Saving June (5 page)

“You’ve been watching way too much
CSI.”
I roll my eyes, but flip the receipt over anyway. There’s a note scribbled on the back in faded blue ink.

J.—

Hope you like my picks. Let me know what you think.

—Your Favorite Person in the Universe

It’s the initial that bothers me most. That single letter. No one has ever shortened June’s name like that. And the tone of the note, the signature—it suggests an inside joke,
some kind of casual closeness. I crumple the receipt in my fist and toss the balled-up wad over my shoulder.

“You know what we should do?” Laney springs off the bed again, bouncing on her toes. “We should go to this Oleo place!”

“What for?”

“Uh, hello? To see if they might know who bought these? Don’t you watch television? You always start at the scene of the crime.”

“Last time I checked, buying music is not a crime,” I point out. “Actually, they kind of encourage that, with all the illegal downloading these days—”

“Work with me here, Harper.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, aren’t you curious? This could really lead to something.”

Of course I’m curious. It’s driving me crazy, not knowing. It’s why I called Laney in the first place. I don’t even have to say anything and she can see it, written all over my face.

“Go put on your shoes,” she says, pushing me off the bed, “because we’re totally going, right now.”

Grand Lake is a town split into two sections, with the namesake lake as the epicenter. There’s the east side of Grand Lake, where Laney and I live, primarily consisting of well-kept houses in quiet suburbs, and then there’s the west side, generally considered lower income and populated
with more apartment complexes. The east and west sides have two elementary schools and one middle school each, and after that, the kids are shuttled into the town’s sole, centrally located high school.

The whole town centers around the lake. “Grand” is something of a misnomer, since it’s pretty small, and the only stretch of beach is the man-made one behind the iron gates of the Grand Lake Yacht Club, where the town’s upper crust keep sailboats and pontoon boats and have a dining hall for club dinners. The area by the lake was an amusement park in the fifties, with a Ferris wheel and roller coaster and everything, but they tore it down long before I was even born. Now there’s just the park and a few businesses and restaurants, including the waterfront Sterling’s Steakhouse. Laney’s father, Richard Sterling, owns the joint, but we never eat there because Laney doesn’t eat meat, much to her family’s chagrin.

To get to the west side, you have to drive past the lake and through this strip called Windermere Village. Windermere is a shopping area, purposefully kept antiquated with a cobblestone road, the streets lined with gaslights and outdoor sculptures. There’s an old-fashioned ice cream parlor called Duncan’s, a bunch of old family businesses and other little shops. It’s the kind of place where mothers amble with their baby strollers and golden retrievers, and older women wearing fluorescent headbands power walk in pairs.

I don’t usually have much reason to go west past Windermere. As we speed by in Laney’s piece-of-crap car, I watch the newer housing areas give way to dated apartment buildings. She turns down a side road, passing a gas station and a liquor store, and continues down to a two-story building made out of dusty red brick. That’s when I see the sign, lit up in neon-green over the doorway of a store on the bottom level: the Oleo Strut.

A bell above the door chimes as we walk in. There’s a guy behind the counter, looking like he’s in his twenties, sporting Buddy Holly frames and an eyebrow ring. His brown hair is short and spiky. He scrawls something onto a notepad at rapid-fire pace, pausing every so often to fiddle with a calculator—it’s one of those old-fashioned ones, with a ribbon of receipt paper churning out with each button pushed.

“Can I help you?” the guy asks, distracted. He punches a few more numbers into the calculator and scratches the top of his head.

Laney looks at me expectantly, but I’m not sure how to even begin, so she jumps in without missing a beat.

“This is going to sound
so
weird,” she starts, “but we’re trying to find out the identity of someone who made a purchase from you a few months ago. We know what was bought, but that’s it. Maybe if we gave you the date, you could, like, look back through security tapes or something?”

Now he looks at us, bemused, tapping the pen cap against the countertop. “Yeah, we don’t keep track of that.”

“Well, you look like the type who has an
amazing
photographic memory.” She pushes herself up against the counter, bending so far over I’m sure her boobs will spill out of her top, and gives her most charming smile. I roll my eyes behind her back. “The Kinks? Tom Waits? Any of that ring a bell?”

