Juniper Lemon's Happiness Index Read online

  Brand takes it all in. As he does, I step subtly toward the filing cabinet. Another project—the Secret Board—is stashed behind, but I don’t want him finding it. On it, beside Camilla’s letter, Kody’s suicide note, and the love letter to Leo, is the Life Savers wrapper I picked up off the floor of Band Geeks’ Paradise.

  When he isn’t looking, I quietly nudge the end that sticks out away.

  “You’re even weirder than I thought,” Brand concludes after a minute. “But this is actually kind of cool.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  He sets down a map of Europe—Hamlet in Denmark, Bastille Day in France, The Prince and Botticelli and da Vinci in Italy—and collapses into a chair as he eyes today’s findings.

  “So you . . . what?” he asks, putting his feet up. “Collect shit and cut it up and put it back together by theme?”

  “Something like that.”

  Brand considers. The corner of his mouth turns up. “And you’re getting a grade for that?”

  I purse my lips, but can’t help it—I smile back. And for a moment we’re just looking at each other: no scowls, no smirking, no sass. Brand’s china-blue eyes are a lot less frightening when he’s smiling and not holding something sharp.

  He says, “So . . .”

  Something flutters in my chest.

  “What was that one you stuck in your pocket?”

  My skin prickles. I realize I am slightly disoriented. “What?”

  “The sheet you folded and slipped away. Right when I found you.”

  The note from A to Oscar.

  “Right.” I shake myself, remembering that he might have dated my sister. I produce the page in question and Brand unfolds it and reads. “Remember that weird love letter to Leo?”

  “Huh.” His eyes linger at the bottom. “That was signed A too, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. And check out the top right corner.” I tap the impressions carved by pen with my finger. “Angela de l’eau.”

  “Duh-low?”

  “French. Means—”

  “Water. Angela Waters?”

  “That would be my guess.” I’d grab the note to Leo now to compare it, but that one’s still attached to the Secret Board and that’s not coming out in front of Brand. Instead I say, “I had this idea.”

  “What?”

  “Well—” I reposition in my seat. “I know Angela. She’s in my French class. She’s really sweet but super quiet, always has her nose in some steamy romance. I see her laughing at other people’s jokes sometimes, but she never joins in on conversations herself.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I was thinking, maybe she’d open up more if she got to know somebody outside of all these dead guys and bare-chested book hunks.”

  Brand considers me and frowns. “Is this a matchmaking session?”

  “No no, nothing like that. But, you know—” I shrug. “I just think, like Kody, Angela could use a friend. We might—I might reach out to her. I’ve been seeing this flier for a da Vinci exhibit—”

  Brand scoffs. “Yeah. I’m sure you’ll be bonding over dead guys in no time.”

  Whoa. Whiplash.

  “Okay . . . what’s with you all of a sudden?” He’s the one who suggested helping Kody. I don’t see how this is any different.

  Brand takes his feet off the table. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he says, leaning over it, “that some people are quiet because they don’t want to talk? You can’t just go around assuming you know what people need.”

  “But if I got to know her, it wouldn’t be assuming.”

  “Like you got to know Kody?”

  “I have gotten to know Kody. And I genuinely like her. She’s fun.”

  “And how do you think she’d feel if she knew you only became her friend because you found her note?”

  “That’s not . . .” I start to say. But it is.

  True.

  “Good intentions have wiped out whole civilizations, Juniper,” he says, standing. “Tread carefully.”

  And with that, Brand limps out the door.

  - 102 -

  Twelve days later, Ms. Gilbert assesses my finished projects for herself. It’s the last day of ceramics and therefore my last of independent study, and I watch, anxious, as she circles around my worktable as Brand did, slowly, attentively following the interplay of details.

  Unlike when Brand was here, the Secret Board is out.

  Although it’s been clear from the start that my materials were “found” on the premises, Ms. Gilbert doesn’t question them. What she says when she finishes with the Secret Board is:

  “Bravo.”

  She then critiques each piece with me—considering even, to my surprise, the gutted pages on clothespins to be a collection—and confesses that although the Secret Board is made more by its parts than because of how they’re arranged, it is her favorite.

  “It speaks to something deep,” she says. “Something intimate . . . but universal.”

  I get a B for the board and an A for the unit.

  “What’s next?” I ask when she has noted my grades on her clipboard. “I mean, the next unit.”

  “Printmaking,” replies Ms. Gilbert. “We carve linoleum blocks to make something like a stamp. Be thinking about your design—we’ll start work on them Friday!”

  ∞

  If Brand was absent before, now he seems to be avoiding me. After school I look for him in the likely places—detention, the dumpsters, 3 Hall, on the stairs where he loiters with his band mates and occasionally tries to light and smoke his burrito like a meaty cigar—but find no sign of him. I wonder if he’s mad about Angela; if my plan to reach out to her offended him somehow. But thinking back, I also remember how quick he was to insist he’d told me everything he knew about Shawn’s.

