The Edge of Juniper (11 page)

He smiled.  “She’s the one who said it.”

“Oh.  She did?”

“She said this whole town is one boring mess, and asked me if I would help her alleviate the boredom.”

“And you’re not going to?”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to.  I broke up with her because she wasn’t right for me.”

I considered that.  “You don’t pine for her?”

He looked at me like I was nuts.  Maybe I was.  “I don’t.”

“Then why did you let her press her boobs on your back?”

“What?”  He let out a choked laugh.

“Just now.  She put her arms around your neck, and I know her boobs had to be somewhere.”  I shrugged and smirked, trying to convey that I was teasing, but in truth, I had to know what his reaction would be.  I couldn’t make myself let it go.

“I didn’t feel her boobs.”  Red was creeping up his neck and covering his face.

“Liar.”

He took a deep breath.  “It’s not like I wanted her do it, she just did it.  You must not have seen me peeling her off.”

“Hmm.”

He bowed his head, thinking quietly for a moment.  “Fay, I’m not interested in Rose.  I don’t want to be with her.  I have someone else in mind.”

“Malcolm, I like simple.  This gets more complicated as time goes by.”  I stood up.

He stood up too, and put his hands on my shoulders.  “It’s not complicated.  It’s as simple as breathing.”

My breath caught in my throat, then sped up as my heartbeat thundered through me.  With the weight of his hands on my shoulders and the weight of his gaze on my face, breathing was anything but simple.

We ended up at the cemetery, a short walk across the park, at my suggestion.  I have always liked cemeteries.  Since I can remember, my mom has taken me to visit her younger brother’s grave every time we came to Juniper.  He died in a car accident before I was born.  I wondered if Aunt Donna ever came to visit him.  We’d spread a blanket out next to his headstone, and have a picnic with him.  I’ve often wondered if the reason I wasn’t given a sibling was so I wouldn’t have one to lose.

Malcolm seemed a little jittery.  “Is this too creepy?” I asked.  “We can go somewhere else if you want.”

“I refuse to be scared if you’re not.”

“I wouldn’t mind.  I don’t have the notion that boys should be tougher.”

“Well, wait a minute, I’m plenty tough.”

I grinned at him.  “I never said you weren’t.  Just that it’s okay with me if you aren’t.  I’m sure there are other situations where you’d be tougher.”

“So being here at night doesn’t bother you at all?” he asked.

“Not a bit.  I’m not scared of dead bodies or ghosts.  I’d like to meet one, in fact.”

“What would you say to a ghost if you met one?”

“I’d let it speak first.”

We walked to the gazebo, our footsteps swishing the grass.  Malcolm’s feet were still bare.  It was exhilarating to be out of my aunt and uncle’s stuffy house, in the night, somewhere I knew nobody else would want to be, where no one would come looking.  In the gazebo, Malcolm sat on a bench, leaving room for me to join him.  I decided to sit across from him though, on a different bench.  It was a small gazebo, so we were still sitting rather close, but I wanted some space between us because I didn’t want him to try to kiss me again tonight.  I hadn’t completely let go of the image of Rose’s arms wrapped around him.  I understood he hadn’t invited her touch, and though this was my first experience with this kind of jealous feeling, I knew enough to know I didn’t want a kiss with Malcolm tainted by those kinds of feelings.

Malcolm looked at me.  “Hi,” he said, his mouth curving into a smile.

“Hello.” I smiled back.

“I have something on my mind, but it’s not a fun topic.  I want to try to turn this night around, but first I want to get this out.”

“What is it?”

“At dinner tonight, I talked to my dad again, about your uncle.  He didn’t want to tell me, but I finally managed to pry him open.  He said that night he called the cops, it was more than just yelling.  He told me your uncle hit your aunt.”

Those words were like wasps.  They swarmed around my head, threatening to sting if I made one wrong move.  “But Celia told me he never hits her.”

“Maybe she wasn’t out there when it happened.  It was the front yard, Fay.  I’m sure more people than just my dad heard their fight. The police kept him in jail overnight.”

“Jail?  Nobody ever mentioned jail before.”

Malcolm just looked at me.

“He really hit her?  In the face?” I asked.

“My dad said he punched her in the stomach.”

