I never took it seriously. No one did. And now she’s dead.
“It’s not right,” I say.
Laney frowns. “What’s not right?”
“Everything.” I snatch back the postcard and wave it in the air. “This is what she wanted. Not to be stuck in this house, on display like—like some trophy. She hated it here, didn’t she? I mean, isn’t that why she—”
I can’t finish; I throw the postcard and envelope back into the drawer and slam it shut with more force than necessary, causing the desk to rattle. I am so angry I am shaking with it. It’s an abstract kind of anger, directionless but overwhelming.
Laney folds her arms across her chest and bows her head.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “I don’t know.”
“How did things get so bad?” I whisper. Laney doesn’t answer, and I know it’s because she, like me, has no way to make sense of this completely senseless act. Girls like June are not supposed to do this. Girls who have their whole lives ahead of them.
We stand next to each other, my hands still on the drawer handles, when the thought comes to me. It’s just a spark at first, a flicker of a notion.
“We should take her ashes to California.”
I don’t even mean to blurt it out loud, but once it’s out there, it’s out—no taking it back. And as the idea begins to take root in my mind, I decide maybe … maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
“Harper.” Laney’s using that voice again, that controlled voice, and it makes me want to hit her. She’s not supposed to use that voice. Not on me. “Don’t you think that’s kind of a stretch? Just because of a postcard?”
“It’s not just because of a postcard.”
It’s more than that. It’s about what she wanted for herself but didn’t think she’d ever have, for whatever reason. It’s about how there is so much I didn’t know about my sister, and this is as much as I’ll ever have of her. College acceptance letters and postcards. Reminders of her unfulfilled dreams.
“Your mom would totally flip,” Laney points out, but she sounds more entertained by the prospect than worried. “Not to mention your aunt.”
I don’t want to think about Aunt Helen. She’s just like everyone else downstairs, seeing in June only what they wanted to see—a perfect daughter, perfect friend, perfect student, perfect girl. They’re all grieving over artificial memories, some two-dimensional, idealized version of my sister they’ve built up in their heads because it’s too scary to face reality. That June had something in her that was broken.
And if someone like June—so loving, kind, full of goodness and light and promise—could implode that way, what hope is there for the rest of us?
“Who cares about Aunt Helen?” I snap.
Laney hesitates, but I see something in her eyes change, like a car shifting gears. Like she’s realizing how serious I am about this. “How would we even get there?”
“We can drive. You have a car.” Not much of a car, but more than what I have, which is nothing. Laney’s dad is loaded but has this weird selective code of ethics, where he believes strongly in teaching her the lesson of accountability and made her pay half for her own car, and so after some months of bagging groceries, she’d saved up enough to put half down on a beat-up old Gremlin.
“My Gremlin is on its last leg. Wheel. Whatever. There is no way it’d make it from Michigan to California.”
“Yeah, but still—” I’m growing more convinced by the second. “That’s what she wanted, right? California, the ocean?”
Laney just stares at me, and I wonder if this is how it will be from now on, if I am always going to be looked at like that by everyone, even my best friend.
I don’t care. She can stare at me all day and it won’t change my mind. There were so many things I’d done wrong in my relationship with my sister, but this. I could do this. I owe her that much.
“I’m going to do this,” I tell her. “With you or without you. I’d rather it be with.”
I expect Laney to say, “It would be impossible,” or, “I know you don’t mean it,” or, “Don’t you think you should go lie down?”
Instead, she glances down at the postcard, brow furrowed like if she stares hard enough it’ll reveal something more.
When she looks back up, her mouth has edged into a half smile. “So California, huh? That’s gonna be a long drive.”
chapter two
Aunt Helen is the last to leave that night. Laney leaves because her mother forces her, and even then I have to all but shove her out the door.
“I can stay,” she says. She has her arms around me, clinging to me like a life preserver. I’m getting the idea that she needs to give me comfort way more than I need to be receiving it. “For as long you want. I don’t want you to be alone.”
It would be nice to have her here, but I know this is something I’m going to have to handle on my own. Better get used to it now.
I eventually pry her off and try to force a smile, but it’s like my lips have forgotten how. I sigh. “Go home. Seriously, it’s fine. I promise.”
I know she’s not convinced, but she squeezes me once more, kisses my cheek and lets her mother drag her out the door.
Before Laney it was my father, who hadn’t spoken at great length to any of us all day, but as he left, he grabbed me in a stiff-armed hug. In that second I had this feeling, the kind that grabs you by the throat, a desperate desire for him to stay, because he knows Mom so much better than I do, because he might know how to fix this.
When he pulled back, he ruffled my hair the way he did when I was a kid. Except now the gesture felt unnatural, like he was out of practice. And I knew he couldn’t fix anything in our family. Not anymore.
“I’ll be in touch, kiddo,” he promised, but promises from my father never meant anything before, and I don’t expect them to mean anything now.
As always, Aunt Helen can’t leave without making a fuss, telling my mother to get some rest, and that she’ll be over later the next morning, and gushing about how beautiful the service was.
“I know she was looking down on us,” she sniffs, dabbing her eyes with the wrinkled tissue she’s been clutching in her hand for hours. “She would have been so touched.”
It’s pretty much the most clichéd thing anyone could possibly say, not to mention the most untrue, but apparently it’s enough to start her waterworks again, which in turn makes my mother cry. Aunt Helen reaches for me, and I brace myself for another hug, but she stops halfway, her hand awkwardly wound around my shoulder. The way she’s looking at me is the kindest it’s been in days.
We’ve never gotten along. Aunt Helen is really into church and prayer and Jesus; she doesn’t approve of my black hoodies and black nail polish and my admitted penchant for excessive swearing. And ever since I announced in the middle of last Easter’s family brunch that I’m not sure I believe in God at all, she’s treated me like I’m some kind of heathen. Maybe it wasn’t the best timing on my part, but I did get a kick out of the horrified look on her face.
Of course, back then, questions of God and the afterlife weren’t really relevant to my life like they are now. I think Aunt Helen is hoping I’m going to have this moment of revelation where I’ll declare myself a born-again Christian who sees the light of Jesus’s love. But June dying hasn’t given me any spiritual clarity. It’s just made everything even more confusing.
“Take care of your mother, okay?” she says to me now. “She needs you.”
I