Brave in the Woods Read online

  “I’m being inconsiderate. Again,” Juni said. “Sorry, Mom. I’ll clean my mess sooner next time. And Dad’s already gone for his walk.”

  Mom didn’t answer, and the way the light hit her curls brought back a flash of memory. It had been a summer morning, just like this one, Mom beside her at the breakfast table, giggling. Mom was “giving her freckles,” which consisted of pinching a freckle off her own arm, and then touching Juni’s arm with it. When Mom would pull her finger away, magically, a freckle Juni would swear she’d never seen before sat underneath. Juni had been little enough to believe that all the freckles she owned came from her mother’s freckle-giving powers, and she’d fling herself out of her chair and go shrieking through the house, “MOM GREW ME ANOTHER FRECKLE!”

  Juni couldn’t remember when she’d left that little piece of believing behind.

  * * *

  As Mom left the kitchen to go back upstairs, the phone rang. It was Mason Wheeler, one of Juni’s best friends, who lived next door.

  “Hey. I was just talking to Gabby and she’s really hoping you’ll be here tomorrow,” he said.

  Juni sighed. “Of course I’ll be there.”

  Gabby’s beloved rat, Piper, had died, and they were having a funeral at the ever-expanding Wheeler Family Pet Cemetery. Juni had already missed barbecues at the lake, the Paul Bunyan Festival and the Singin’ with the Oldies musical marathon at the Mt. Lassen Theatre. She couldn’t miss this, too, especially since she was about to miss something even more important.

  Juni hadn’t told Mason or Gabby yet, but she wasn’t going on their annual just-before-school-starts camping trip to Domingo Springs even though it meant everything to all of them. Especially now.

  “Why didn’t she call me herself?”

  “She didn’t want to be a pain.”

  “But it’s okay for you to be a pain?” Juni said. She was only half joking. It was like neither of them knew how to talk to her anymore.

  “Well, we all know you could never be mad at me, so . . .”

  “I’ll call her,” Juni said.

  “What’s going on?” Mason said. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

  “Nothing. I’m just tired.”

  “You know Gabby understands, right?”

  But Juni wasn’t so sure. Gabriella Carolina Tavares had a personal motto, “Grab Life by the Horns.” She played club soccer like a gladiator and was the only kid Juni knew in middle school who kept an Anthology of Accomplishments that took up seven notebooks on half a bookshelf and went back to first grade. Gabby liked to repeat one of her father’s favorite sayings: Si vale la pena hacerlo, vale la pena hacerlo bien. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Gabby’s father was a life coach, and Mr. Tavares was Gabby’s hero.

  Although Gabby would never come out and say, “Juniper! You have to live your life!” Juni couldn’t help but feel that was exactly what Gabby was thinking.

  “I’ll be there,” Juni said.

  When she hung up, Juni took her charcoal drawing of Mom’s curl-antlers and taped it to the kitchen wall with all the others. She stepped back and studied. There were now thirty-two antler drawings, one for every day since Connor went missing. Some large, some the size of a postage stamp. Napkins, receipts, notebook paper. Whatever was within reach. She had no idea what they might have to do with the curse, but she felt they were connected somehow.

  Mom thought they were disturbing, and Dad didn’t say what he thought, but Juni could see it right there on his face. The worry. Like maybe her compulsion to draw antlers was somehow his fault.

  Anya came up behind Juni, looking over the collection. It was because of Anya that they were still on the wall. My house, my taste in art was what she’d told Mom and Dad. She seemed to understand they were necessary for Juni, even if she wouldn’t let Juni talk about why.

  “Did I ever tell you I gathered every manageable possession I had left of my family and wore them all tucked into the many pockets of a big raincoat Great-Grandpa Teddy gave me?”

  Surprised by Anya’s openness about her past, Juni shook her head. “You didn’t.”

  Anya smoothed Juni’s hair. “There is no right way to cope with a terrible situation. Whatever works is what you do.”