The wasp-words were closing in.  The buzzing was loud in my ears.  “That’s hideous.”

“It is.  And my question to you is, do you feel safe there?”

“This is silly.  I’ve already told you.  Yes, I feel safe there.”  I couldn’t talk to him about this. It should stay in the family.  “Maybe he misinterpreted what he saw.  You hear that all the time, about how unreliable witnesses are.  They argue, but that’s it.”

Malcolm leaned forward to look more closely at my face.  Along with his usual scent, he smelled like fresh pond water and night air.  “Will you tell me if you ever start to feel unsafe there?” he asked.

I was certain this would never be an issue.  “Sure.”

He sat back, looking relieved.

“Can we be normal now?” I asked.

“Nothing is normal with you around.  But sure, let’s give it a try.”

I laughed and looked out at the gravestones.  “Let’s talk about the dead.  Anybody you know buried here?”

“Lots of Dearings are buried here, but not many I knew personally.  We go way back in this town.  The goat grandpa I told you about, he’s here.”

“Introduce me?”

“Uh, sure.”  We walked to a grave on a small hill.  “Grandpa, this is Fay.  She’s jealous she never got to ride Glenda.”

“Hi, Grandpa.” We stood there quietly for a bit.  I turned to Malcolm and whispered, “Was your grandpa a talker?”

“No, he was pretty quiet.  A thinker.”

“I won’t bother him then.”

A laugh popped out of Malcolm, and he shook his head at me.  I noticed he did that a lot, almost like he couldn’t believe I was real.  “What about you, lots of relatives here?”

“My grandma and grandpa.  They moved here from Maine.  They raised two girls—my mom and Aunt Donna, and a son, Joseph, who died before I was born.  He’s here too.  My mom is real big into visiting graves and leaving flowers, so we visit their graves every summer we come to town.”  I led him around to their graves.

“I’m thinking we didn’t do a very good job at being normal,” he said, when we had made our rounds and arrived back at the gazebo.

“Very true.  Okay, how about this, then.  I don’t even know how old you are, or what grade you’ll be in this fall.”

“Seventeen.  Senior.”

“I’m sixteen.  I’ll be a junior at Perry High.  Speaking of, I’ll be going back to Perry in six weeks and one day.”

“Ah, a countdown.  Are you anxious to get out of here?” He touched my knee with his thumb, just briefly.  I looked down at it, marveling at how such a small touch could produce a feeling throughout my entire body.  He had large fingers, both long and thick, and so tan that when he bent them, the skin was paler in the knuckle lines.

“It’s been weird.  At first I was excited to come and spend time with Celia.  But it turns out that our week-long visits weren’t at all how it is to actually live with her.  Then for a few days I just wanted to go home.”  I bit my lip, unsure if I should really say what I was considering saying.  As usual, I said it.  “And right now, I’m kind of enjoying being here.”

He liked that.  His grin grew by three sizes, at least.  “Good.  You know, I don’t even know why you’re here.  All I know is that your parents needed you to stay here.  I’m guessing they didn’t trust you to stay out of trouble if they left you home alone for the summer?” he teased.

I thought about playing it light, and bantering back to him.  It would have been easy.  But I decided to go with the bald truth, and I’d just have to try to control my eye sockets.  “My parents are on a service trip with a bunch of teachers, and at the end of it, they will decide if they’re going to stay married.  I think they’re going to be together so much, they’ll remember how much they love each other.”  I felt compelled to continue before he could respond or wear any sort of pity on his face.  “I know what you’re thinking:  A trip isn’t going to fix a marriage.  But honestly I think it’s going to work.  They could have decided not to go, after telling me they might to split up.  But they met on a service trip sort of like this in college, and so they decided to do it, for each other.  To make sure about what they really want.”  I leaned back against the edge of the gazebo, the board painfully jabbing into my back.

Malcolm tilted his head to study me.  “I wasn’t thinking that.  My parents do all kind of hokey things for their marriage, not that a service trip is hokey, I don’t mean that.  But you saw that candle my mom has—stuff like that.  My parents go to therapy all the time.  They think it’s fun. And they’ve been on more retreats than I can count.  They constantly tell me you have to put in what you want to get out.  So I think you’re right, it sounds like they’re willing to put a lot in, so it could work.  Or at least it could be a beginning.”