  Is Brand steering clear because he’s angry—or because he doesn’t want to talk about Cam and the party?

  It occurs to me there are other places to look for answers.

  ∞

  I should have started in Camilla’s room. It’s the first place I thought to look for YOU, but it’s also been the hardest to access. Between Dad working at home and Mom spending weekends in bed, I almost never have the house to myself anymore.

  But tonight is their Grieving Parents Support Group; tonight, for the first time since I found Camie’s letter, they’re both out and won’t be back for over an hour.

  Tonight I can dig.

  The air feels stale when I enter—staler even than when I snuck in for Shawn’s number a month ago. The smell reminds me of old books, and everything from the windowsill to the rings and lipsticks on Cam’s dresser are lavender with dust. I walk in and sink onto her bed.

  The items around me are familiar: the yellow string lights that we put up together, which I reach to plug in; the hanging star lanterns she fell in love with at a crafts fair; the miniature Big Ben we both cracked up at regularly after discovering the real clock’s unofficial Twitter page. I spy her guitar in the corner and can still see her laughing as she improvises lyrics to the tune of “Hey There Delilah”; the Paris snow globe on her nightstand and the way she’d pick it up, turn it, and whisper un jour through the falling glitter.

  My eyes drift to the lineup missing Bristol.

  Where the hell is she?

  I get up to check the desk. Book by book I paw through the shelves, pulling one at a time to stick my hand in the space between them and grope for either horse or hidden paper, some secret item. Finding neither, I start in on the drawers. Inside: pens, markers, notepads, a stapler and USB cords; beaded bracelets, old school pictures, thumbtacks and a frozen wristwatch; envelopes, ear buds, stray batteries, a dozen other Dala horses and a dinosaur like a prize from a cereal box.

  No YOU and no Bristol.

  I shake my hands out and b
ounce up and down. If I were evidence of a secret relationship . . .

  My eyes fall on her computer.

  Of course.

  I lift up the top and hit the power button. Nothing happens. I raid the desk again for the charger—but even if I find it, I realize, I’d still have to bypass Cam’s lock screen. That could take hours.

  “SHIT.”

  I slam a drawer in frustration.

  With a hiss through my teeth, I fold the screen back down. Stupid. The charger could be anywhere: in one of her bags, cleared away like her toothbrush, maybe even with Bristol. I guess I’ll worry about the password once I find it. The files will keep.

  But I’ll be damned if I leave this room without something tonight.

  I turn around to scan for other ideas. One prospect jumps at me—a row of photo albums in the nightstand—and I storm to it and begin blowing through. The relationship sounded serious enough; YOU and Camie must’ve had time to snap pictures. Whether they’d be in with all her other prints is questionable, but not impossible . . .

  I move from one album to the next—but in the end, everything I find is old: shots of me and Cam in pajamas, carving pumpkins, sledding; on family road trips, Bristol posed by waterfalls and Ferris wheels and paintings; trick-or-treating, modeling outfits, trying lipsticks and liquid eyeliner with Heather and Lauren. The most recent one leaves off on her trip to Chiapas last summer.

  It’s like a whole year is missing.

  That’s when it hits me:

  Yearbook.

  I cross the room and rip down last year’s volume from the desk shelf. If the guy goes to Fairfield, he’ll be here.

  No sooner do I start fanning pages than does a name in black marker leap out at me: Brand Sayers. My breath stops as I spot the three words above it—

  Go to hell.

  —and by the exhale I have already experienced at least four distinct reactions:

  (Surprise) What? Did Brand have some kind of history wi—

  (Relief) Oh yeeah. That’s what he wrote in everyone’s yearbook.

  (Anger) RUDE!

  (Rationale) It’s not like he knew she was going to die in July.

  When I finish scanning signature pages I check inside the covers, then the white space in front. No “love” sign-offs, no I’ll miss You; no (romantic) sightings of the three little words.

  Nothing.

  Then, as I hold the book to the ceiling and fan it in a hopeless final pass, something drops and spirals to the floor—a torn piece of college-ruled. I set the book down to retrieve it.

  Me

  it says, in rich, blue ink at the bottom.

  I sink to the carpet and read the rest.

  Camilla,

  It’s always hard to say goodbye.

  “It’s No Use Raising a Shout”

  W. H. Auden

  v-vi

  Love,

  Me

  I tear back to Brand’s to compare handwriting. Polar opposites.

  But why is YOU’s on some throwaway shred of paper? An extra precaution? I glance at the book again and kick myself for being so careless; if I’d been paying attention, I might’ve found something telling about the pages it was stuck between. As it is, I’ve lost that lead.

  Guess I’ll have to seek my answers in the message itself.

  I copy the lines onto a Post-It, put the scrap and the yearbook away, and return to my room to look up Auden.

  - 103 -

  I hit the school library early the next morning. I now know “It’s No Use Raising a Shout” is a poem, and W. H. Auden its author. I’ve read it several times, and even figured out that “v-vi” probably refers to the fifth and sixth lines:

  Here am I, here are you:

  But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

  ∞

  But they don’t give me any clues.