  Anya didn’t talk much about the family she was born to other than the basic facts. That her parents had died, one right after the other, when she was eleven years old. How she and her brother, Will, had slipped through the cracks of social services for a time, living together in an old fishing shack their father had used in the woods near their home in South Lake Tahoe. When they were found, Will was sick, and he eventually died from pneumonia before Anya was sent to live in Chester with foster parents who eventually adopted her. Great-Grandpa Teddy and Great-Grandmother Abigail had brought Anya to this very house, and were loving and kind. But Anya had run away from them once, and never talked about why.

  Anya touched the edge of Juni’s latest antler drawing. “No good has ever come from believing in curses. Or fairy tales,” she said.

  Juni held her breath, hoping Anya would say more. Needing her to. But more wasn’t coming.

  She knew this was hard on Anya. Because of course it was. Anya was doing everything: cooking, cleaning and running their lives as best she could, filling in the gaps Connor’s disappearance had left behind. Now it seemed she was forced to think extra hard about the family she’d lost so long ago. It must have been unbearable.

  But how could she ask Juni not to believe something Juni believed?

  “I’m scared,” Juni whispered.

  “It’s hard not to be afraid when you don’t have answers,” Anya said.

  She ran her hands over Juni’s shoulders and squeezed, like the quick wringing out of a sponge. “When I can’t shake the fear, I go to the woods. I let those trees soak up the burden of it. They know what to do.”

  But Juni was certain there weren’t enough woods or antler sketches or anything else big enough to soak up her terrible fears. That she’d stop breathing. That they were cursed.

  That Connor would never be found.

  CHEEZ WHIZ AND AARDVARKS

  THE WHEELER FAMILY Pet Cemetery was created in 1946 by Mason’s great-grandmother on his father’s side, Anita Wheeler. Mrs. Wheeler loved her dog, Izzy, with every bit of her heart, and when the German shepherd leapt into the nearby Feather River—to save her only son, Mason Jr.—and died for her trouble, Mrs. Wheeler decided Izzy deserved a proper burial with a headstone, minister, one-gun salute from her sharpshooter friend, Bob, and every one of Izzy’s dog friends from the neighborhood in attendance.

  It was a miracle, after all. Or a fairy tale. Who could know at this point?

  Because Izzy hadn’t been at the river with Mason Jr. that day. She’d been sleeping on the porch at Anita Wheeler’s feet when she suddenly leapt up for no good reason, ran for all she was worth to the Feather River a quarter mile away and jumped in to save Mason Jr. just in the nick of time.

  Later, as Izzy’s dog friends began to die of old age, the owners asked if they could bury their beloved pets alongside her, and a pet cemetery sort of happened. And since he was alive instead of drowned in the Feather River, Mason Jr. went on to make the kinds of aerosol cans used for shaving cream and stuff, and made a fortune, which he then spent on several charity causes, one being a Save the African Mammals campaign. The story goes that Mrs. Wheeler went to her grave proud that by saving her son, Izzy was partly responsible for keeping the world in Cheez Whiz and aardvarks.

  Even more important, though, Mason Jr. had been Anya’s very best friend right up until he passed away ten years ago.

  Anya didn’t talk about that, either.

  Mason loved his family story even though most people in their small Northern California town of Chester, population 2,144, thought he and his family were odd. They walked wide circles around Anya, too. Fairy-tale curs
es? Miraculous dogs? A pet cemetery? It didn’t matter that Mr. Wheeler was the town veterinarian, or that Mrs. Wheeler was a sculptor with art in an actual San Francisco gallery, just like it didn’t matter that Anya wrote cozy mysteries, a perfectly normal job. But it seemed their peculiarities were too much for the everyday cattle ranchers and timber millers in their everyday town.

  This was one of the thousands of ways Juni and Mason were connected; he had his miraculous dog story and she had her Grimm family legend. The most important connection, though, was that Mason Harold Wheeler IV was the love of Juni’s life, even if they hadn’t kissed yet.

  He’d tried once. There was a Sadie Hawkins dance at the end of seventh grade last year, and when Mr. Finster pretended to marry them, Mason, completely out of character, turned to kiss her. And since Juni had nowhere to go, she fell straight back into the haystacks. They had a discussion about being in agreement afterward, and Mason felt awful. He hadn’t seen it as a “real” kiss, whatever that meant.