“Are you just saying what I want to hear?”

“No, I mean it. It sounds like they still like each other, if they were willing to spend a whole summer together.”

“So now you know why I’m here.”  I felt better having told him, and I hadn’t even had to
try
not to cry.

“And that you’re leaving in six weeks and one day.”

“That’s not counting today, since it’s almost over.”

“I have an idea or two; some things we can do to fill that time.”  He had a mischievous look in his eyes.

“You do?  I’ve been told there isn’t anything to do in Juniper.”

“When you’re with the right person, you never run out of things to do.”

8

Eleven tables.  That
was all I’d cleared in the last four hours.  Everyone was at the Founder’s Day carnival.  The third Saturday every June, the town put on the tiny carnival to celebrate the heritage of Juniper.  I’d never been, but Celia assured me it was lame.  She and I had differing opinions about most things though, so I thought I might like the carnival.

I had agreed to meet Malcolm there when my shift ended, which was in one hour.  He’d told me there would be food trucks with fried anything-I-could-dream-of, and he was going to buy me my choice of fried delicacy.

“What are you doing down there?” Heidi’s rumbly voice startled me from my trance.

I looked at the bright white of her canvas sneakers and wondered how she kept them so clean.  Everything else in the entire restaurant was coated in a thin layer of fryer grease.  “It’s dead in here, Heidi.  I had to do something before I fell into a coma.”  I dipped my rag in the soapy water, and continued to scrub the baseboard by the front door.

“Well, get up, kid.  That water’s gray.  The customers will lose their appetites.”

“What customers?  No one has walked in here in forty-five minutes.”

“That’s why I’m letting you go early.”

“Seriously?”  I hopped up, holding the bucket, and made a beeline for the kitchen. “Thanks, Heidi,” I called over my shoulder.  Heidi had finally given me my own schedule, and this had been my first shift without Celia.  I’d grown bored after the first ten minutes without my cousin’s sass.  I vowed never to take her for granted again.

I took off my apron and headed out for home to get ready for the carnival.  I needed a shower first.  Even though she thought the carnival was a joke, Celia planned to be there, and she told me I should dress up a little if I went too.

I swung open the screen door, feeling giddy for the evening ahead. I stopped in my tracks when I saw my aunt at the kitchen table, red-faced and wiping her eyes.

“Aunt Donna, is everything okay?”  I walked slowly to the table, as though she was a wild rabbit I didn’t want to frighten.

“Oh, don’t worry about me.  Everything’s fine.”  She blew her nose on a paper towel, then stood and began to fill a sink with hot water and dish soap.

“I can wash those for you.  I wouldn’t mind a bit, seeing as how I’m a professional dish washer and all.”

She cracked a small smile and sighed.  “You can dry.”

I joined her at the sink and picked up the dish towel.  It was thin white linen, with hand-embroidered flowers on one end.  I ran my fingertips over the threads, feeling a sudden ache in my chest.

It was Donna who spoke.  “Your grandmother made that towel.  I have a whole set of ten.  She gave them to us for our wedding.”

“I thought so.  We have the same set at home, from my parents’ wedding.”  I swallowed thickly.  Aunt Donna didn’t mention the catch in my throat as I spoke.  “Mom saved them for a while. Then a few years ago she decided it was silly to keep them in a box, so now we use them.”  If they got divorced, would they even want them anymore?

We worked in silence for a while.   When there was only silverware left, Donna fished around in the soapy water while I held my breath, terrified she’d stab herself on a knife hidden under the bubbles. She finally spoke.  “Your uncle is down at the bar tonight.  When you come home after the carnival, and I expect you home by eleven tonight, not twelve, make as little noise as possible.  He gets grouchy when he drinks.”

I nodded, knowing she didn’t want me to comment about Uncle Todd’s drinking.  It had taken a lot for her to tell me what she did.  “I’ll be home by eleven.”

“Thanks,” Donna said, and gave me a thoughtful look.  I understood she wasn’t thanking me for helping with the dishes.

