Nick and June Were Here

by Shalanda Stanley

  “What about the time we saw that band in Eudora? What were they called?”

  “Ravaged Melon,” I said. “They were terrible.”

  He agreed. “And all the times we spent in the barn?”

  “And every time you painted on me,” I said. “I remember everything.”

  He nodded, like he was just making sure. He reached for my hands. “Promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “Promise me that this won’t change things. I need to know that you’re still going to college with Bethany, that you’re still doing all the things you’ve planned.”

  I thought about lying. It would be easier, but I couldn’t lie to him on our last day. “I don’t even know if I’m going to college.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I got home from the hospital.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said. He looked mad. “Don’t give up something you’ve always wanted just because you can’t have it the way you wanted.”

  “I’m not giving up. But what if I can’t do it?”

  “What if you can? You’re so much stronger than anybody else I know. If I had to pick one person in my life who could do anything, it would be you. You’ll figure it out, because that’s who you are,” he said.

  The way he looked at me, I couldn’t doubt that he believed what he said. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his bag and unzipped one of the pockets of mine and placed it inside. He didn’t explain.

  I didn’t want to get out of the truck yet. I wanted to tell him that he was it for me. It would always be him. I thought about our names on the roof of the hospital and what I’d carved in the table at that diner.

  Nick touched one of the birds peeking out of the neck of my dress. I’d keep them as long as I could.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “I’m gonna go,” I said. I said it like I wasn’t leaving him forever.

  He nodded and I opened the truck door.

  Do you love him? the little girl asked.

  Yes.

  I stepped down with my bag and turned back to him. I wanted to say something else but I didn’t know what my last words to him should be. So I didn’t say anything, just shut the door and walked away.

  It hurt to breathe. I listened for the sound of the truck’s engine cranking up. I waited for it, walking slower. But it didn’t come. I heard his door open and I turned around.

  What would you do for love? she asked.

  He got out of the truck and walked to me, his movements slow. He should be driving away, not walking toward me with his bag.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What’s right. I think.”

  “What’s that?”

  He took my hand and pulled us toward the police station.

  “No,” I said, planting my feet, stopping us.

  No, the little girl begged.

  He was supposed to be driving away, not turning himself in.

  “You can’t do this,” I said. “This isn’t the right thing. You going to jail isn’t right.”

  He looked down at me and I didn’t know how it had happened, but his eyes had aged ten years since he’d gotten out of the truck. “It’s where I’ve always been heading,” he said.

  He didn’t sound sad, just resolved.

  “No.”

  Even if he was right, if what he was doing was right, it felt worse to lose him this way.

  “June.” He looked away, like he was trying to pick the words that would make me understand. “John is right. He’s always right. So was Hank. This is how I make it right, with both of them, and for myself.”

  He smiled, and tears stung my eyes.

  “We both have places to be,” he said. “You’ll go to college. I’ll go to prison. It was what was always going to happen.”

  He pulled me toward the door and this time I didn’t resist. We walked the rest of the way to the entrance of the police station. He opened the door. “Meet up after?”

  The front room in the station was small and there was a woman sitting behind a desk. She looked like our school secretary.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  We didn’t say anything, just held our breath, waiting for her to recognize us and jump into action.

  She didn’t, though.

  “I’m Nick Hawthorne,” Nick said. “And this is June Daniels.”

  Her eyes flickered with recognition then. She’d heard our names before. A couple of police officers who were behind the desk had, too, because they stopped what they were doing and faced us. All of the air got sucked out of the room.

  “Take one step back from the desk,” she said.

  We stepped back.

  “Drop your bags.”

  We dropped them at our feet.

  The police officers moved toward us, their movements measured.

  “Don’t move,” one said.

  Nick didn’t listen, though. Leaning down, he whispered, “Tell me something new.”

  He asked me all the time to tell him something he didn’t already know about me.

  The two cops were still coming toward us, but I had eyes only for Nick. He still waited for my answer.

  What does love mean to you? the little girl asked.

  She didn’t scare me anymore, because I knew what love meant.

  “It’ll always be you,” I said.

  He looked so sad, but there was a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

  They reached us and grabbed Nick, pulling him away from me, and I couldn’t breathe. My heart tried to beat out of my chest. The little girl was crying now. She loved him, too.