  He should have felt bad. Not only because he didn’t ask first, but because a first kiss was special. Not something that happened in front of a fake minister and a bunch of haystacks with boys chanting in the background, “Snog! Snog! Snog!” because it was their new favorite word.

  Juni told him they should have a code word for when they were both ready. After negotiating, where Mason suggested la bise because it was French and romantic, they finally settled on something simple: okay.

  Juni had been thinking about it since the dance, through Connor’s vanishing and the dry heat of summer. Would today be the day she had her first kiss?

  Or today?

  Or maybe today?

  And yet, how could she forget Connor for even a moment? Because when she was thinking about kissing, she definitely wasn’t thinking about Connor.

  * * *

  The next day, Juni walked across her yard and up the Wheelers’ front porch steps, which tilted a bit to the left. When she opened the heavy door, she faced herself in a giant gilded mirror that hung inside the foyer.

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . .” Juni said as she pressed down the temperamental waves of her dark hair.

  Mason stood in the viewing room and gave her a small smile as she walked in, a single dimple on his left cheek. Gabby stood beside her older brother, Luca, Connor’s best friend, who Juni was avoiding like he was made of spiders. Together, they were looking down at the tiniest casket Juni had ever seen.

  Gabby’s long walnut-colored ponytail hung flat against her back, and Luca’s arm was around her shoulder, which gave Juni a heart pang. Because of course it did. It was bad enough that Juni had to see Luca be a big brother every day. But even worse was that he’d been with the army man and Father Thomas to notify Juni’s family that Connor had gone missing. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t Luca’s fault, he’d only been there to help, but each time she saw him, she couldn’t help but think about that terrible day.

  Juni nudged Luca out of the way, a little harder than she needed to. This was the best friend’s job, and she was late.

  Gabby took her hand and held it tight.

  Mason’s dad, Mr. Wheeler, walked into the viewing room wearing his customary black suit of mourning, a stethoscope around his shoulders. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, heavy on the salt, and a face full of freckles, just like most of the other Wheelers whose portraits hung in a straight line down the front hallway. Mason looked just like his dad and had already found his first gray hair this summer. He’d pulled it out and placed it in a red velvet box and showed it to Juni as though it were a mystical object.

  “I’m so sorry, Gabby. I wanted to come and give you my condolences. I sure would love having one of Piper’s paintings for my office.”

  Gabby used to dip Piper’s tiny paws into Juni’s paint and let her scurry around on a canvas, over and over again, an explosion of tiny dots. Rat-paw pointillism.

  “Sure, Mr. W. I’ll pick out the most colorful one.” Then Gabby burst into tears, and Mr. Wheeler hugged her until a cow mooed out front—his next patient, most likely—so he excused himself.

  Gabby wiped her eyes and touched Luca’s arm. “Can you carry her?”

  They moved single file along the flagstone path in the shade of the oaks and cedars. Eventually, Luca laid the casket into the small hole Mason had already prepared. The morning was hot and still, and there was a heavy smell of overturned earth. Juni tied her hair up in a ponytail to cool off the back of her neck.

  Gabby cleared her throat. “You were a loyal friend and so very smart. You didn’t turn your wheel at night, and you always pooped in your litter. You were a wonderful artist, and I will never forget you.”

  Juni read the headstone Mrs. Wheeler had carved:

  HERE LIES PIPER

  Tiny in Stature, But Large of Heart

  A True Friend

  “See the vegetable carvings?” Mason said. “I told Mom those were Piper’s favorites. English peas, corn, romaine lettuce. The romaine was especially hard to carve.” Mason puffed up as though he’d done it himself, and Gabby smiled, leaning down to trace a finger along the edges of the leaves.

  “Goodbye, Piper,” Gabby whispered.

  She took Luca by the arm, and they walked toward the shaded patio and the peach cobbler Mrs. Wheeler had set on the table, while Juni and Mason grabbed their shovels to finish the job of burying Piper’s casket. A thin ray of sunshine lit up Mason’s coal-black hair, and Juni noticed small beads of sweat across the top of his lip. She wondered if kissing him would be salty.

