Juniper Lemon's Happiness Index Read online

  The sheets are thin. Newspaper. I unfold the first, and as I brush off the baking soda, my eyes go to the date in a corner.

  July 6.

  And even before I turn the slip over and see her picture, the commemorative words I helped write, I know I am holding Cam’s obituary.

  My heart accelerates and I feel green. What’s it doing here? Did Mom or Dad put it here?

  I fumble the second piece over. Another senior portrait, a boy, stares back at me. I don’t recognize him, and can’t fathom why Mom or Dad would have some other kid’s obit in our pantry—until I catch the date for the memorial service at the bottom: July 10.

  The breath goes out of me.

  Same age. Same burial date.

  Same accident.

  He’s the other driver.

  “Find any, Juniper?”

  I jump at Angela’s call from outside, but somehow find my voice to answer her. “Still looking!”

  My eyes dart up the clipping.

  AARON CHAMBERLAIN

  Aaron was born in Aloha to Sam and Jocelyn Chamberlain. He loved swimming, stand-up, music, pizza sandwiches, and many an adventure in the great outdoors. A talented comedian and athlete, Aaron took pride in his videos and making people laugh, learning to snowboard without instruction, and playing water polo for the AHS varsity team.

  He is survived by—

  I hear feet on the stairs.

  “Smells good down here!”

  Mom.

  I nearly drop the empty box. Shoving the clippings back inside, I just barely replace it, grab a cylinder of baking powder, and step out before she enters the kitchen.

  “So,” Mom quips when she does. She eyes our spreads along the counter. “Which of these delightful-looking treats is the culprit?”

  My pulse pounds in my ears as my brain shorts. Not only have I uncovered someone’s secret stash of grief; this is the first time I’ve had friends over since Camie’s death. For Mom to be down here, socializing—chatting not just with me, but with strangers—

  It isn’t just a big deal.

  It’s monumental.

  “That would be the cinnamon roll shortbread,” Nate informs her. “Kody’s recipe.” Kody beams.

  “They look delicious.” Mom inhales their aroma above the tray. “And they smell even better. May I?”

  Kody gestures help yourself, so she does. The four of us look on, unconsciously quieting. Kody and Angela know how withdrawn Mom has been and their looks go out to me, and though I meet their gazes gratefully, there’s no way they can guess the real storm spinning behind my eyes.

  The obits are Mom’s. They have to be. Dad would rather talk about his grief—not stash it in some hidey-hole. But why would Mom keep them (and why in the baking soda)? Why keep Aaron’s?

  Maybe to remember that he was a person, too?

  In the quiet of the kitchen, Mom chews. Nate lifts his brows at us, joining the circle of discreetly exchanged looks, but he is smiling. Probably he’s just waiting to ask how many stars we get.

  And the verdict is . . .

  “Divine!”

  Kody passes me a smile.

  “You think those are good. Wait till you try my teacakes!”

  Nate leads Mom along the counter. Angela accompanies, offering suggestions for what to try next, and Kody gets out an old cookie tin for Mom to collect what she jokingly refers to as her “kitchen owner’s tax” in.

  I lean against the fridge, processing. Mom hasn’t been this outgoing in months. But more staggering is what’s just occurred to me: All this time she’s had the obituaries, this dark remembrance squirreled away—just like I’ve had the secret that I wrote on 65. It kills me that we both have things about Camilla we keep from each other.

  Will we ever be able to talk about them?

  “So.” Mom fits the lid on the tin when the tour is finished. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends, Juniper?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I clear my throat and regroup. “Mom, this is Kody, Angela, and Nate. Guys—my mom.”

  Nice-to-meet-yous and Thank-you-for-the-kitchens are exchanged. Then, a sharp rise as if suddenly perceiving something, Mom stands taller and furrows her brow.

  “You seem familiar,” she tells Nate, studying him. “Did you know Camilla?”

  Whoa. That grief group must really be helping.

  Mom never brings up Camilla.

