The Edge of Juniper
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Authors: Lora Richardson
The Edge of Juniper
Lora Richardson
The Edge of Juniper
Lora Richardson
Copyright 2016 Lora Richardson.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission of Lora Richardson, except in the case of brief excerpts included in a critical review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover Design Copyright 2016 Pink Ink Designs.
The Edge of Juniper
Lora Richardson
For Erin—my sister and true friend.
And for Dad, giver of endless support.
C
elia
tore
off
my blanket and pressed her mouth to my ear. “Fay!” Her breath was hot, and I swiped my hand across my ear to erase the feeling. She tossed my sandals onto the bed beside me. “Get your shoes on. Don’t bother with clothes.”
I blinked and looked at the window, where no hint of daybreak showed around the edges of the shade. Celia glanced over her shoulder at me, her fingers flying over her shoelaces. When she saw I hadn’t moved, she gripped my wrists and pulled me to a sitting position.
“Is there some sort of emergency?” Sleep made my words slow, and I found it hard to muster any fervor. I was accustomed to Celia being worked up over one thing or another. Her excitement rarely led to anything worth being excited about, and I had learned not to fret too soon.
“Not an emergency, an adventure,” she said, beaming at me. She picked up my foot and tried to stuff it into my sandal.
I took it from her and finished the task myself. “You want me to go outside wearing this?” I gestured to my thin, worn nightgown.
“No one will see you, I promise.”
Easy for her to say, she was wearing pants. Celia’s hair, sleek and black as ink, swung in front of her face as she leaned down to grab my hands again. I knew my own hair—long, blonde, and fine—was likely snarled up like a briar bush. In spite of both my hair and my lack of proper attire, I felt a twinge of eagerness for whatever she had planned. I was not one to shun adventure, especially middle-of-the-night adventure.
Celia pulled me up and dragged me from the bed. We tiptoed down the hallway and through the kitchen. She slowed at the back door, making sure the lock and doorknob were silent, as we slipped out into the stifling June heat of Juniper, Indiana, population eight hundred nineteen.
“Won’t Aunt Donna kill us if she looks in your room and sees we’re gone?” I had only been at my aunt and uncle’s house for three days, and my parents had implored me to follow the rules. I was not used to having rules.
“She’d kill
me
, sure, but you’re a guest. You’ll be fine. She won’t find out, though, so stop worrying. I do this all the time.”
I wondered if that was true. Celia was only six months younger than me, but because of her autumn birthday she was a year behind me in school. She hated that I was sixteen and she was still fifteen. She had the false notion that she needed to keep up with me, when in truth, I never did anything remarkable. It seemed she expended a lot of energy to prove to me how mature she was. I wasn’t sure how to convince her that she didn’t need to impress me.
If you asked Celia, she’d say I was a city slicker. It was true that I loved my home in Perry, a city in Eastern New Hampshire, a thousand miles from here. However, the times I’d spent in Juniper with the Youngs had shown me I was a country girl deep down in my bones. In Perry, I might have had to drive to find the woods, but I went to the trouble to do it.
I conjured an image of my typical Saturday night with my friends back home. Likely Finn would take us to the bridge over Hollis Creek. He’d park the car in the grass on the side of the road, and he, Freya, and I would walk to the foot bridge where we’d sit and talk about stupid stuff. Maybe we’d split a beer, pilfered from their house. Maybe we’d play truth or dare, challenging each other to tell the truth about our crushes, or dare each other to moon the cars driving past on the road. I couldn’t count all the cars we mooned over the years. The bridge was at least twenty yards into the thick woods, though, so we’d all admit that probably no one ever saw our hind ends.
Celia and I traipsed through the back yard and into the woods beyond. I wondered if she knew how lucky she was to have the woods right behind her house. We passed the huge, droopy hemlock tree at the edge of the yard, and I brushed my fingers across the needles and smiled, remembering. Many a time in summers past, we’d slept under that tree, just the two of us, deep in the cave of branches. We would sweep a circle clear of needles, and lay down blankets to make a little nest. Huddled close together for safety against darkness and monsters, we’d tell each other stories until we fell asleep. I strained my ears, listening for the ghosts of our giggles, but heard only the night bugs and the crunch of twigs under our feet.