“Sorry, kid, my memory is for shit,” he says with a grin, and I’m impressed with the fact he doesn’t even give her chest area so much as a second glance. He jabs the pen in our direction in mock seriousness. “That’s why you should stay away from drugs.”

As he starts to walk toward the back room, Laney throws her hands up in frustration.

“A walking PSA,” she mutters under her breath. “How helpful.”

Suddenly he turns to face us again. “Hey, you know, you might have better luck with my brother. He works the register sometimes and he’s good with faces.”

“And where would he be?” I ask.

He nods his chin in the direction of the back of the store. “Stocking. I think he’s doing vinyl.”

With that, he disappears. Laney and I exchange glances.

I shrug. “Worth a shot.”

The store is so crammed with music that it’s difficult to squeeze through the aisles. Everywhere are carts filled with
CDs and cassettes, handwritten signs plastered on the walls categorizing them by genre, and even those have subcategories. The rock section is split into classic rock, garage rock, glam rock, soft rock, psychedelia, alt-rock and indie rock. Punk contains anarcho-punk, garage punk, hardcore and riot grrrl. New Wave has an entire cart to itself.

We’re turning a corner when Laney says, “That must be him.”

I look in the direction where she’s pointing, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

“Oh my God,” I gasp. I grab her arm, haul her around the corner and safely out of sight.

It’s the boy. The boy from the wake, who leaned up against my house and smoked cigarettes and glared a lot. The boy who obviously had
some
connection to my sister, but at the time I’d been too preoccupied to even consider his, like, existence, never mind what that connection could be.

Well. Now I know. Sort of, anyway.

“Hey,” Laney says. Her eyes widen. “I know him!”

“You—you do?”

“I mean, I don’t
know
him, but I know of him. His name’s Jacob. Jake Tolan.” She frowns. “He looks way different without blue hair.”

“Blue hair?” I sneak a furtive glance around the shelf. He has one of those sticker guns in his hand, is labeling a
stack of vinyl records and putting them away in alphabetical order.

I
have
seen him before. Blue-haired boys stand out at Grand Lake High. And then something clicks—Tolan. I know that name. It was on one of those forms I discovered while rifling through June’s drawers. Her National Honor Society papers, the ones she filled out to log her tutoring hours.

“That’s him,” I realize. “He’s the one who gave June those CDs.”

“Wait, seriously?” Laney peers around behind me, scrambling to get a second look. “How do you know?”

“I’ll explain later.” At her skeptical look, I add, “I promise. Just—go look around or something. I want to talk to him alone for a second.”

She raises her eyebrows, but then she nods and goes to browse the shelves. I step out from around the corner and begin to peruse as nonchalantly as possible. I thumb through the D’s, watching Jake out of the corner of my eye before sliding out a record at random.

“That’s a good pick.”

I jump a little when I realize he’s at my shoulder, still wielding the sticker gun. If he recognizes me, he masks it well.

When I just stare at him blankly, he leans over and taps the cover with one finger. “Miles Davis.
Kind of Blue.
Circa
1959, I believe. It’s one of the most definitive jazz albums of all time. You listen to a lot of jazz?”

“Yes,” I lie. I pause. “No. I mean. I’m just looking.” Feeling bolder, I say, “Any recommendations?”

He thinks for a moment. “John Coltrane is a must, and you’ve gotta listen to Charlie Parker. Oh, and Thelonious Monk. That man could play the hell out of a piano.”

“When you put it so eloquently…” I pop the Miles Davis back into its rightful place and turn to him again. “What about Tom Waits?”

Jake looks confused. “What about him?”

“I’ve heard he’s good. Any recommendations?”

“Tom Waits isn’t really jazz. I mean, he is, but he isn’t. There is
one
album—” He stops mid-sentence and stares at me, and I swear I can actually see him working out the connection, how he gave the same one to June. Which means he knows that I know. Abruptly he turns his back on me and returns to the stack of records, stabbing the sticker gun against them with vicious concentration. “I’m busy. You can look for it yourself.”

“Right. Well, take it easy, Jake,” I say. I make sure to pause for effect before adding, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

Not the smoothest hint drop ever, but it gets my point across. This time his head snaps around so fast it’s a wonder it doesn’t come flying clean off his neck. I know I’ve struck a chord with that one, even if I’m not exactly sure what it
means. His mouth opens, but if he says anything, I don’t hear it because I’m already halfway down the aisle.

