Saving June. Hannah Harrington

I can stow it in my nightstand, because I’m pretty sure when I went out for coffee, Aunt Helen searched my room. Imagine if she found something like that. Heads would be rolling.

      Ooh, or maybe condoms. Or birth control pills. Now that would really freak her out.

      I sit down on the bed and put the phone down. “Come in.”

      Mom opens the door, standing with it halfway ajar. She doesn’t make a move to fully enter, just stays there, looking. But I can tell she’s not really seeing me, is lost somewhere in her own mind. We’ve barely spoken over the past few days—we exist parallel to each other.

      “Hi,” I say, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

      “Hi.” Mom hovers in the doorway, her hand on the knob. She leans on it like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Maybe it is. “Helen invited me to her morning church service this Sunday. Not just me—you, too. She thinks it would be good, for the both of us.”

      “Helen thinks?” I bristle. “No, thanks.”

      “Harper.” She pauses, breathing in and out through her nose a few times, one hand pressed to her temple as if to prevent the onslaught of a migraine. “I don’t appreciate your hostile attitude. She’s trying to help—”

      “Well, maybe she’s trying, but she’s not helping.”

      “She’s helping me!” she snaps. Her chin quivers with the threat of tears. “I need someone right now. It’s not like your father has been of any help, if you’ve bothered to notice. Helen is the only one who’s here for me. I can’t do this on my own. Do you not understand that? Does that not make any sense to you whatsoever?”

      So that’s how my mother sees it? That she’s all alone, save for Aunt Helen? My presence means nothing. I’m invisible, or worse, a burden.

      “Helen says I need to surrender,” she continues. “That I need to let God in, let Him take control. And I think it might help you find some peace, too, if you came with me.”

      “Let me think about it,” I lie, because I know already that I will never step foot inside that church, know that come Sunday I’ll be long gone from this town.

      Why should I stay? Aunt Helen hates me. Mom doesn’t need me. I can’t do anything right. Really, I’m in the way. This just makes my decision all that much easier.

      Mom nods once and starts to close the door. For a second, I want nothing more than for her to come back, to cradle me in her arms like when I was a kid and had badly scraped a knee, to smooth her palm across my forehead as if checking for a fever, to do something—anything—to remind me of the days when knowing that she was my mother and that she was there was enough to make the bad things better.

      It’s weird because I don’t really want her to comfort me; I just want her to try. But that yearning is only a dull ache in my chest, the kind of phantom pains amputees get where their missing limbs should be. It isn’t anything real.

      The next day I take the bus across town to the Oleo Strut. The bus stop is three blocks from the store, and even though I have on a T-shirt, it’s another blistering day, and by the time I arrive in front of the brick building, the thin cotton is stuck to my back with sweat like a second skin. No one notices when I enter. Jake’s brother—I don’t know his name—is behind the counter, arguing with a man in his forties dressed in a skuzzy, spiky leather jacket and a pair of dirty corduroys.

      “Punk is not dead,” Jake’s brother is insisting emphatically. “Look at—”

      “Who? Green Day? Avril Lavigne?” the other man sneers. “That’s just manufactured pop bullshit. You’ve got all these poser bands out there, cranked out of big-name labels, pretending to be part of the counterculture when they’re just another cash cow for the capitalist, consumerist machine. It’s a gimmick. Kids these days think they can go out and buy punk self-identification through massmarketed band apparel from Hot Topic.”

      “Yeah, but there is still good stuff, true punk. It’s out there, it’s just not being played on the radio. Punk isn’t just a look. It’s not even just about attitude. If you have the aesthetics and the posturing, you better back it up with the politics.”

      “Bullshit. Johnny Ramone was an NRA-supporting, full-fledged Republican!” the guy protests.

      Jake’s brother leans farther over the counter. “Fuck Johnny Ramone. The U.K. had the right idea—look at Joe Strummer. Look at the Sex Pistols, and Crass and—”

      “Whatever, man. The culture’s still dead. Nothing like that exists anymore.”

      “You just have to know where to find it,” Jake’s brother says. He withdraws a neon-green flyer from underneath the counter. “The Revengers. They’re hardcore, the real thing, and they’re playing a few shows in state later this summer. You gotta check them out—they don’t mess around. If after that you still think punk’s dead, I’ll give you any record in the store, half off. Hand to God.”

      He holds up one hand solemnly. The man only grunts in response—but he takes the flyer before he leaves.

      “You make a compelling case on behalf of punk rock,” I say as I approach the counter.

      “Someone has to do it,” he replies with a grin. “Need help finding something?”

      “Yes. I’m looking for the latest Green Day album.”

      He laughs, surprised, and eyes me more closely. “Hey, I’ve seen you before. You were in here the other day, with the blond girl, right?”

      “Yeah, that was me.” I pause and clear my throat. “Is your brother around?”

      “Jake?” He rubs his chin. “He’s not working today. But I think he’s at home.”