We moved through the trees for a time, Celia seeming to glide, and me stumbling clumsily along after her. A low hanging branch scraped across my neck. “Are we about there?” By that point I had tripped over several branches, had itchy scratches on my legs, and leaves were stuck in my sandals. Which is not to say I wasn’t enjoying myself; I loved it. I just wished I was wearing my hiking boots and holding a flashlight.
“Almost. Do you see how the trees thin out over there?” Celia pointed. “There’s a clearing on the other side, and a pond. That’s where we’re going.”
“Okay, let’s go a little faster.” My eyes burned and I tried to blink away the sleepiness.
As we neared the clearing, I heard laughing and splashing. I glanced at Celia, who grinned, her teeth and eyes all I could see in the darkness. She squatted behind a dense bush, and motioned for me to do the same.
I looked out at the black surface of the pond. It was mostly dark in the clearing, but there were a few lanterns and flashlights that made the water look silver in places. Heads bobbed in the middle of the water. I smacked a mosquito on the back of my arm.
“Are we going to join them?”
“No, just wait for it.” Celia covered her mouth to bury her giggles.
I furrowed my brow. Why were we lurking in the bushes? “Do you know those people?”
“Shh!”
I heard a faint wailing noise. Sirens. I glanced at Celia, then turned my attention back to the pond. The heads in the water zoomed for the shore. The sirens grew louder. Naked bodies grappled at the grass and slipped their way up the small hill at the edge of the pond. Beside me, Celia snorted with suppressed laughter.
“Look, there’s Brian Halsey’s ass!” She pointed to a pale, gleaming backside as it rushed out of sight and into the trees on the other side of the clearing.
Finally the sirens peaked and faded into silence, leaving my ears buzzing, and the police car entered the clearing. Now that the area was lit by headlights, I could see a small dirt road leading to the pond. A few cars were parked on the side of it, and I wondered if, even though most of the skinny dippers had escaped on foot, they would be caught anyway because of their license plates.
A tall, trim police officer got out of the car and waved his flashlight around the scene. Only a few girls remained, left behind by their faster friends. I bet it rankled that every single boy had left them to get caught. One of the girls wrapped a towel around herself and talked with the police officer. She didn’t seem upset, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying from that distance.
Celia clutched her stomach as she expelled the last of her silent laughter. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go back.”
I stood beside her and followed her back the way we had come. When we were a good distance away, I spoke. “Were you the one who called the police on them?”
She laughed. “No. I overheard them talking today at the restaurant. I might have mentioned it to Esta.”
Esta was Celia’s best friend since Kindergarten, and though I’d known her nearly as long as Celia had, I still hadn’t figured her out. She didn’t seem to like me much, but she was loyal and devoted to Celia, and I heartily approved of that. Regardless, I wasn’t surprised to hear she would call the cops on a bunch of teenagers skinny dipping. “Is skinny dipping even illegal?”
Celia shrugged. “I don’t know, but trespassing is. It’s her uncle’s pond. Anyway, it was funny. Did you see Aaron’s dick flopping around as he ran for his towel?” She howled with laughter again.
I sighed loudly to show her I wasn’t amused. But actually, I had seen that penis. I had never seen one in real life before, having neither a brother nor an immodest father. Nor a boyfriend, let’s not forget that. Celia had a boyfriend, though. “Are you going to tell Ronan you saw a penis tonight?”
“He wouldn’t care. Wasn’t it hilarious how they all scrambled to get out of the water?” Celia was still giggling.
“Hmm.” Celia didn’t seem to notice that I didn’t share her enthusiasm. I couldn’t help thinking it would have been a whole lot more fun to be on the other side of the scene. Imagine the stories the swimmers would be telling in the morning!
When we reached Celia’s yard, we quieted down and crept up the back steps. Celia turned the doorknob and it squealed. I cringed, my heart pounding. I chided myself for getting worked up. I’d never snuck out before, and of course that meant I’d never snuck back in either. I told myself it would be fine.
But when Celia pushed open the door, the scent of hot coffee hit my nose, and the sight of my Aunt Donna sitting at the kitchen table hit me right in the gut.