Jacob Tolan can suck it. He’s not the only one around here who can make a mysterious exit.

“That is so weird,” Laney says.

I glance at the column of people ahead of us and nod. “I know.”

“No, I mean, that is so
weird,”
she stresses. “Like—I cannot even!”

We’re waiting in line at Windermere’s local coffee shop, The Windermere Coffee Co. Creative name, I know. Our repeat business here is not due to customer loyalty but because somehow Grand Lake manages to be so obsolete that even the all-seeing Starbucks corporate machine has skipped over the town entirely.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Laney asks.

“What can I do? He knows I know. I don’t even know
what
I know, but I’m pretty sure I know
something.
You know?”

This line of thinking is confusing to follow even for me, but because Laney is my best friend, she nods and says, “Oh, yeah, I
so
know.”

Laney orders a soy
venti
latte with, like, five shots of three different flavored syrups, hazelnut and mint and vanilla. It sounds gross. I like to keep it simple: skinny chocolate mocha, extra whip. After the bored-looking girl behind the counter takes my order, I look around the crowded shop, hugging my arms around my middle. It feels weird, being out in the real world again. Around people just living their lives like normal. Their presence is oppressive. The very fact that the world is going on as usual, like nothing ever happened, makes me want to scream. I know it’s irrational to expect everything to grind to a halt because of June, but still. A wave of anxiety builds in my chest, my head pounding so loud it drowns out the noise of people talking and tapping away on their laptops.

The snap of the cashier’s chewing gum brings me back down to reality.

“That’ll be two dollars and ninety-five cents,” she says.

Before I can reach for my wallet, Laney hands over a ten-dollar bill, covering for the both of us. I’m about to insist on buying my own when I catch the eye of two guys, both college age. One is tall, kind of slick looking and gives off major smarminess vibes. The other is pudgy and acne ridden, like one of those guys from the “before” shots
in commercials for Proactiv. They’re huddled at a nearby table, whispering and sneaking long looks our way.

“Hey, princess, is that you?” the tall one suddenly calls out.

Laney turns, and the moment she makes eye contact with the guy, all of the color drains from her face. Her eyes dart from him to the door, like she’s going to bolt, but then she smoothes out her expression and walks over to them, fists balled at her sides. I have no idea what is going on. I take the change from the cashier and trail behind her, juggling both of our drinks.

“I love a girl who
comes
when she’s called.” The tall one leers, and the greasy fatty bumps his fist into the guy’s shoulder and laughs, saying,
“Nice,”
like that was some display of razor-sharp wit instead of being totally gross.

I expect Laney to punch him in the face, or at the very least tell them off, but she does neither.

“What do you want, Kyle?” she asks stiffly.

Kyle? I glance at her, surprised. She knows this guy?

“What, we can’t share a friendly hello?” The guy—Kyle, apparently—grins, and I notice how bright his teeth are. “Last I knew you had no problem sharing more than
that.”

His gaze travels up and down her body lazily and lingers. The whole leering thing is giving me major creeps. Laney’s face scrunches up funny; I wait for her to lay the smack down, the way she always does when some loser hits on
her, but she just stands there, speechless. Finally I nudge her elbow and hand her the latte.

“We should go. I’ve got that—thing,” I say lamely.

Acne Guy snickers. “Oh, right. Wouldn’t want to miss that
thing.”

Laney spins on her heel and rushes out the door. I’m so shocked that all I can do is level my iciest glare at Acne Guy before hustling out of the store after her, bumping into an entering patron on the way. No time for snappy comebacks when my best friend is making a mad dash.

Outside, Laney’s already inside the car. I can’t run while carrying steaming coffee, and she has the keys in the ignition by the time I manage to climb into the passenger seat. She doesn’t even wait for me to buckle in before peeling out of the parking lot, tires screeching.

“Gah!” I yelp as a bit of hot coffee sloshes over the cup and lands on my hand. “Will you stop for a second? Jesus!”

We pass another block or so before she bothers to slow down. She white-knuckles the steering wheel, staring straight ahead and ignoring me.