  “No, ma’am,” Nate replies, easily, blissfully unaware of the cosmic forces it must’ve taken to form the question. “My family only moved here this summer.”

  “Oh? Where from?”

  “Eugene.”

  “Eugene?”

  “You’re probably confusing him with someone from a Gap commercial,” I say lightly, half hoping for a smile or a laugh. When was the last time I made Mom laugh? “It’s the hair flip.”

  “And the jeans,” Angela adds.

  “And the name,” agrees Kody. “‘Nate Savage’ could sell scarves and sport coats on sound alone.”

  Nate grins. “What—but not with my dashing face?”

  “Savage . . .” Mom frowns at the floor.

  Abruptly her expression changes.

  “Nathan Savage?”

  “Just Nate,” Nate says quickly.

  Crash.

  The cookie tin clanks against the counter, rattling to a stop. The kitchen goes still, and when I look up Mom is gripping her temples.

  “Mom?” What just happened? “Are you—?”

  “Air.” The word is dry, a whisper. Mom clears her throat and lowers her hands. “I just need some air.” And it looks true; as she reaches down the counter for her purse I can see her face has gone off-color. “I’m just gonna—” She scrabbles for her keys. “I think I’ll run to the store.”

  “Are you sure, Mom? I can get you som—”

  “I’m fine.” She glances once around the kitchen. “You kids need anything?”

  Angela looks askance at me, and before I can warn her not to, says, “Baking soda?”

  I wince and lower the powder tin. So much for discretion.

  “Baking soda.” The motion is not missed by Mom. Her eyes dart my way and off again, and then she mumbles, “Call me if you think of anything else,” and slips out the door.

  “Is it just me,” says Angela when the sound of her car has faded, “or did that get a little weird just—ow!” Kody’s knocked her on the foot.

  “Sorry, Nate.” I feel awkward and embarrassed and don’t really know what else to say. How do you apologize for grief? “My mom’s still really sensitive about my sister—the randomest things set her off sometimes. You probably just reminded her of one of Camilla’s friends.”

  “Right,” he says. You can tell he feels guilty, though.

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  Nate nods, stoic.

  “Speaking of Camilla . . .” Angela foots awkwardly into the uncomfortable silence that follows, “Have you found any more leads on that guy, Juniper?”

  Nate’s frown changes shape. “What guy?”

  “The one she was secretly seeing and wrote a letter to before—OW!” Kody has kicked her again, too late.

  I heave a sigh as my gaze meets the pantry. Where there’s Camilla trouble, YOU can only follow.

  I tell Nate about the letter.

  “A secret boyfriend,” he repeats when I finish. “So—do you have any leads on this guy?”

  Right now my prime suspect is Sponge—but if I share that with the class, I’ll have to explain why.

  And where I found the evidence.

  “Bits and pieces. Nothing solid yet.”

  “Have you, like,” says Angela, preemptively shifting her shins away from Kody, “looked in her room for pictures? Notes?”

  “ANGELA.”

&nbs
p; “What? If it was my sister, that’s what I’d do.”

  “I have,” I say, halting the two in their grapple, “but never for long. My mom is really weird about that stuff.”

  “Weird?” Kody releases Angela’s shoulders. “Weird how?”

  I tell them about the jewelry incident. How one day the door was just shut after that, an unspoken barrier like a string of police tape.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” says Angela. “At least, not to me.”

  Kody asks, “Did you guys share clothes and stuff?” I nod. “Don’t you ever—I don’t know—want to wear one of her shirts or something?”

  “All the time.” In fact, I think Camilla would feel a lot less like a shadow if I had more of her things to physically adhere to. Things I could touch and carry like the bag she took to Shawn’s. “But there’s no way my mom wouldn’t notice. And she’d flip.”

  “What if we all went in?”

  Each of us turns, surprised, to Nate.

  “I’m not saying we should,” he adds quickly, “I just think Angela has a point. It seems like a logical place to look for evidence of a secret relationship.”

