Juniper Berry (9 page)

“You'll return. Of that I am sure.” He smiled at Juniper, then at Giles. “Both of you will. Come back anytime, as you are always welcome here. Where else can that be said of the two of you?” He waved them toward the hall. “Go now, I'll be waiting.”

And with that he walked out of the room, down the other hallway. The thick darkness enveloped him instantly, the bright red balloon he carried the last thing to fade.

Chapter 10

I
F WE ARE DOOMED
to repeat history,” Mrs. Maybelline said, “then we might as well make it fun.”

“Fun?” Juniper asked, her voice lost in a haze. She could not follow her day's lesson adequately, as her mind constantly drifted to Giles. She had not seen him since they emerged from beneath the tree four days ago, and now she missed him greatly. For hours she waited outside, monocular outstretched, searching the distance for her friend. But he still hadn't appeared.

“Yes, fun!” Mrs. Maybelline shouted. Her girth swallowed the edge of the desk, and a pudgy hand opened Juniper's laptop computer. With a strike of a swollen index finger, she turned it on—the sudden hum matched Mrs. Maybelline's own. Spittle rested on her lips and a slug of a tongue reached out, absorbed it, and retreated. Her body rocked back and forth in anticipation as the oceanic background appeared and then gave way to diagnostic pop-ups and alerts. Giddy, she clapped her hands together nearly two dozen times in a mere moment. “Now open that new program I uploaded. Hurry up; it's absolutely fabulous!”

Obeying, although somewhat distractedly, Juniper closed the pop-ups and clicked on the newly installed polka-dotted icon. Soon the program “History: Your Way” was blaring a series of horns in announcement of its arrival to the screen. An animated Thomas Jefferson popped into existence and danced about the monitor, from one corner to another, bouncing off the edges, limbs swaying madly, jaw unhinging to produce the words “We the people . . . give you history: your way!”

“See?” Mrs. Maybelline said through her chuckles while nudging Juniper with her sunken elbows. “Fun already. Makes you want to live in the past with him, doesn't it? Fun, fun, fun.”

“Fun,” Juniper repeated in a monotone. Her mind was thousands of miles away or, more accurately, in the woods outside her home, which, as of right now, seemed just as far. For what might have been the hundredth time since she and Giles emerged from the underground, Juniper pictured their quiet walk back through the woods that day.

The hole in the tree had closed and Juniper's mind was reeling. “I don't know what to think. Should I have taken a balloon?” she asked Giles. But he wasn't listening. He had pulled the balloon down directly before his eyes. Enthralled, he gazed into it as if it were a crystal ball.

Juniper looked at her friend's face, distorted through the swollen latex. “Giles . . .”

“I can't wait any longer. I want to open it now. Are you ready?” he asked, hands set to untie the string.

Juniper shook her head. “I don't want to watch. Not again.” She scanned the woods. “I'll be right over there,” she said, pointing to a large tree she could easily hide behind. “Wait until I'm out of sight.”

His excitement deflated, but not by much. “Okay, okay.”

“Just get it over with,” she called out as she made her way to the safe place behind the tree.

He wasted no time.

Juniper heard the scratching pull of the latex, Giles's deep inhalation, and the sudden rush of air screaming down his throat. She covered her ears, then closed her eyes. But regardless of how much pressure she put over her eardrums, she could never drown out her mother's harrowing wail. Even with her eyes sealed tight as could be, nothing but blackness before her, the gruesome visage of her parents succumbing to those balloons still somehow surfaced. There was no escape from it.

And now Giles . . .

A hand grabbed her arm just above the elbow, slightly too hard, and her eyes snapped open. Giles was staring at her, beaming a broad smile. Juniper slowly lowered her hands from her ears. She eyed him suspiciously.

“It . . . it didn't . . . do things to you? To your body?” She saw her father slumped over the dining room table, twitching.

“Of course it did. I feel great!” And he looked great, too, just like her parents had that morning. “I'm not kidding. June, you should have given it a try.”

Juniper opened her mouth to tell him that he was wrong, except she wasn't so sure anymore that he was.

