I’m sorry for taking it out on you.”

  “Who did?”

  “Keegan’s mom.”

  “Keegan’s mom? Did—aren’t you staying with them?”

  “Yeah, but it’s only temporary.” He closes his mouth and shoves his hands in his pockets. “My . . . aunt wants me to live with her in Washington. I’ll be moving at the end of spring break.”

  Even though we haven’t been talking, this news guts me like a hook.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Me too.”

  Brand nests his hands more deeply in his jacket, looks around him.

  “How is the, uh”—he gestures generally at the walls and clotheslines, both crowded with Camie and Bristol miscellany—“project coming?”

  I blow out a sigh. “Same old, same old. I’ve grouped things and ordered them more, but still no clue what I’ll do with it all. Maybe I just like having something to work on.”

  Especially when some tasks seem forever out of reach.

  “I’m guessing you haven’t made any progress with YOU,” Brand says as though he’s read my thoughts.

  “No. But . . .” I gaze at 65 and think of Nate, of his anguish at the cemetery. “I think Camie wouldn’t’ve wanted me to torment myself over something beyond my control, either. If I can’t find YOU, I can’t deliver her letter to him—end of story. She’d understand.”

  Brand frowns, but he doesn’t disagree. “And uh . . .” He licks his lips and raises his pale china eyes to mine. “Are you okay?”

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah. What I did at the dance.” His gaze shies away a moment. “That was pretty fucking douchey. In fact, it was award-winningly, record-settingly douchey.”

  I raise a brow. “Is this an apology?”

  “Would you forgive me if it was?”

  Is it wrong that I enjoy seeing him squirm a little?

  “Maybe.”

  Brand stands and pulls me to my feet, leveling with me, and leans in close the way he used to when he wanted to end an argument with a kiss. This time I’m assuming it’s to apologize. But what he says is, “I also heard you punched Morgan Malloy in the face.”

  He grins.

  And then, I can’t help it—I grin, too. “Three days of ISS and detention.”

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think I’d been a bad influence on you.”

  The light in his eyes is contagious.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” he adds as he leans, but doesn’t sit, against the table edge. “But why’d you do it?”

  It takes me a moment to remember we are talking about Morgan. When I do, I tell him about her distaste for Camie and her plans for the yearbook dedication.

  He shakes his head. “Disgusting. Spiting you in private is one thing, but doing it in public, where everyone will see—”

  “What?” I interrupt. Brand freezes mid-sentence, startled by my sudden raptness. “What did you just say?”

  Everyone will see it.

  “I said—”

  He stops talking because I am kissing him on the mouth. I feel him go rigid, then reanimate, then kiss back.

  When we part he holds my face in his hands.

  “What was that for?” he asks, gaze dizzy between my eyes and lips.

  I tell him, “I know how to deliver the letter.”

  - 249 -

  The next day I send a group text to Kody, Angela, Brand, Nate, and Sponge. Not everyone is receptive to it, but when Angela joins those who are in the computer lab of the public library that afternoon, I feel lighter than I have in weeks.

  I drop what I am working on to embrace her by the door. She lets me, and then even hugs me back.

  “I’m so sorry, Angela. I shouldn’t have lied to you. It was manipulative, and idiotic, and—”

  “In the past.” Angela smi
les and pats my arm. “Besides, it wasn’t all bad. I mean, I met some new people”—Brand, Nate, and Sponge are all here and she waves at them in greeting—“and I did get to see the da Vinci exhibit for free.”

  I laugh. It feels good to laugh with Angela again.

  “So what do you need me to do?”

  I show her over to our station, the boxes of pictures and Camie’s postcards heaped on the tables. A separate folder contains a batch of fresh Camilla Was Here prints.

  When everyone is up to speed, we hit the machines, scanning and making copies. I’m pretty pleased with the whole operation, and it fills my heart to the brim to be among friends again, but as the minutes pass and we work our way through album after album, folder after folder, and Sponge jumps on his computer to start preparing the print order, I can’t shake the feeling that an essential part is lacking—and might be lost forever.