  “Thank you,” says Angela, looking pointedly at Kody.

  Then all gazes move to me.

  Nate cautiously continues: “If the four of us looked now—you, me, Kody, and Angela—we could all search faster and cover way more ground. Be out before your mom gets home.”

  The others hold their breath. I chew my lip, looking from them, to Nate, to the tin Mom abandoned on the counter.

  I may not get another opportunity like this.

  At last I concede, “Okay.”

  ∞

  I go in first. Our steps are measured, muted as if out of respect, and the mixture of humility and reverence on everyone’s faces makes it seem more like holy ground than a teen girl’s bedroom. Angela and Kody regard the ceiling, a collage of Paris—its splendid palaces and curbside cafés, bright flowers and fruit stands, the old shops and long windows and elegant women in skirts and peacoats—like The Creation of Adam. This does sort of feel like a pilgrimage.

  Or trespassing.

  The sheep look to their shepherd. I draw a half-hitched breath.

  “Let’s get started.”

  I move for the dresser. Tentative, Kody goes for the bed. Nate and Angela take the bookshelves and desk respectively.

  “Look for pictures, a message, anything coded,” I instruct despite the knot in my chest. “Especially addressed to ‘YOU,’ or signed ‘Me.’ Oh—and if you see a mini Dala horse with a star on its belly, would you let me know? It was Camie’s favorite and I haven’t been able to find it.”

  We work in silence. I don’t find much in the dresser, apart from some scarves I’d like to borrow and the occasional horse that isn’t Bristol. I even check inside the socks, beneath underwear, in all the nooks and crannies of her jewelry boxes.

  Nothing.

  The others find as little as I do.

  “Did you say you found the letter in a purse?” Nate asks, replacing the last book on the shelf.

  “Yeah, I—”

  I follow his gaze and stop short.

  The bags.

  I cross the room to where they hang off of hooks in rows, opening the closet to reveal more. “Jackpot.”

  I deal them out like a hand of cards, and for the next several minutes we are all combing through clutches, cross-bodies, drawstrings, and shoulder bags, periodically announcing our finds:

  “Sunglasses.”

  “ChapStick.”

  “A book.”

  “Change purse.”

  “A flask and a bottle of soap bubbles. Bet that was a fun afternoon.”

  “Three pens, tissues, and seventy-two cents.”

  “H&M receipt.”

  “Uhhhh,” says Nate, holding up a pink-wrapped feminine product.

  When I get to a camel-colored backpack, I feel something in a pouch before I see it: stiff paper, too rigid to be a receipt. I unzip the pocket and pull it out.

  A ticket stub.

  “Guys.”

  “What is it?” Kody and the others gather round.

  “Concert ticket. To . . .” I break off.

  “What?”

  “Arctic Monkeys.” I check the date to be sure and bring it down. “I invited Cam to this. She told me—she said she had other plans.”

  “Yeah, with somebody else. Ow!” Angela rubs her shoulder where Kody hit her.

  “What plans?”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t remember. She said it was something she couldn’t get out of. Club stuff.”

  “Hey.” Angela paws through a clutch. “I found one, too. To . . .” She holds a yellow scrap out in front of her. “Zombocalypse 3?”

  “What?” I seize the stub. Like the one for the band, it’s also dated in the last year. “Well, she definitely didn’t see that one with Melissa and Heather. I think we’re getting warmer.”

  Another couple minutes and the tickets are cropping up like weeds: movies. Concerts. A play. The zoo. The fair. The art museum. Always just one: half of the equation.

  Always with a hole where its twin should be.

  “Yo,” Nate calls after a while. “I think I found something else.”

  We turn to see him holding a paperback in one hand, a crumpled slip of paper in the other. His finger’s on the open title page, a handwritten line at the top:

  Camilla,

  Saw this and thought of you.

  Yours,

  Me X

  The four of us exchange glances.