“Who was that?” I demand. “Why are you—”

“Just give me a minute, okay? Please.”

I fall silent. I’ve never seen her like this before. So shaken up. It’s really freaking me out.

Laney calms down enough to take a sip of her latte, then hits the turn signal and pulls into an empty parking lot. She
shuts the car off, tosses the keys on top of the dashboard and slumps against the seat, head rolling back. I stare at her and wait.

“That was Kyle,” she finally says.

“I gathered that much.” I take a long drink of my mocha, watching her.

“We had sex.”

I almost do a spit-take. Laney looks over at me as I choke and cough, wiping the coffee and whipped cream off my chin.

“You—what?” I’m still sputtering.
“When?”

“Almost a week ago. He was behind me in line at the gas station, and we just started talking….”

“So that’s your prerequisite for sex now? Standing behind you in line at the Gas-N-Go?”

It comes out harsher than I intend, but between the scalding coffee on my tongue and this little revelation, I’m more than a little off my game. Call me a prude, but this whole casual sex thing is so weird to me. I can’t imagine sleeping with some guy I’ve only known for a few hours. I know Laney tends to be…more forward than I am, and it’s not unheard of for her to mess around with guys she hasn’t known that long, but a random hookup like this? Really?

Laney gives me an offended look. “God, Harper, no! It’s more complicated than that.” She sets her coffee down in the cup holder and exhales loudly. “It was right after…

after June, and I was really upset, I wasn’t even thinking. We talked a little, and he invited me to this party. And I got, like, seriously wasted. I don’t even know how it happened. Next thing I know…”

I study her for a long moment. “Laney. Did he—”

“No!” she says quickly. She hesitates. “It’s not like he
assaulted
me, okay? I didn’t exactly say no.”

“But did you say
yes?
“

“Yeah. I mean. I think so. Maybe. I must’ve, right?” Her eyes glisten wetly. “It was so stupid.
I’m
so stupid.”

The look on her face guts me. I should’ve been there. I’m the one who watches her back, the same way she watches mine. I wouldn’t have let this happen.

“You’re
not
stupid,” I tell her. I take a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts. This is way too much to absorb in one sitting. “Look. Laney. It’s not your fault that that Kyle guy is a sleaze. You could’ve told me earlier. I would’ve—”

“Would’ve what?” she says sharply. She shrugs and lowers her eyes to her coffee cup. “It happened. Whatever. It’s over now, and it’s not like I’m going to do it again. I thought about telling you. I was going to, but with—well, everything—” She swallows hard. “It seemed kind of unimportant. You have enough to deal with right now.”

Laney’s not the blushing virgin type; she had sex for the first time with short-stint boyfriend Dustin Matthews after sophomore year homecoming and spared me no detail in
recounting the event. And from the stories she’s shared, I know it wasn’t her last time hooking up, either. Every time I looked remotely scandalized by her tales, she’d roll her eyes and say, “Sex is, like, not
even
a big deal,
trust
me,” which maybe was true for those who were having it—not that I would know—but in my experience was a huge deal for those who weren’t.

By the time we’ve finished our coffee, Laney seems to be feeling more like herself again. She slides on her oversize pink-tinted sunglasses and grabs the keys.

“We should get going,” she says, and goes to start up the Gremlin.

Except it doesn’t start.

The engine revs like a skipping record, then putters out. She curses and twists the keys again. This time the engine barely makes a noise at all. So she tries again.

And again.

“So I think we’re stuck,” she says to me, five minutes later when the engine has failed to start.

“Yeah, looks like.”

She groans. “Today sucks.”

“Do I need to call my mom?” I think about the inebriated state I found her in the other morning. “I think she might be busy….” Aunt Helen would probably come out, but the last thing I want to do is ask her for a favor.

Laney waves one hand. “No, it’s cool. I’ll call mine. I’m
sure she’ll be
so
pleased to tear herself away from
Days of Our Lives
in order to help out her only daughter.”

She digs into her purse and whips out her cell phone. First she calls for a tow, and then she calls her mother. The towing guys come out first. We stand next to the curb as they hook the car up to the truck.

