Brave in the Woods Page 3

  Juni hadn’t yet been brave enough to tell Mason and Gabby she wasn’t going, but today was the day.

  “We’re making tamales on Wednesday first thing, and then Mom is taking us to the store for the rest of what we need,” Gabby said, her leg bouncing under the table. “Can you make more of this exact cobbler? I could eat a truckload.”

  “I will make all the cobbler you can eat. Just the three of you again this year? And Luca, of course. No room for more?”

  “You make people hug trees when they’re finished with yoga, Mom. No one wants to be friends with us.” But Mason laughed when he said it.

  “I’m not going,” Juni blurted.

  “What?” both Mason and Gabby said at the same time.

  “I just . . . can’t.”

  Mrs. Wheeler laid her hand on top of Juni’s and squeezed.

  “I thought you wanted to go,” Gabby finally said.

  “I did. I do. It’s just that I need to be here . . . in case they find Connor.”

  Mason eventually broke the lingering silence. “I guess we’ll just have to set up camp in your yard instead, Juni. Out past the goat pen on the lake.” He looked at Gabby. “We’ll try again next year, right, Gab?”

  Gabby took a small section of her long ponytail and began weaving a braid. “Sure. We’ll catch frogs instead of fish, and then set them free. Like old times.”

  Juni wondered how long it would take Gabby to give up on her. They’d been a team since kindergarten, but Juni could feel her slipping away.

  “Any news on Elsie?” Luca said, scooping more cobbler for himself. Juni was grateful for the change in subject, even if it was Luca.

  “Still waiting,” Juni said.

  “Have you tried a PowerPoint presentation with all the relevant facts?” Gabby said. “Works every time.”

  “It’s not her mom and dad. It’s the army,” Mason said.

  But Juni wondered. Mom was so shifty when the subject came up. Like she knew something Juni didn’t.

  “Tell your mom and dad I’ll stop by tomorrow and run the car,” Luca said. He’d been taking care of Connor’s restored Caprice station wagon as though it were Connor himself. “I’ll see if I can sneak in a question about Elsie.”

  Juni looked toward the tire-swing oak, felt pulled to stand where the buck had stood, a smooth-like-honey feeling moving through her chest. The opposite of buzzing bees.

  So, after the peach cobbler and and an afternoon spent comforting her best friend, Juni skipped over the rocks in Last Chance Creek and gazed up through the branches of the tree she’d climbed with her brother too many times to count. Then she looked down.

  At the base of the oak was the tip of an antler bone, about two inches long and nestled in the leaves. As though the buck she’d seen earlier had dropped it there for her to find.

  She held the bone close to her heart, and a shimmering came over everything, a strange frequency Juni could feel deep inside herself. Like a dial had turned the tiniest bit, and now she was receiving a clear signal from Connor, even if she didn’t know what it meant.

  None of this was strange for Juni. She had grown up believing in the deepest part of her heart, if not her logical mind, that if she just looked hard enough in all the creeks and rivers and the lake itself, she might find a wish-granting trout. Or if she captured a golden snake, she’d understand the language of animals. She believed in talking birds and enchanted flowers and singing bones.

  Her own birth had been a miracle, so how could she not believe?

  “Sing, little bone,” she commanded. “Tell me everything.”

  Unable or unwilling, the antler bone did not answer.

  THE LETTER AND THE MEMORY DREAM

  LATER THE NEXT afternoon, when Juni found out the foster family was coming for Penelope, her breathing turned thick with bees. Mom made her blow into the peak flow meter three times before noon, and logged her sweatiness and “dull eyes” into the diary. She moved Juni from the green zone into the yellow zone and called Dr. Montgomery around two o’clock. Since monitoring Juni’s breathing was the only thing bringing Mom out of her room from time to time now, Juni was less annoyed than she could have been.

  “We can’t keep them all, Juni. I’m really sorry,” Anya said as she packed the last of Penelope’s bag at the kitchen counter.

  “I’m going to the goat pen,” Juni said, and slipped outside before Mom was off the phone. She knew resting was in her future, but she needed some fresh air before that happened.

  At least the family coming for Penelope was friendly. There was a very tall woman, a very short man, and two boys around Juni’s age who looked like they might be twins, but not quite. This would be the second time they’d visited from Quincy, about an hour away.

  Eventually, even from out in the goat pen, Juni heard them coming. Their laughter filled the front yard, the sky, the woods. Juni knew Penelope would be played with and snuggled and kept safe, and maybe she’d only scratch them accidentally. She was a bit ornery, that Penelope, and it had taken time for Juni to learn her moods. Penelope had returned the favor, always showing up just when Juni needed a warm fluff of comfort.

  “You’d better go on and help,” Dad said, letting himself into the pen. He grabbed a rake for the goat berries. “You know Penelope will only come out of hiding for you.”

  Dad’s head was perfectly round and shiny and had freckle splotches that Juni had liked to connect with a dry erase pen when she was little. He used to take up all sorts of cheerful space, singing, “Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! It’s off to work, I go!” as he put on his baseball cap in the mornings. He used to tie fishing lures at the breakfast table, which caught him fairy-tale-sized fish and stories to match. His voice used to boom across the house, the yard, the world.