Not long after, Giles left for the day. It wasn't very late, but he gave a hasty good-bye and went racing home at a speed Juniper feared she could no longer match.

“Head out of the clouds,” Mrs. Maybelline lectured, directing Juniper's eyes to the computer screen with a pudgy digit, “and back to real life. Just click on the Industrial Revolution icon and it will carry you straight on through it, highlighting all the fun and interesting stuff in no time at all. Then, at the end, there are games for every time period. Isn't that wonderful? Go ahead. Pull it up.” Which Juniper did while trying to keep her thoughts from roaming yet again. She was scared of where they'd take her.

“What a great time it was to be an American!” Mrs. Maybelline went on. “You'll feel like you're actually there! By the time you're done, you'll know everything you need to know. I even learned stuff I had no idea about. Who knew what a cotton gin was? Ah, technology. I'm telling you, Juniper, quick and easy! It's the way to go. You won't even feel like you're learning! In the meantime I've got a few phone calls to make and the restroom to use,” and off Mrs. Maybelline went, muttering the rest of her errands until Juniper, much to her delight, could not hear them anymore; “e-mail to read, I have to update my mood and status, blog then vlog, check the gossip sites . . .”

Left alone, Juniper clicked the mouse, the screen flashed, and a bright, shiny world of more than a hundred years ago emerged in pixilated perfection. The music mellowed into a peaceful birdsong and the sun shined over a series of pristine factories being built at an alarming pace. Thomas Jefferson walked gaily down the streets explaining this part of America's history in goofy, rhymed stanzas to a bleary-eyed Juniper.

It didn't take long for her to realize “History: Your Way” wasn't fun at all, and it certainly wasn't history her way. She just couldn't relate to what she saw and heard. Everything on the screen left her utterly disconnected. All the details were glossed over, dates and definitions were emphasized more than events and content—there was no how or why—and the games had nothing to do with the lesson. (She couldn't see how a first-person shooter was educational just because you fired a musket.) The program portrayed everybody in town as cheerful drones, and the children brought home shining coins from their jobs and lived in huge, lively houses and the country grew at an astounding rate, covering the land with its newfound technology, bringing peace and love everywhere it spread. Everything on-screen was all so clean and simple and perfect. Toward the end, her animated guide said the Industrial Revolution was what made the country great, but she never really figured out how.

Something, Juniper believed, was missing, and she wanted to know what.

She let the program run its course, taking in what she thought was interesting or important, and, as usual, she decided that when Mrs. Maybelline left for the day she would run down to her father's study, grab a few books on the subject, and educate herself—as well as keep her mind busy and away from her parents, Giles, the tree, and those balloons. She could lose herself in her books, her spyglasses.

But was this complicating things? Where did it ever get her? Perhaps she should have just accepted what the computer told her. After all, Skeksyl's words still stubbornly lingered in her head. Maybe she really was wasting her time with her books and spyglasses and her pursuit for truth. There were far easier ways to get to the same exact places. The more she thought about it, the more Skeksyl's words took hold.

She never went to the study that day, but she did come upon something else.

After Mrs. Maybelline left, Juniper was making her way back to her room. Passing one of the mansion's numerous bathrooms (there were nine, in fact), she heard her father's voice escaping into the hallway. “I don't understand,” he said. He had been known to practice lines in there, and Juniper went to get a closer look. She put her back up against the hallway wall and slid closer until she could see his face reflected in the bathroom mirror. He stared into the looking glass with his mouth gaping wide open, his tongue hanging out and wiggling. His hands prodded about, at times pulling his jaw in opposite directions. He seemed to be attempting to peer down his throat. His head bobbed and weaved, trying for a better view. But of what?

Frustrated, he slammed his hands against the sink and leaned forward, bulging his eyes and spreading the lids with his fingers, one after another. He gazed deeply into each eye, again searching for something. “I don't understand,” he said once more. “I don't understand. I don't understand.” Then the words quickened. “Idon'tunderstandIdon'tunderstandIdon'tunderstand.”

Juniper stepped in front of the door. “Dad? Dad, are you doing lines? You're doing lines, right?”