  “Hey.” I peer around a scanner bed to question Angela. “Do you know if Kody is coming? She never answered any of my texts.”

  Angela frowns. “She’s been pretty quiet since the Shaker. I’m not sure if—”

  But Angela stops talking then.

  Because that’s when the door of the computer lab creaks open again, and Kody herself passes through it.

  She watches me stone-faced, unreadable. I cross the room to meet her slowly, decide it would be pushing my luck to try a hug.

  After a long silence, she says, “That was a really shitty thing you did, Juniper.”

  My eyes find the dusty blue carpet. “I know.”

  Kody says nothing.

  “I . . . I never meant to hurt you, Kody.”

  “Yeah, well—you did.”

  The room holds its breath.

  “I trusted you. You let me think you were my friend, and all I ever was to you was—was some pity project or good deed.”

  “Kody, you have to know that isn’t—”

  “I believed in you,” she says louder, over me, and I feel like crawling under one of the tables and pulling in the chair. “I believed in the girl who stood up for me and told Morgan off and borrowed my books and sat with me at lunch and told me things about her sister she never told anyone else. And you know what?”

  I shut my eyes, waiting for the coup de grâce.

  “I want to believe in her again.”

  I crack a lid open. Kody holds out her hand.

  “What do you say we start over?”

  I stare at her open palm, at her. Then, because my throat tenses and I can’t choke an answer out, I nod and take it. Half frowning, half smiling, Kody says “Aw, screw it,” and pulls me into a watery hug.

  I squeeze back.

  - 254 -

  Our library group meets every afternoon for six days, and on Sunday we sneak into the school using one of Brand’s keys to set up.

  Monday morning, our efforts go live.

  ∞

  “You have to see this.”

  The first half of the school day is like any other, but at lunch I find Nate and Kody waiting for me.

  “Now?” I ask them. “But we have lit next period. Wouldn’t it be less conspicuous to wait till then?”

  “Trust me,” says Kody. “No one will be looking at us.”

  With a rush, I follow them toward 3 Hall. Did it work? Did YOU see it? Hope against hope—did he return the message somehow??

  As we approach, the noise level increases. At first I just think it’s the lunch crowd, but the closer we get, the louder the chatter, and when we finally emerge into 3 Hall it is swarming with people.

  “Whoa.”

  I feel myself step back. I knew it would be transformed; my friends and I spent the better part of yesterday wallpapering the wing from floor to ceiling, north end to south, with Camilla Was Here prints, printed pictures, and souvenirs from home or one of countless Places She Was: ticket stubs and fliers and train maps; stamp cards and coffee cups and quarter machine prizes; photo strips and game tokens and art show cards. Sometimes themes crop together: Cam’s guitar tabs with album art, pictures of her playing, sheets of lyrics she wrote herself and backstage passes; book jackets with reading lists and makeshift bookmarks; travel trinkets, postcards, shots of Bristol and groups abroad beneath the banner of flags from International Club.

  We made my project into a real exhibit:

  The Camilla Lemon Gallery.

  What I don’t expect is the crowd vying for space before the central bulletin board, which we cleared completely to display two things:

  a row of my post-Camilla observations: People Caught Staring, “Holes,” “Falling,” the reading response comparing myself to Billy Pilgrim and Miss Havisham, New Units of Time, Instructions for Remembering Your Sister, my Places She Was list, the bullet portraits of Thanksgiving and Christmas, “Reminders,” and:

  the Secret Board—to which we have added Camie’s letter to YOU.

  I’m even more speechless to realize that the onlookers aren’t just viewing the bulletin board; they’re adding to it. Post-It notes, index cards, all manner of torn bits of paper.

  “What are those?” I ask Kody.

  “Secrets,” she replies, giddy. “Someone tacked up a pen on a string last period and people have been adding their own ever since!”

  My pulse quickens. What if one of those scraps is from YOU?