  A delicate breeze grew out of the summer-day stillness, and Juni took a deep, calming breath turning herself toward the lake. But the next breeze didn’t come off the lake. It blew, instead, along the fine hairs at the back of her neck. She felt a pulling sensation, a beckoning that came from the woods behind her.

  Juniper. A whisper. Or maybe it was the rustling leaves. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion after that.

  Juni looked first at Mason, who hadn’t seemed to hear the soft calling of her name as he kept shoveling. She slowly turned all the way around, and there, standing under the tire-swing oak across Last Chance Creek, was a large buck, his cupped ears turning side to side.

  Juni felt the pace of her heart quicken. Goose bumps prickled across her shoulders. Because it looked to Juni as though the buck from Connor’s painting had stepped right off the mural hanging on her wall. She counted ten points, tattered bits of velvet still clinging to his antlers from their late-spring growth. Even his stance was the same.

  Juni blinked to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. She wanted to call to Mason so he could see what she was seeing, but her voice wouldn’t work.

  The buck dipped his great head and Juni suddenly knew, in the Grimm part of her heart, maybe, that somehow, impossibly, this glorious animal had been sent by her brother. She felt Connor all around her in that moment, intense and dazzling, like late-afternoon sunlight reflecting off the lake. She leaned against the tree as the pure agony of missing him rushed through her.

  “Juni?” Mason said. “You okay?”

  And just like that, the buck was gone, off into the woods in two graceful leaps.

  “Did you see that?” Juni asked.

  Mason looked over his shoulder in the direction of the tire swing. “See what?”

  “The buck. Over there.” She pointed toward the trees.

  “Missed it,” he said.

  Juni closed her eyes and tried to soak in the feeling of her brother, that bright flash of light, as she helped Mason scoop the last of the dirt into Piper’s tiny grave. She wondered if this was what going crazy felt like.

  * * *

  When Mason and Juni were finished shoveling, Mason linked their arms. He smelled like cinnamon toast. His eyes were a strange combination of brown, green and blue, like a mood ring, and when he
looked at her, Juni could feel every bit of herself all at once. Like she was on fire or her skin was suddenly made of fine-grit sandpaper. She tried to push away the buck and the where is he where is he where is he thoughts, if only for a little while.

  Mrs. Wheeler scooped healthy servings of peach cobbler into their bowls and cooed loving words to Gabby. She had such lovely hands, which Juni had drawn a hundred times without her knowing. Juni also liked to draw the long waves of her ashy-blond Rapunzel hair, which Mrs. Wheeler wore in a loose knot on top of her head.

  “Thanks for carving her favorite vegetables,” Gabby said.

  “Of course, my sweet. It was the least I could do.”

  After they ate for a while, silver spoons tapping against her best bone china, Mrs. Wheeler asked, “Are you all set for your campout next weekend?”

  The campout. Connor and Luca started going when they were fourteen. They chose Domingo Springs because it was less than half a mile from the Pacific Crest Trail and attracted a lot of thru-hikers, the ones traveling from Mexico to Canada or vice versa. Connor and Luca had sworn to each other they would hike the trail when Connor got home, all 2,659 miles.

  The boys liked to sit around the campfire and listen to stories about near-death bear encounters and fox-shaped ghost sightings and help themselves to the large bags of candy the hikers always offered. Each summer, Connor and Luca would buy supplies of packaged food, fresh baked goods and containers of water. Then they would walk parts of the trail and leave those little bundles for the hikers to find.

  Trail magic, the hikers called it. Because they would often find those little bundles of the exact thing they needed—a roll of toilet paper, sugary fruit punch or an apple—just when they felt like giving up.

  When Mason, Gabby and Juni turned ten, the boys took the trio along, and the five of them prepared for the long weekend by having a smaller version of a tamalada at Gabby and Luca’s house. Up until then, the Tavares family had only made tamales for Christmas, but Connor had begged Mrs. Tavares that year and no one could turn down Connor for anything. Now it was tradition to make enough tamales to share with the hikers they camped with.