From a distance, the carnival did look a little puny.  It was set up in an empty parking lot and the vacant lot next to it.  The grassy lot wasn’t small, but it still wasn’t the image I had in my mind of a carnival.  There were five rides, most of them for small children.  Only the Ferris wheel and scrambler looked like they could support adult bodies.  On the parking lot, a few food trucks were set up, as well as a few commercial tables representing local businesses.  There were also some game booths, and when I saw the prize offerings, I decided I wanted to pop some balloons with darts.

I walked through the thick crowd feeling happy, the throngs of boisterous people making it really feel like a carnival.  The sweet smell of cotton candy hung on the air.  I wore a swishy blue sundress, and I had braided the front of my hair and wound it into a crown on top of my head, which always made me feel a little bit fancy.

I stepped up to the dart booth, and waited my turn.  The carnie, who was so tan and wrinkly that he was basically a mummy, handed me three darts and told me good luck.  I threw the first and missed.  I raised my arm to throw the second, and felt it tugged backward by someone’s hands.  I spun around to see Celia, standing with Esta and Ronan.  Ronan was snickering about his little trick.  Coming from anyone else, I would have laughed.  Coming from him, I ignored it.  “Hi guys.  Having a good time?”

“I’m already sick from an elephant ear and riding the scrambler three times in a row,” Celia said, smiling through her complaint.  “You going to win me a teddy bear, Fay?”

“Throw your darts, lady.  There’s people waiting,” the carnie grumbled at me.

Celia laughed.  “Yeah, lady.  Throw your darts.”  She and Esta collapsed in laughter, and I wondered if they’d been drinking.

I threw a dart, and missed again.  Drat.  Ronan laughed.

It was then that Paul and Malcolm walked up to the booth and joined us.  “Oh no, you don’t,” Celia said to Malcolm, pointing her finger at his face.  “This is my area.  I’m standing here with
my
cousin, and you are not to come inside our circle.”  She drew an imaginary circle in the air around us with her finger.  I knew then that she was tipsy.

Malcolm radiated amusement, towering over all of us, wearing a gray T-shirt that allowed me to see the appealing width of his chest.  Maybe I was a late bloomer, but I hadn’t known I’d had a type.  The slippery feeling growing in my stomach as I took him in was telling me that massive, hairy, smiling guys were clearly my type.

Paul grinned, amused by Celia too.  “Hi Celia, Esta.”  He didn’t say anything to Ronan, a silence that spoke volumes.

“Come on, let’s go find Molly.  She was supposed to be here by now,” Esta said, clearly desperate to end the awkward encounter.

“I wanna watch Fay throw her last dart,” Celia said, and I heard the slight slur in her words.

I threw my dart, and was delighted when it popped a red balloon on the edge.  The red ones were special prizes.  The carnie spat out a disgusting blob of chewing tobacco onto the ground where he’d surely step in it later, and told me in a bored voice.  “You get to pick any prize.”

I pointed to the one I wanted, and grinned as I was presented with the small stuffed goat.  I turned and held it out to Malcolm.  “For your shelf.”

He laughed and took the goat.  “It’s perfect.”

“You are not serious,” Celia said.

“I never joke about stuffed goats.”

That cracked Paul up.  Esta looked at me, a look of understanding emerging in her eyes.  She grabbed Celia by the elbow and pulled her away.  “Come on, Molly will be waiting.”

Celia turned her head to look at me, even as Esta steered her away.  “Come too, Fay.”

I wasn’t going to hang out with her and Ronan.  There was no way.  She wouldn’t have let me get away with it if she hadn’t been drinking, but I looked directly at her and said, “You go on ahead, Celia.  Your mom said to be home by eleven tonight, and to come in quietly.  See you then.”  I looked at Esta beseechingly, and she nodded and linked arms with Celia, guiding her to a different booth.

Ronan finally turned and followed her, but not before giving me a smug look.  My heart sank, and I felt twisted by conflicting emotions.  On one hand I felt guilty that my cousin and I weren’t on the same page when it came to her family, and that I was doing things she didn’t want me to do. I was sad that we weren’t sharing the closeness I had hoped for from this summer.  On the other hand, I was trembling with excitement to find out what would happen in the next few hours with the boy standing behind me.