  “It’s okay, June,” Nick said.

  But it wasn’t.

  They pulled him farther away. There was a woman I hadn’t noticed before standing next to me, and I felt like I had that night in Leanne Smith’s bathroom, like I was dying, like I was going to come out of my skin.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  But I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I could only watch them lead him away. My eyes burned.

  I noted the tilt of his head and the slope of his neck, how his shoulder blades moved in his back with each step. I watched so closely. I’d be able to draw it later, what he looked like walking away from me.

  I thought of all the faces of Nick that I’d known, his little-boy face, his car-thief face, his angry face, his I-love-you face. Now he would have a prison face.

  They opened a door and led him into another room. I watched, even after the door closed.

  What would you do for love? the little girl asked again. She still cried.

  “Anything,” I told her.

  The first time I sat next to Nick at school, we were in the fifth grade. Our teacher, Mrs. Carson, put us together because we were going to be partners on a project. I’d never been that close to him before. He’d drawn on his arm with a pen, intricate designs running from his elbow to his wrist.

  I leaned in to get a closer look at them.

  “I’m Nick,” he said, introducing himself like we hadn’t lived in the same small town all our lives.

  I liked the formality of it, so I returned the gesture.

  “I’m June.”

  * * *

  When I got home, I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed. My room was filled with flowers sent from the forty-five churches. They sent cards, too, telling me to get well soon. My parents wanted to put me back in the hospital, but I talked them out of it. Bethany wouldn’t leave my side, so she slept on a pallet on my floor. If she got in the bed with me, she’d accidentally move me and I’d get nauseous. My muscles ached and I shook.

  Dr. Keels said it looked like withdrawal, but I’d never stopped taking my medication and th
e drug screen proved I hadn’t taken anything else. They didn’t know what it was, but I did.

  It was Nick. I was sick with missing him.

  * * *

  I’d begged my parents to help Nick. I had worried they’d turn me down because I’d run away with him, but in the end, they’d come through with a good lawyer. He had been able to get Nick’s sentence reduced to three years. That meant it would be one thousand ninety-five days before I would touch him again. There were moments when the sentence felt like a victory and moments when it made me so angry, all I saw was red. It wasn’t fair that Nick would spend three years of his life in a cell, in a place where I’d watch him grow older through a pane of glass. I wondered how tall he would be when he got out.

  Benny Robertson was in county jail, awaiting trial. Nick’s lawyer said it looked really bad for him. Other boys who’d worked for him were talking, too, and some men who were already serving time in prison came forward to tell how they’d been recruited from high school, how Benny would pay off some of their parents’ debts and make them work it off by stealing for him. Nick’s dad was one of them. It wouldn’t reduce their sentences, but they said that wasn’t why they’d done it. They wanted to make sure that it stopped.

  I had an official diagnosis now. I had schizophrenia. As far as my parents knew, I was the first person on either side of my family to have it. I was a pioneer.

  Dr. Keels was my psychiatrist. She’d moved from Little Rock to Creed to run the mental health ward at the hospital. It was an offer my dad had made and she couldn’t turn it down. He was still moving heaven and earth to try and help me. Our family had a social worker, too. Her name was Martha and she came to check on us from time to time. My mom and dad needed help dealing with everything, too. Martha and my mom were becoming good friends.

  Bethany enrolled in Southeastern Arkansas University, and the day she left was one of the hardest days of my life. I was still getting used to dealing when things didn’t work out like I’d always imagined, but I wouldn’t be left behind forever. My plan was to take two classes next semester. I’d already picked which ones. I was going to ease into the college experience. My parents and I took a couple of trips to the campus so I could get a feel for it. At least twice a week, Bethany FaceTimed me and told me everything that had happened in her classes in minute detail. “So you’ll know what to expect when you’re ready,” she said.

  Since my medication had hit peak effect, I hadn’t experienced any symptoms, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. I couldn’t stop worrying about relapsing. Sometimes the anxiety was harder to manage than the symptoms of psychosis had been, the fear that the sleeping monster would wake again. I started exercising, running, so I’d be so tired at night I couldn’t help but sleep. Dr. Keels said as long as I exercised in moderation, it was a good coping strategy.

  I hoped she was right.