  Calling her his June Bug. His Juni Bean.

  “I’d rather stay here,” Juni said. It might be the only time she got to spend with Dad that day, maybe even the next few days because if he wasn’t roaming the woods, he was working as a handyman all over town. Dad worked weekends, too, doing what he could since losing his job at the Collins Pine Sawmill two years before.

  But it wasn’t only that. Juni just couldn’t face losing something today.

  After a minute or two, when Juni still hadn’t left, Dad stopped, arms crossed on top of his rake, and stared at her, like he was about to growl an angry-bear growl.

  She sighed and put hers away, leaving Dad to his lonely work.

  Juni found everyone settled in the front room.

  “Can you grab a contract?” Anya said to Juni. “We’ve already fetched Penelope from her hidey-hole.”

  “We’ve decided to name her Yolanda,” one of the boys said, peering into the cat carrier. His bangs were short and uneven. “I like shouting, YO-LAN-DAAAAA!”

  Juni sighed again and let herself into Anya’s office. The desk was the usual mess of bills, coupon clippings and unread magazines. Juni moved things around looking for the folder marked Contracts. In the process, she tipped over a stack of magazines, and a manila folder slid to the floor.

  The folder was marked Elsie.

  Juni grabbed it. Inside were letters from a place called Service Dogs, with Love. Juni read through every letter and couldn’t believe it. The last one especially. It was dated two weeks earlier.

  Leonard McLaughlin

  Service Dogs, with Love

  PO Box 197

  Arlington, TX 76001

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Creedy,

  I was so sorry to hear of your final decision about Elsie. As I said, there is another family in Mammoth Lakes who are happy to take her. Captain Johnny Wilder served alongside Elsie prior to Connor, and he was honored to have the opportunity to bring her into their home. He wanted me to mention that his home is always open to you for a visit with Elsie if you’d like. Rest assured, she will be cared for a
nd loved.

  He’s given me permission to give you his address and email.

  John and Amanda Wilder

  2629 Scrimshaw Lane

  Mammoth Lakes, California

  Johnnywilder60@usmail.com

  Sincerely,

  Leonard

  “What’s taking so long?” Anya said as she walked in.

  Juni turned to look at her with the letters in one hand, the folder in the other. She began to wheeze.

  Anya’s eyes grew wide. “Juni, I . . .”

  But Juni didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. Maybe ever again. She rushed out of the office, angry thoughts crashing through her head. Mom and Dad had lied to her. But the fact that Anya knew and didn’t say anything was worse.

  Juni stormed past the family sitting on the worn living room couch as they chattered happily.

  Anya followed her to the foot of the stairs. “Juni, please, let me explain.”

  Juni turned around and rasped, “How could you let them give away Connor’s dog?”

  “Juni . . .”

  “I will never speak to you again.”

  Because of course she wouldn’t. They were traitors.

  Anya winced, like she’d caught her finger in a drawer. The Quincy family had fallen silent.

  Juni wasn’t sure how, or if, she could ever forgive them.

  And then she stopped breathing altogether.

  * * *

  Whenever Juni had an asthma attack, she’d have funny dreams afterward. Because they were part memory, part dream, she called them her memory dreams. This one was about Connor.

  It had been raining the day he told Juni he’d joined the army. She sat on her bed while he explained that he’d been accepted into the canine program and was leaving for training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas in ten days’ time. All branches of the military trained with canines at Lackland.

  It felt like a punch to the stomach, and Juni’s bees swarmed her breath away.

  “Should I get the bee smoker?” Connor said.

  “No. I’m going to let myself suffocate and die and then it will be your fault,” Juni said.

  “I have to go, Juni. It’s a good way to go to college. I’ll be doing what I love while I figure out what I want to study. Like Anya says, ‘Never turn down a quest.’”

  “But you’ll be questing in a dangerous place! There will be bombs and bad guys!”

  “There are very few bad guys over there. Mostly good guys. I’ll be safer than safe with a trained dog by my side.”

  But Juni didn’t believe him. She took a puff from her inhaler.

  Connor pulled Juni under the dining room table where he had taped butcher paper to the underside. He explained that they were going to paint a mural flat on their backs, the way Michelangelo had painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  They painted different scenes from their life and from the fairy tales. A gingerbread house. A catfish swimming through the pines at the bottom of the lake. Juni painted the juniper tree for which she was named, and Connor painted a wide-chested ten-point buck. The one who’d shadowed them on the day she was born.

  When the painting was dry, they taped it to Juni’s wall. They lay side by side on the floor and gazed at their creation while rain tapped the window.

  “This way, you can look at the mural and remember I’m always with you.”

  “That’s dorky.”

  “Yeah, well. At least I didn’t say I’ll be watching you because I’ve found a way to look out through the painting, like a magic mirror.”

  “That’s creepy, not dorky.”

  They were quiet for a while, heads touching.

  “You’ll be on a quest yourself while I’m gone,” Connor said.

  “How?”

  “You’ll have to find a way to live without me.” A joke, but it was truer than true.