I turned to face him, not sure if he’d understand the magnitude of the choice I’d just made.  One look at his face told me all I needed to know.  I saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed.  “You can go with her if you need to.  It’s okay.”

I shook my head.  “So should I have the fried Oreo, or go with the fried Snickers bar?  Or maybe something savory.  Fried pickles?”

“What you need to do is approach it like a meal,” Paul said.  “First you have an appetizer, such as a classic elephant ear.  For your main course you go with the pickles or something like mushrooms.  Then your fried candy for dessert.”

“Is this legal?”  I laughed and we headed off to stuff ourselves with grease.

“Next time Malcolm has to sit alone,” Paul shouted, straining his neck to look back from the Ferris wheel car in front of us.  He had wanted to squeeze all three of us into one car.  I had climbed in first, then Malcolm, and then Paul tried to squish in.  Malcolm swatted him on the head and told him to get his own car.

Malcolm just shook his head and kept grinning, and eventually Paul turned back around.  “Why are you so glum all the time?” I teased him.

“Oh you know, I find there’s just not that much to be happy about in life.”  His actions belied his words as he reached over and danced his fingertips on the back of my hand, where I was gripping the rail so tightly my knuckles were white.  “Here, squeeze my hand instead.”

“No, no.  I’m happy holding onto this firmly attached security bar.”

“Have I finally found something that intimidates you?  Are you scared of heights, Fay?”

If he only knew some of the things that intimidated me.  “Okay, yes.  Heights are my Achilles heel, especially this kind, where I’m being whipped through the air.”

“Whipped through the air?  It’s just a gentle breeze.  We’re basically floating.”

We swooped lower toward the ground, and my muscles relaxed.  Then we rushed on past the ride operator, and headed up again, and everything in me clenched tight.

“Why didn’t you tell me this ride would be too scary?” Malcolm asked.

“I try not to let fear stop me.”

“Well then, let me distract you.”  He pointed over the trees to the east of the carnival.  “See that clearing behind those woods, right on the edge of Juniper?”

I looked in the direction he pointed, and saw the way the town turned to fields and then to woods, with a clearing beyond, like a secret refuge hidden from view.  “Yes.”

“That’s where my grandfather’s goat farm was.”

“What’s there now?”

“It’s still a goat farm.  The Tate family bought it, but they let me camp in the woods and fish in the pond.”

“What is it with Juniper and ponds?  This place is chock-full of them.  It’s practically overrun with ponds.”

He chuckled.  “Well, yeah.  Every good farm has a pond.  And there’s not much out here but good farms.”

“Your dad isn’t a farmer.”

“No, he didn’t want to take over the goat farm.  He worried himself sick for a while when he was younger, thinking Grandpa would be upset about it.  But, of course Grandpa didn’t mind.  Dad was the first in his family to go to college.  He got a business degree.  That’s where he met mom, at college in Colorado.  He picked Colorado because of John Denver’s music.  He’d never been there, just wanted to get a Rocky Mountain high.”

I laughed as the Ferris wheel swooped us down and back up again.  It was working; he was managing to distract me.  “But he came back.  He must love it here.”

“Yeah, he does.  I like it here, too.  Anyway, the plastic factory was failing and up for sale, and my grandpa sold some land and gave Dad his inheritance early, so he could buy it out.”

We got to the top again and Malcolm put his arm around my shoulders.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m holding you.  Do you want me to stop?”

“Yes.”  He made to pull away.  “Actually, no.”  He froze, his arm halfway behind me.

I turned to face him.  I’d always been blunt, possibly too forthcoming for my own good.  I had no inclination to stop that now.  I figured my personality was formed, and for better or for worse, I said what I thought.  “Whenever you touch me, Malcolm, it’s like horses are galloping through my body.”

He sucked in a breath, surprised by me, I thought.  He settled his arm around my shoulder.  I continued.  “I refuse to be some sort of teenage cliché.  I think it’s stupid that my body is reacting this way when I barely know you.”

He laughed then, a deep belly laugh, the gravel in his voice tumbling around, smoothing itself out.  I wasn’t embarrassed, but did he have to laugh?

“Fay.  I’m sorry.  I’m not laughing at you; I just really like the things you say.  And, in case you can’t tell, I have horses galloping through me too.  Great big Clydesdales.”