June, Reimagined (6)
June felt her blood pressure drop as her body went oddly warm.
“Don’t move.” Hamish stood up in a panic. “I’ll be back.” He ran out of the café into the dark, rainy evening, leaving June alone again.
Her money problems no longer mattered. As it turned out, June had flown all the way to Scotland to die.
THREE
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
June,
First, you hang up on me, then you turn off your cell phone, then I call your mom and she says you’re taking a fucking break from school and visiting your fucking grandparents in Michigan indefinitely. I thought you were at a coffee shop in Clifton! What kind of horseshit is that? Nan’s obviously lying. It’s like the time she told me you had the stomach flu for a week when you’d really started your period. I’ll say the same thing I said then. Whatever’s going on, I can handle it. You don’t need to hide. I’ll buy you metaphorical tampons. Get you a metaphorical heating pad and some aspirin. Eat metaphorical chocolate and watch Titanic, for fuck’s sake! Just tell me where you are!
—Matt
To say that June had not expected to die in Scotland would be a gross understatement. While death had made a sudden and unwelcome appearance in her life, June still functioned under the common and blissful young-adult mindset that her death was intangible. She could smoke weed, drink, have sex, and still wake up in the morning with only a slight hangover, easily cured by greasy fast food, two Advil tablets, and a day of The Real World reruns. June’s death was a hypothetical concept to be ignored, not a reality to be considered.
As she struggled to breathe in a strange café an ocean away from home, June’s thoughts should have been on her parents. Just yesterday she had visited an internet café in Inverness to check her email, only to find a very pointed message from Nancy Merriweather reminding June of her innate lack of foresight and the inevitable repercussions of her rash decisions. Her mother may have had a point there, though June was unwilling to admit it, even while dying. Nancy ended the email, as ever, by reminding June of her forthcoming responsibilities: the Women’s Club of Sunningdale was expecting 115 thank-you cards, personalized and handwritten by June herself, to be sent to the club’s benefactors and silent auction winners by February 15.
Thank-you cards be damned. Soon enough, Phil and Nancy Merriweather would have, unbeknownst to them, two dead children hiding out in Scotland.
But June’s thoughts were not on her parents. Only one person had great influence on June Merriweather. If she was honest with herself, which at this point in her life she most definitely was not, Matt Tierney had an indelible power over June, though she refused to name it. Definitions are fixed. Permanent. Once set in place, one must act on them. And June wasn’t ready for that sort of commitment.
Now, as she rubbed at her itchy arms and felt her bloated lips, June had one thought: she had taken a bus for the first time and hadn’t told Matt Tierney. He would want to know about the trip, every detail.
Where did you sit?
In the back.
Did it smell?
Like diesel and dirty armpits.
Are the roads as narrow as they look on TV, and is it weird driving on the other side?
June had been certain they were going to sideswipe every hedgerow they passed. A few times she even gasped. But there was so much more to tell Matt—how she sat by the window, mesmerized by the gray clouds that hung low over the mountains like a blanket; how the older couple sitting across from her held hands the entire ride; and how the bus had to stop to let sheep cross the road.
June hadn’t responded to Matt’s email, which she regretted now as she sat dying in Knockmoral from a peanut allergy. Matt didn’t even know Knockmoral existed, let alone that June was in it.
For the first time in her life, June was decidedly without her best friend. The thought of never seeing him again made her already pinched breath even tighter. A montage of their lives together flipped through her mind, like slides in the old-fashioned projector she’d found in her grandparents’ attic, next to boxes of Kodachrome film.
Matt and June as children, burning leaves with magnifying glasses, eating highly processed icy pops that stained their tongues blue and purple. The first time June and Matt stole, and drank, beers at the Tierneys’ annual Halloween party. The time Matt kicked Billy Carson in the balls after Billy said June was flat chested and called her Tortilla Tits. June teaching Matt what the word “virgin” meant. The two of them secretly watching Fatal Attraction and seeing boobs for the first time on-screen.
If Matt were here, none of this would be happening. Whereas June was reckless, Matt was meticulous and his life was mapped out. He always chastised her for constantly forgetting her EpiPen, so much so that in high school he carried an extra one in his backpack, just in case.
In the end, though, June’s carelessness got the better of her. Her body was too focused on the allergic reaction to emit tears, but if she could have, June would have been blubbering. Matt Tierney wasn’t just her best friend. He was a physical place—the safest June had ever known. Safer than her own house or bedroom. Safer than herself. And she had run away from that. But she had a good reason. Matt had said June could never ruin his life, but he was wrong.
The door flew open as Hamish reemerged, out of breath and drenched from the rain. “The lass is in here!”