  Then he said, “You’ve got this, Juni. You’re stronger than you think you are.”

  “I can’t even breathe right.”

  Connor pointed to their painting. “That buck lived long enough to grow ten points. He avoided disease and bullets and pack animals. That’s what I want you to think about when you look at him. He was a survivor and so are you. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Even then, Juni felt the lie snake-wrap itself around her chest. He would be gone for an entire year, and a year was forever.

  Turns out a year wasn’t forever.

  Every moment—when someone you love is missing— is forever.

  NEVER TURN DOWN A QUEST

  THE ASTHMA ATTACK had been sudden. Dizzy, Juni had knocked her head on a wooden step when she fell. Because of Anya’s panicked yelling, Dad had rushed in from the goat pen and carried Juni into her room, where Mom fluttered around her bed. Dad talked softly, the way Connor used to, his hand on her belly, where her diaphragm struggled underneath.

  Think about the bee smoker, Juni.

  The way it quiets the bees.

  Quiet and still.

  Dad said the words over and over, quiet and still. Connor’s words. Then, she slept.

  When she woke from her memory dream a few hours later, something Connor had said niggled at her, but she couldn’t pin it down. Was it the part about survival? Or that he’d be watching out for her? The memory faded the way dreams do.

  Juni turned on her side and looked at the antler bone she’d found the day before. She’d set it on her nightstand so it would be near her when she slept, working its way into her dreams, maybe, to give her answers. She touched it softly with one finger, and there it was again, that feeling of a radio signal coming in clear and true.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  Juni got up and stretched, crossing to the picture window that looked out onto their grassy meadow, thick woods beyond. The sun had long since gone down, and the sky was a deep-sea blue, not yet full dark. In the distance past the trees, even though she couldn’t see it, was Mount Lassen, which had exploded into an ashy landslide a hundred years back. Connor had hiked all over Lassen National Forest, said he could feel the rumbling promise of another eruption deep in the earth beneath his feet. Juni could feel it, too, had felt it all her life in her dreams, but didn’t think it was the volcano. Her dream rumbling took the form of giants stomping through her meadow, or tower-sized pines crashing to the forest floor. She dreamed of six-foot ravens nesting in the oak outside her window, their wing beats matching the rhythm of her heart. Juni often felt as though her room was the center of a snow globe, a fairy-tale world living just outside the glass.

  It had been Anya’s room, after all. Perhaps the magic had spun from her dreams when she was a young girl so many years ago.

  Great-Grandmother Abigail had decorated Anya’s room in soft colors. There was the original wallpaper with tiny lavender and butter-yellow flowers, and curtains made from sturdy rose gingham that Anya took down in the spring and autumn, washed by hand, and hung to dry in the meadow. The curtains were threadbare in places, but Juni would never part with them. It would be like parting with Anya herself.

  Unbearable.

  Just like Anya’s betrayal.

  Feeling the urge to draw antlers again, Juni reached for a brown marker on her desk and began to draw a wide set in the middle of her picture window.

  There was a knock at the door. Anya poked her head in. “You missed dinner,” she said. She carried a plate of pale chicken and roasted broccoli spears.

  “I want to be alone.”

  Anya sat on the edge of Juni’s bed as she finished drawing. It didn’t take long. She drew them uneven, one side higher than the other, a simple outline. If she squinted, it looked as though the oak tree outside her window had a wide set of antlers growing among its branches.

  “I’m not hungry, Anya.”

  “I came here
to say some things and I’m not leaving until I do.”

  Juni sat, and Anya set the plate of chicken on her lap. “I know what it feels like to lose a brother. Your parents do not.”

  “What does that have to do with Elsie?”

  Anya brushed a wispy wave from Juni’s eye. “Don’t you understand?”

  “What is there to understand? Connor said she was ours. She’s family. And you gave her away.”

  “Seeing Elsie would be a reminder. Every single day.”

  “Why wouldn’t they want to be reminded of Connor? He’s still out there!”

  “Elsie came home, Juni. She came home and Connor didn’t.”

  Juni considered this. “Why didn’t they just tell me, then? I’m not a baby.”

  “Your father was hoping your mom might change her mind.”

  It was all too much. Juni was suddenly tired. Sleeping-spell tired. She set the dinner plate on her nightstand beside the bone and lay down, closing her eyes. Maybe she’d started dreaming the moment she felt antlers sprout from her head all those days ago, and hadn’t woken up yet.

  A moment later, Anya gasped, and Juni sat up, startled. Anya held the antler bone with an exaggerated look of surprise, as though she’d just watched it grow from her very own palm. “Where did you get this?”

  “Do you think it means something?” Juni said, suddenly wide awake. “I found it in the pet cemetery.”

  Anya’s eyes were extraordinarily blue. Blue like a wish-granting sapphire, or the deepest part of an enchanted sea. She stared past Juni, past the walls of Juni’s room, past Mount Lassen and the sky beyond, maybe. A full minute ticked by, two. Juni waited, hoping she would answer the question.

  “Mama had one just like this. It was a protection charm. She wore it everywhere. Luck against the curse was what she always said. It had been in our family for generations.”