  * * *

  It was visiting day at the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction. It was my first time there. I’d driven myself. I’d gotten my driver’s license on my eighteenth birthday. Nick’s aunt Linda wasn’t able to come this time, but she’d told me what to expect. She’d described what it was like to go through the lines and the metal detectors. She’d told me about the wand they’d use to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything. The only thing in my pocket was the piece of paper that Nick had given me right before we turned ourselves in.

  The guard looked at the paper, flipped it over, and studied it before handing it back to me.

  Nick’s aunt had told me they’d lead me into a large room with a glass partition dividing it. She’d said they would tell me where to sit and I would wait. She’d said there’d be a loud buzzing sound and a door would open. She’d said Nick would come through it.

  The room was freezing. Any second now, the buzzer would sound and the door would open. I shifted in my seat. It was cold, too. I rested my hand on my pocket, over the piece of paper. I could feel its edges through my jeans. I did that from time to time, reminding myself that it was still there.

  On one side of the paper was a map. It showed the way to Hank’s cabin from Highway 23 and from there to Nick and John’s campsite. The one where he’d wanted to make his home. It looked like the kind of map that might lead to treasure. It even had an X marking the spot. I’d studied it. I’d copied it down in my notebook a hundred times. I could draw it with my eyes closed.

  On the back was a drawing of a tiny cabin in a clearing surrounded by trees. The cabin was nestled in the side of a mountain, and there was a stream that ran along the edge of the property. The grass was tall and there were sunflowers. It was like the cabin Nick had painted in the barn. All this time, I’d thought it was Hank’s cabin, but it wasn’t. It was Nick’s. The one he’d planned on having, a place that would be permanent.

  A girl and a boy were in the drawing. The girl sat on a bench and wrote in her notebook. She had stacks of them at her feet. The boy painted the scene from next to the stream. Blackbirds flew over them, their wings almost touching. It was beautiful, the kind of place where anything could happen. It was the kind of place that made you believe in happy endings.

  The buzzer sounded.

  The door opened.

  Any second now.

  This is the book I was scared to write. I’ve always wanted to write a love story, but I didn’t expect it to become so personal. There are pieces of my life and my family’s life that are so closely woven into the fabric of Nick’s and June’s characters that it makes me equally excited and terrified to share it with readers.

  I understand Nick and his motivations. I understand his family and their poverty, how poverty defines his choices, the fear that you will never overcome it, that even if you do, it will somehow find you again. Thank you to my parents for showing me what it takes to not be defined by your circumstances and endowing me with the grit to overcome them. Thank you for your sacrifices, sleepless nights, and multiple jobs so that my brothers and I could have what you did not.

  I battle with depression and anxiety, but unlike June, I do not have schizophrenia. I don’t assume that because I have a form of mental illness, I understand what it’s like to live with schizophrenia, so I owe a tremendous debt to my sensitivity readers, those with schizophrenia and those in the mental health profession, who provided me with unparalleled insight into the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia. It was my goal with June to present her as someone whose diagnosis is a part of her life, but show that her life is not defined by it. It is my hope that with the help of my sensitivity readers, I achieved that. All mistakes are my own.

  I must thank Kate McKean, my literary agent. I am so lucky to call her my partner in this writing life. I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else. Thank you to my editor, Melanie Nolan, assistant editor Karen Greenberg, copy editors Artie Bennett and Steph Engel, and cover designers Casey Moses and Regina Flath, who did a fantastic job of putting a face on Nick and June’s story. Working with the Knopf team is just as wonderful the second go-round, and I am beyond grateful that I was given the time (I took a lot of it, like years) to make this book the best I could make it. Thanks for allowing me the chance to start over and start over and start over again.

  As always, I am indebted to my family and friends; my husband, Erik; and my children, Jake and Eliza, for their unfailing support.

  Lastly, thank you to the readers. I hope that you love Nick and June as much as I do.

  TERRANCE ARMSTARD

  SHALANDA STANLEY grew up in Louisiana and earned her BA in creative writing at Florida State University. She has an MEd in special education from the University of Louisiana at Monroe and a PhD from LSU in curriculum and instruction, with a focus in reading and literacy education. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe in the School of Education.

  SHALANDASTANLEY.COM

  What’s next on
>
  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  * * *

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.