“Long live the Gremlin,” Laney says somberly, pouring what little is left of her latte onto the pavement in commemoration as the mechanic’s truck tows her piece of junk out of the lot. She lowers herself onto the curb and I sit down next to her, kicking at a stray pebble.

“Maybe it’s just the battery?” I say hopefully. “Or the water pump. It could be the water pump.”

“Whatever it is, there’s, like, no way I can afford to fix it,” she says. “I can barely manage to keep the tank filled these days. Even if I could swing it, it would wipe out all the money that could get us to California.”

The idea of running away to California is like a silver strand of hope, this tiny, fragile thread tying me to the world, giving me a reason to have been left behind by June. Giving me a purpose. And now that thread is thinning with every passing moment, worn down by the brutal scrape of reality grating away at it, bit by bit. It was probably a stupid idea in the first place. And an increasingly impossible one.

But then I think of June’s postcard, her words, that perfect, idyllic beach, and something in me resurges, clings
to that thread even more tightly. I’m not letting this go without a fight.

“Besides,” Laney says, “the repairs will probably cost as much as the stupid piece of crap is worth.”

“Can’t your dad pay for it?” I ask.

“You know how he is—for a guy who makes as much money as he does, he’s a total tightwad.”

“But you get an allowance, right?” I press. “Don’t you have some of it saved?”

Laney looks at me incredulously. “Harper. I’m spending four dollars a day on sugared caffeine. What do you think?” She rolls her eyes. “And willing though my mom may be to update my wardrobe, no way will she help me out with this. Let’s face it. It’s a lost cause.”

I’m not ready to give up yet. “There are other ways of getting to California,” I point out.

“Like what? By plane? I think they’re going to say something when your carry-on is a freaking
urn.”

Laney’s uncharacteristically reasoned logic could not come at a worse time. She’s supposed to be the optimist, not me.

“What about a bus?”

“I am so not taking a bus. Have you heard how unsafe those things are? We’d probably get mugged or murdered. Or worse.”

Now, that sounds more like the overly dramatic Laney I know.

I sigh and look down at her feet. She has on black sandals with a cork heel, and her toes are painted dark red—obviously she had them done recently. Her mom’s idea of mother-daughter bonding time is getting pedicures together; a conundrum for Laney, who loves pedicures, but hates spending more time with her mother than strictly necessary.

“I think,” Laney says, “we are at an
impose
.”

“You mean an impasse?”

“Right, that. If the universe wants us to go to California, things will work out on their own.”

“Don’t say that,” I snap. It always bothers me when Laney starts espousing this particular brand of fatalism. “This isn’t about leaving shit up to fate. This isn’t a game!”

“I wasn’t trying to say that,” she says, confused and a little hurt.

“I have to do this.” My voice rises, almost cracking. I have to make her understand. This isn’t just a joke or something I’m talking about for kicks. This has to happen. “I need your help. Please. I’m not just messing around here. I am so, completely dead serious, you don’t even know. I
have
to do this. For June. I have to, or—” Or I’ll never be able to live with myself. I can’t bring myself to actually say it. I don’t need to. Laney knows.

“Okay,” she soothes, “okay, we’ll find a way, okay? I promise. Just breathe.”

I look at her and nod. I believe her. Laney never makes promises she can’t keep.

Mrs. Sterling picks us up a few minutes later in her white SUV. During the drive back, she makes a lot of
tsking
sounds with her tongue and keeps saying, “Laney, your father is
not
going to be happy about this,” like Laney’s to blame for her junky car breaking down. Her mouth looks weird, like she’s trying to frown, except the Botox makes it impossible, and from the backseat I catch her glancing in the rearview mirror to brush her peroxide-blond hair away from her alarmingly orange fake-baked face.

When she pulls into my driveway, she twists around in her seat, smiles tightly and asks if my mother enjoyed the quiche.

“It was great,” I lie, and open the door. “My mom says thanks.”

“I’ll call you,” Laney says as I climb out. I wave, and she blows a kiss through the window.

The house is empty again. I think about eating, but I’m not really hungry, and besides, after tossing out the gross foods we’d been given, the refrigerator is bare; there’s a bottle of wine on the bottom shelf, mostly empty. I dump what’s left into the sink and tuck the bottle under some trash in the bin.