tangle around my legs, the batteries in my Discman are dead and it’s bright outside. A glance at my alarm informs me it’s past noon.
Aunt Helen and my mom are gone. Again. Apparently I’m the only one expected to be under voluntary house arrest. I check the answering machine—no messages. My father hasn’t called since the wake. Go figure. He’s probably too busy with Melinda, the most important person in his life.
I don’t know why I’m so annoyed; it’s not like I want to talk to him. I almost feel like I wouldn’t care if I never talked to him again. June is gone, and where is he? I don’t care how hard it is for him. I don’t care if he’s uncomfortable in this house. I needed him, and if he couldn’t be there for me over something so important, what good is he at all?
It’s quickly becoming clear that the only person I can lean on at all these days is Laney.
I consider calling her when I remember she’s elbow-deep in an AP English exam and unavailable for another two hours. Nothing good is on daytime television, and really, it makes me anxious to sit in the living room for too long with June’s urn planted on the fireplace mantel, staring me down. There’s nothing to do but roam the deserted house.
Mom started smoking again after she and Dad split. She thinks she’s good at hiding it, like I don’t know she keeps a stash of cigarettes hidden in her jewelry box. Sure enough, there’s a pack of Camel Lights stowed away under a mess of necklaces, along with a plastic lighter. I nab both and retreat back into my own room.
There were times, before the divorce, when our parents would fight. Mostly it was Mom who would yell, while Dad sat silent, a stony wall to her barrage of shouts and accusations. I know she thought he was messing around on the side, during his late nights at the office, and hiding money from her. I have no idea how much of that was actually true—if any of it—but Mom would get so worked up, she must’ve really believed what she said. She’d just go on a total rampage, annihilating everything in her path. The best coping method was total avoidance, and so sometimes during their arguments, June would come to my room, near tears, and we’d climb out my window and onto the roof and just sit. Sometimes I’d smoke, sometimes we’d talk, and sometimes we’d just sit there in mutual silence. During our conversations, we never acknowledged the obvious: our parents’ marriage was vaporizing before our eyes.
Maybe we thought if we didn’t mention it, it would go away on its own. Maybe we just didn’t know how to talk to each other the way we used to, when we were little kids and best friends who shared everything.
Now I wrench the window up and slowly slide my legs outside, climbing out just enough to sit on the ledge with my bare feet flat on the slanted roof, already warmed by the high sun. I shake a single cigarette from the pack at my side and stick it in my mouth. It takes only two tries to strike up a flame, which is quite impressive considering how hard my hands are shaking. I wonder if it’ll always be this hard, to think about June, if I’ll ever be able to separate the good memories from bad, or if they’ll always be intrinsically tied together.
I light the end of the cigarette, inhaling deeply. The air is hot and still, the breeze nonexistent, the sun beating down in an otherwise clear sky. From my perch I can spot some kids a few doors down, skipping rope on the street and chanting in unison. Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in nineteen hundred and forty-two. The waves got higher, and higher …
If I close my eyes it’s almost like June’s beside me, the way she used to be. I can see her perfectly in my mind—those slim arms wrapped around her knees as she pulls her long legs in close to her chest. She used to sit like that all the time, like she was trying to make herself as small as possible.
Maybe she was always trying to disappear.
I’m sitting there, breathing in the mingled smells of smoke and cut grass and tar from the shingles, trying to remember, when suddenly a voice cuts through my meandering thoughts.
“Hey!” My eyes fly open to see Jacob Tolan, standing on the edge of my front yard, shielding his eyes from the intense sun with one hand and squinting up at me. “Enjoying your moment of faux teenage rebellion?”
The unexpected intrusion nearly sends me plummeting off the roof and to an early death. At the very least, a few broken ribs. Flustered, I quickly right myself and glare down at his figure. The first thing I notice is that he’s wearing a black leather jacket open over a long-sleeved red flannel shirt, even though it’s about a billion degrees outside, and black jeans, again. Possibly the same pair. What is this, the nineties?
“Get off my lawn,” I shout, holding the cigarette away from my face.
“Oooh, tough words from the girl who smokes—let me guess—Virginia Slims?”
Who the hell does he think he is, coming here and accusing me of smoking girly cigarettes?
“Camel Lights, actually, dickwad.” I take another long, harsh drag, just to prove a point. Unfortunately, the effect is diminished when I start coughing up half a lung.
Jake extracts his own pack from his jeans pocket, tilting it up for me to see. “What do you know. Same brand. Got a light?”
I reel my arm back and chuck my lighter at him, hard. My aim is decent enough, but Jake dodges out of the way just in time; the flimsy thing barely clips him in the shoulder, and he shoots me a long, even look as he leans down and fishes it from the grass at his feet.
I keep on glaring as he straightens and lights his cigarette. “What do you want?”
He says, “We need to talk,” and glances around conspicuously. “Preferably in, you know, private.”
“Like … private, private?” I ask. Does he seriously think anyone would bother to listen in on this conversation?
He scowls and does that annoying squinty thing again. “Is there any other kind?”
Part of me wants to tell him to go screw himself; the other part of me is curious to know what possible reason he could have for coming around and wanting to talk. Curiosity wins out in the end. I stub the cigarette out, making sure to roll my eyes and blow out an exaggerated sigh so he won’t think I’m, like, really wanting to know what he’s doing in my front yard.
“Fine, whatever,” I tell him coolly. “Give me a minute.”
I scoot back through the window, carefully wedging it down, and then hurry downstairs. It seems like a good idea to make him wait for a while, just so he doesn’t think I’m dying to hear whatever it is he has to say. Even if I kind of am.
I stand at the front door and count to thirty before I open it. Jake is still standing in the same spot, stomping out his cigarette, and instead of approaching me, he just cocks his head to the side until I march over.
“What do you want?” I huff.
I want to know what’s going on, but if he keeps this up, forget it. I’ve never been the kind of girl to beg. I’m definitely not about to start now.
He grabs my arm and hauls me behind the towering oak tree at the edge of the lawn. “Let’s talk in there,” he says, jerking his chin toward the van parked right on the curb.
I glance around to see if anyone is in earshot. Our old neighbor Mr. Jones is mowing his lawn, and some woman pushes a stroller down the sidewalk. When the woman passes, she gives us a strange look, but then the baby starts wailing and diverts her attention.
I stare at Jake blankly. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”
“What? Why not?”
“Sketchy black van? Weird stalking of my house? What are you going to do next, offer me some candy?” I scoff. “Sorry, I saw that Dateline special, thank you very much. Besides, anything you need to say to me, you can say be hind this tree.”
He makes this annoyed growling sound in the back of his throat, then takes a deep breath. “Listen. I know what you and Laney are planning on doing.”
Well,