  So I decide to start checking hard copies.

  I walk among the shelves in search of poetry. It’s a long shot, but I’m thinking Camie could’ve followed the prompt just after it was written—while she was still at school. And if the yearbook was leading her to a physical book—one specific copy on location—there may be something more for me to find there.

  Something that will point me to YOU.

  Frost. Eliot. Dickinson. I follow the alphabet backward around a shelf.

  I am almost on the other side when my eyes catch leather and Woke Up Like This hair by the computers.

  Brand?

  I double back and peer through the shelves. What’s he doing here? Brand is not, as I might imagine, burning things or dozing or messing around with his band mates, but sitting quietly at one of the reading tables. No—talking with someone. A girl. The brunette is paging through printouts in her binder, tapping on some; Brand nods and makes notations in his own. They’re . . . studying?

  Since when does a truant study?

  The girl laughs at something and touches Brand’s arm. I feel myself flush, then wonder why I am flushing, and then flush even harder and curse at myself.

  Focus, Juni.

  I take a breath and remember what I’m doing here. The book I need should be in the next row.

  Stepping around the shelf, I ignore Brand, think Auden, and very pointedly keep my eyes on the spines.

  Which is why I fail to see the girl sitting crisscross on the floor and walk catastrophically head-on into her book stack.

  Crash.

  A gasp. I catch myself and apologize, quickly crouching to help pick it up. When a dark hand meets mine I recognize the aqua/yellow nail polish.

  “Angela,” I say, surprised.

  A black curl trails from her up-do. Angela sweeps it back and smiles apologetically. “Hi, Juniper.” In her other hand is an open book; on the cover are a man and a woman in an impassioned kiss. “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little embarrassed.” When I glance behind me, sure enough, Brand is watching us, shaking his head. Because I tripped?

  Or because I’m talking to Angela?

  Geez. It’s not like I’m handing her a ticket to the da Vinci exhibit.

  . . . That I may or may not have already bought her.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Angela smiles. “I think the pile caught all the action.”

  “Are your books?”

  “Think so.”

  She closes her current read to help me tidy. I look closer and the title surprises me.

  “Shakespeare in Love?”

  “Yeah.” Her smile is a nervous flutter. “It’s some of his love poems.”

  “Ah.” The books in the pile, I realize, are also poetry—not the bodice rippers I’d taken them for. I feel my cheeks burn, guilty for judging her.

  Then I have an idea.

  “You read a lot of poetry, Angela?”

  She hugs her knitted vest in, nods.

  “Any Auden?”

  “Auden?” Her back straightens. “He’s one of my favorites.”

  “I don’t mean to impose, but—is he around here?”

  “Yeah!” She climbs to her feet and starts for the shelves. “You after something specific?”

  I tell her the name of the poem. Angela finds the A’s almost before I am standing. “Arnold . . . Ashbery . . . Atwood . . . Auden!”

  There are several anthologies. Angela takes a slim one called Tell Me the Truth About Love and hands me a Selected Poems. We both start leafing.

  “So is this for a scavenger hunt, or something?”

  “Or something,” I agree.

  We browse the listings book by book until Angela says, “Found it!”

  She taps the page of a paperback with a neon nail and holds it out so we can both lean over it. “It’s the very first one. And look—someone even left us a bookmark!”
<
br />   “What?”

  I yank the book closer and pluck the slip from between the pages, hold it up like a diamond beneath the light: a check-out receipt, dated June 10 of this year.

  June 10.

  We would’ve had our yearbooks by then.

  “You . . . okay?”

  I snap to and flash her a smile. “Great. Just—excited to find it.” Understatement. I will tear this book apart. “Thanks for your help, Angela—think I’m gonna go check this out before the bell rings. See you in French?”

  “See you,” she echoes, bemused.

  ∞

  I comb the Auden book all morning, sneaking glances at it in anatomy and French.

  By lunch, when I pull it out at our table, I’m feeling defeated. I’ve scanned the entire text and found no obvious notes or markings; I must’ve read “It’s No Use Raising a Shout” three dozen times by now. Still I have gleaned no hidden meaning from it—none, at least, beyond the lines the yearbook references.

  Here am I, here are you:

  But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

  I think back to YOU’s yearbook prompt and wonder if I missed something. Was there some kind of code in that message? A key that would’ve meant to read it differently?

  What if “v-vi” wasn’t lines?

  I flip to page five. On it is a poem called “What’s in Your Mind, My Dove, My Coney”; on six, only half another called “Prothalamion.” I read the first, and though it doesn’t seem to carry any cryptic love notes, parts of it hit me with unexpected power—words of life, sudden loss.

  I’m halfway through “Prothalamion,” which seems to celebrate a wedding, when I hear the scrape of a chair pulled back.

  “Whatcha readin’?”

  I turn, surprised. Not because Nate’s nodding at my book as he drops into a seat beside me; because the sound I heard came from the other side of the table. I look up.