  “Juniper.” Nate, who’s been standing off to the side, touches my arm. “Isn’t that one of your horses?”

  I follow his gaze to a photo on the wall. Nate’s right: The Dala horse it features isn’t Bristol, but one of my many message attempts to reach YOU. I recognize the desk I left it on at the Fairfield Library.

  But I don’t remember taking the picture . . .

  “And this one.” He moves another photo.

  The keychain at Pippa’s.

  I walk over to it, too. The picture’s held there by a blue strip of craft tape. When I lift it off the wall and check the back, I see the trademark black square of a Polaroid.

  But I don’t expect the script that says on it, in white:

  Camilla, your smile was sweeter than your favorite orange cinnamon roll. We miss you here.

  Pippa

  I check the library picture. The square on back is covered in neon—signatures along with messages like “I remember when you used to turn in books with thank-you notes to librarians ” and “It was such a joy to watch you fly through Harry Potter!”

  How is this possible?

  “And there’s Grimaudi’s,” Nate continues. “And the music shop. And—”

  Suddenly I’m seeing Not Bristols everywhere, photos easily distinguished by blue tape. There must be dozens of them.

  I check a third. A fourth. Then three more.

  All of them have messages to Camilla.

  I raise a hand to my mouth.

  “Did you tell them we were doing this?” Nate must mean the community members whose handwriting fills the backs of picture after picture in milk pen.

  “No.” I sniff and quickly wipe my eyes. “Did you?”

  Nate shakes his head. When we look at Kody, she just shrugs.

  “Then who—”

  That’s when I realize:

  All of the new pictures are Polaroids.

  And the one person I know with a vintage Polaroid camera is—

  “Lauren.”

  Like magic, when I say her name, I see her across the way: by the trophy cases, taping up another photo. She must have cut class all morning to put them up.

  When she spots me, Lauren holds up a hand and gives a small, timid smile. I can’t help it.

  I actually cry.

  “Uh-oh. Principal Wu’s coming.”

  A slim, incisive woman in a sharp suit and Nikes is cutting through the crowd like a shark out for blood. She spies a few teachers w
ho’ve left their rooms to see what all the fuss is about—Ms. Gilbert and Mr. Bodily among them—and powers over to question them. I take a sobby breath and quickly mop my tears so that I can accept my punishment with dignity. It has to be clear, after all, that I’m the one behind this project—and even if it isn’t, Ms. Gilbert can link the Secret Board to me. Really, we planned it that way, so that when consequences came, I’d be the one to absorb them.

  Knowing the end is near, I move through the crowd (which Wu and some of the teachers are now breaking up at her direction) to scan some of the notes that have been added to the central bulletin board.

  Just before I’m close enough to read, a hand falls on my shoulder.

  “Juniper?”

  It’s Mom.

  “What’s going on? I got a call from—”

  But Mom breaks off. Having come through the visitor’s entrance, she is only now seeing the walls: the Camie artifacts and Dala horses everywhere. Her mouth opens. She wanders forward in awe, taking everything in.

  Her eyes fall on the Secret Board.

  “Ms. Lemon.”

  Mom and I both jump. Principal Wu is stalking up to me, but notices Mom and shifts her focus.

  “Excuse me,” she says. “Are you Juniper’s mother?”

  “Yes,” Mom returns. But she’s still entranced. Her eyes are glued to the bulletin board, and instead of turning to face Principal Wu, Mom pushes closer to it.

  She stops in front of 65 and reads.

  65

  Happiness: 0

  A few days before the accident, I told her I wished she wasn’t my sister.

  My wish came true.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Wu is saying. “Now, if you’ll follow me to my office, we can discuss the appropriate disciplinary con—”

  But Mom isn’t listening. She says, “Oh, Juniper,” and flings her arms around me with an eagerness, a need, a desperate warmth she hasn’t shown me the last two hundred and fifty-four days—and cries into my shoulder.

  Things Unsaid

  Six nights before the accident, at just past three in the morning, Camie snuck into the house in tears.