Aunt Donna sat, her hand wrapped around the steaming mug, and her eyes leveled on Celia. I saw a storm brewing behind Aunt Donna’s gaze, and my heart sank. I thought of my mother and how disappointed she would be if she knew I’d broken her sister’s house rules so early into my stay. My parents needed me to be here for the summer. They needed this to work out.
“Fay, please go on to bed,” Donna said, and smiled at me. It was a tense smile, and didn’t reach her eyes. I glanced at Celia and bit my lip. I didn’t want her to take all the blame. Donna read the concern on my face, and would have none of it. “Don’t worry about her, just get yourself to bed.”
I didn’t dare speak after that. I lowered my head and walked down the hall to the bedroom I would share with Celia for the next eight weeks. I shut the door behind me and turned on the lamp by my bed. When I sat down, I got a glimpse of my filthy feet and legs. I took off my sandals and walked into the tiny bathroom attached to Celia’s room. I ran a washcloth under cold water, and used it to scrub the dirt off my feet and wash the scratches on my legs.
I tucked myself into bed, pulling the thin blanket up to my ears, and tried to ignore the yelling I could hear coming from the kitchen. It was muffled due to the distance and the closed door, but a few phrases reached my ears plain as day. “Get your act together,” and, “Bad influence on Fay,” and, “What would your father do if he found out? For God’s sake, child!” A sick feeling settled in my belly.
The door opened a crack, and I held my breath, hoping it was Celia, finally released from the lecture. It wasn’t though; it was Abe.
“Fay? Are you awake?”
I laughed softly. Who could sleep through that racket? “I’m awake, Abe. You can come in.”
He walked in and sat down on the edge of my bed. For a minute, he sat quietly, staring at Celia’s posters—she had fashion models and design ideas plastered all over her walls. I took the opportunity to look at him. His hair was glossy and black like Celia’s. His child face held a hint of the teenager he was about to become. His nose had that look all twelve-year-olds’ noses get, where it’s just a little too large but you can tell the rest of the face will eventually catch up. His eyes skated around the room, looking at everything but me.
“It’s okay, you know,” he said. “Sometimes they yell like that. And Dad’s not home, so you don’t have to worry.”
“The yelling doesn’t bother me.” A lie. “But Celia didn’t sneak out alone, and I hate that she’s getting in trouble alone.”
“You guys snuck out?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
That was an excellent question, the answer to which I certainly didn’t understand. “Celia wanted to watch a bunch of skinny dippers get caught by the police.”
Abe laughed—a wonderful snuffling sound.
I laughed too, at the absurdity of the whole thing. What a waste of getting in trouble. My parents’ faces popped into my head and my stomach tightened up again.
“Abe? Do you think your parents will let me stay, after this?”
He frowned at me. “Of course they will. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Your mom sounds really upset.”
“Nah, that’s just regular mad. You’re fine.”
“Okay.” I let out a long breath. It said a lot about Abe that he was able to calm me down. “Thanks, Aby Baby.”
“You’re welcome, Fayby Baby.” Then he looked at me closely and added, “Don’t call me that anymore, unless we’re alone. Got it?”
“Got it.” I nodded solemnly at him, and he left the room.
I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall. Aunt Donna was still going, though she was quieting down. I tried to believe Abe; that they would still let me stay. Aunt Donna and Uncle Todd were more strict than my parents. Freya said my parents were permissive, and maybe that was true. My parents knew everything I did and everywhere I went—they simply allowed it all, knowing I wouldn’t cross any lines.
I needed to figure out where the lines lay in Todd and Donna’s house. The trouble was, those lines seemed to wiggle all over the place. I’d spent a week with them in Juniper every summer of my life, and I’d witnessed plenty of strange rules. One time, Abe had been sent to bed at six o’clock for eating two slices of pie. There had only been enough pie for everybody to have one piece, and so someone had to do without. Mom warned me that without her and Dad here with me, I’d have to abide by the same rules and limits that were set for my cousins. I hadn’t anticipated any problems with that, because Juniper was pretty much my favorite place on earth, rules or no rules. And here I was, three days into my stay, and I had done way worse than eating a double helping of pie. Donna had a right to be upset. My skin prickled with shame.