Mr. Berry turned and looked at her. No, through her—she very well might have been fading away. His hand reached out and slowly closed the door. He didn't say a word.

This is what it has come to
, Juniper thought.
Closed doors
.

Then, as if on cue, the front door slammed. The sound typically accompanied Mrs. Berry's arrival, and Juniper ran down the stairs and to the grand hallway to find her mother tossing her jacket on a long wooden bench. “Mom!”

“Not now.” Without so much as a glance, Mrs. Berry stuck a hand in Juniper's face and walked on by. Climbing the stairs, she said, “I just talked with my agent. He wants your father and me to star in a film together. The public is clamoring for it. He has a pile of scripts for us to go through. But we have to do this right; the material has to be flawless, stunning. Now, make sure to leave us alone. We can't be bothered.”

Tears welling in her eyes, Juniper stared at her mother's back. Her chest began to rise and fall as she desperately tried to think of something to say. “I wrote a screenplay,” she called out, finally, with all her heart. “It's perfect for you and Dad, I know it. Will you look at it?”

Mrs. Berry didn't stop climbing the stairs, didn't even turn around.

Juniper chased after her. “Mom! Mom, please!”

Closing her eyes, Mrs. Berry stood on the top step and brought her hands to her temples. “Juniper . . .” She rocked back and forth. Outside, through an open window, the raven screeched. Mrs. Berry's eyes opened. “Juniper, don't waste our time.”

As she watched her mother walk away, Juniper heard Skeksyl's offer repeating over and over within her head, growing louder and louder. She saw her very own balloon waiting to be blown up. She just had to sign her name and breathe.

Without even realizing it, she had crept downstairs, out the back door, and toward the woods. The tree, the raven, and everything they represented were in sight, only steps away.

“You can do this,” she whispered. But she knew she couldn't do it alone.

She had to talk to Giles.

She walked to the edge of her yard, the western border. She had never crossed it before, never would have even dreamed of trying lest she be harshly punished and confined even further.

One foot went over, then the other. She stopped. Her parents didn't come out screaming, security didn't rush her, there was no commotion by any of the staff. Nobody cared. And so she kept walking. She walked until she reached her nearest neighbor, nearly a mile away.

A house came into view, another sprawling home much like her own, and along with it came the seemingly obligatory commotion arising from the front yard. Juniper's first thought was that there would be a mass of fans lingering outside these gates as well, seeking autographs and pictures and the like. Her second thought was that maybe she could blend in with them for a little while, experience what it was like. She wanted to see her world from the outside in. Maybe from that perspective things wouldn't appear so bad, maybe everything would make sense. Then she had another, even darker thought, one she never believed she would have. She could just give everything up and walk out those gates as someone else. Maybe she could change the way she acted and looked, change her name and attitude, create a new her, and then everything she was previously would just vanish. Her parents no longer cared; it was obvious she wouldn't be missed. She could start over.

She walked around the house and indeed saw a crowd. But this one was of a different sort. This mob was a bunch of children her age, gathered in a circle. Doing what?
A game
, she thought.
They're playing a game!
And she rushed to join them, no gates to keep her in or out, no parents to call her back.

The circle was tight, so she had to push a bit to get a view of any kind.
This is where a periscope would come in handy
, she realized, regretting she left her World War I replica in her closet. But no, on second thought, had she brought it, such a device would have kept her far from the group. Now she was able to rub elbows with boys and girls who, she imagined, could have been her friends in another life. She was able to listen to their jokes and share in their laughter; she could help spread gossip if so entrusted; she could receive fashion advice. Standing among them, she couldn't believe how wonderful it felt.

Once she squeezed to the front, however, she saw the crowd's main focus: two boys standing in the middle, their fists clenched and held up. An onlooker began chanting and, like a highly infectious disease, it soon caught hold with all the rest. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Fists pumped in sync, feet stomped the ground, even girls hollered for punches to be thrown. Juniper scanned the circle for Giles, but he was nowhere to be found. She figured that made sense. He wouldn't be anywhere near this crowd.

The fight held no interest to Juniper, and it was over almost immediately after it started. Surprisingly, the bigger of the two boys was on the ground, clutching a bleeding nose.