  “And get this.” Nate closes the book—Les Misérables—and holds up the paper that was in it. “The receipt is from Fullbrook.”

  “What?”

  The four of us crowd around the tiny font.

  Fullbrook University Bookstore.

  “But that doesn’t make sense.” I scrunch my brow. “The guy Camie was dating is still in high school. Why would he be buying books there?”

  “Maybe he was touring campus,” Angela suggests.

  “Or taking a class,” offers Kody.

  “Maybe—”

  But Angela stops talking. There’s a thick, leathery crinkling noise, and Nate and Kody and I all freeze, pivoting to face whatever silenced her.

  Standing in the doorway, hand tightening around a paper grocery sack, is Mom.

  We are holding half a dozen of Camilla’s bags between us.

  “Juniper,” Mom says, jaw tight and voice small but frighteningly even, “it’s time for your friends to go home now.”

  133

  Happiness: 0.2

  Friends who support me (+++).

  Being caught in Cam’s room (–).

  Mom upset (–).

  Dad taking her side (––).

  Fighting (–).

  Confrontation (–).

  Struggle over baking soda box; losing my grip; crashing

  into & breaking Camie’s handmade pink & lemon

  sugar jar (–––).

  The look on Mom’s face when it happened (–––).

  The look on Dad’s before he went after her (–––).

  - 134 -

  When I arrive at West Rose Mall the next morning, site of the Sunday farmer’s market and the GSBC bake sale, Kody reads in my expression that things went badly.

  “How bad?” she asks.

  I set down the first box of cookies. “Bad.”

  I really don’t want to dredge up the details since we’re prepping for eight hours of pushing pastries with a smile, but I give Kody, and then Angela and Nate when they arrive, the short of it:

  1) Grounded. By Dad, though, not Mom, because

  2) Mom prefers to shut out reality, including me, and

>   3) I blew up when Dad accused me of not respecting her needs, and

  4) I am now formally forbidden from entering Camilla’s room.

  ∞

  I don’t even touch on my big accusation—that Mom and Dad pretend Camie never existed—or what happened in our struggle for the baking soda. Too much explaining.

  And too painful.

  “Shit, Juniper.” Nate looks bleak, as worn-through as I feel when I finish. “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t suggested—”

  “If you hadn’t suggested it, I would have done the exact same thing later, but without the support of friends.”

  A pause. Then—

  “Aww.” Angela touches my arm, the other hand going tenderly over her heart.

  “Aww,” Nate echoes, girlishly imitating Angela.

  Kody rolls her eyes. “Are we all going to hug now?”

  “Aww,” chorus Angela and Nate, both reaching for Kody.

  The whole thing’s about as cheesy as a cracker platter—but it’s the best I’ve felt since July.

  ∞

  Fairfield is a small suburban town, but by ten o’clock, the bake sale is bustling. Word of Kody’s cinnamon roll shortbread is wafting out from here, like—well—like the scent of hot cinnamon roll shortbread. A few times, I think I even catch Lauren looking over from across the street, where she and other choir members are washing cars to raise money for San Fran.

  “You okay?” Kody asks when she catches me staring. Her eyes move across the street, where Lauren looks quickly away.

  I turn and smile automatically. “Great.”

  But there’s a disconnect. I feel like that’s my old life over there, and all I can do is watch it from outside. For the last two years, that was me washing cars and waving signs and belting musicals with the group. Laughing beside my best friend. Spraying—

  —the hose in at one of the customers?

  A shriek.

  “WHAT THE HELL!”

  The window of a red coupe rolls the rest of the way down and a sopping Morgan Malloy glares out.

  “Whoops,” says Lauren loudly. “Didn’t see your window was open. Sorry!”

  Her eyes cut to mine.

  I feel a bit better after that.

  In the meantime, our group has its own antics: Nate, for example, noticed early this morning that customers with brightly colored shoes tend to buy complementary confections. Somehow this evolved into a game of guessing everyone’s perfect pastry based on footwear.