The Familiar Dark(19)

I pulled back the cover carefully, almost wincing against what I might find. Junie’s presence enveloped me as I read her words, saw the doodles she’d drawn on the edges of the pages. I hoped she didn’t mind, my snooping into her private world. I took my time, running my fingers over places where her pen had dug into the paper, smiling at quick notes she’d jotted complaining about a school assignment or lamenting my inability to cook. Had a fight w/ Izzy, but we’re good now, adorned the top of one page, followed by a heart. There was no mention of boys or drugs or sneaking out. Nothing that set my alarm bells ringing. Nothing until the final pages. Where in a bottom corner, writing cramped like she was fighting to get the words out, Junie wrote: Worried about Izzy. I told her he’s too old. But she’s not listening. To anyone. She says it’s love, but it’s really only lust. Gross. Just thinking about it makes me sick. I wish she would wake up. She’d written the word up with such force that her pen had torn through the paper.

My breath gusted out of me. Here was something I could grab onto. A place to start, at least. Which was more than I’d had an hour ago. The day opened up in front of me. A reason to stand up and move. A reason to keep going.





EIGHT


Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School was twelve miles outside of town, down a winding road off the highway that hid it from view. It served the kids of the entire spread-out county, some riding the bus more than an hour each way to sit in an old, drafty building without enough teachers or anywhere near enough funds. They’d renamed the school a few years ago in a nod to diversity. When I’d attended, the county had been virtually all white. But nowadays, with the chicken-processing plant perched on the edge of the county line, the kids of immigrants roamed the halls, their parents taking jobs no locals would touch, even when other steady employment was almost impossible to come by. I’d listened to plenty of bitching about the name change while serving coffee in the diner, endless complaints about political correctness or, as one old-timer put it, “this bullshit idea that everybody’s got to be equal.” People around here didn’t like being force-fed progress, even when it could be argued that a mouthful was long overdue. I somehow doubted the name change did much to alter the reality for those kids, who were always going to be outsiders. Junie had hated the place, couldn’t wait to start high school in another year. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that Harry S. Truman High School wasn’t much better, maybe even worse. Too many kids without a lot of hope for the future crowded into an even smaller space. From my graduating class, only a handful of kids had gone on to college. And of those, the majority had come back to Barren Springs without a degree. It’s hard to move up in the world when you’ve never seen it done.

I counted myself lucky that I’d graduated at all. Seventh grade was the first time I’d set foot in an actual school. Cal and I were “educated” in the holler. My mama taught us our ABCs and not much else. Our closest neighbor, Miss Eileen, taught us to read and to do basic math in exchange for cigarettes from Mama. Seventh grade was the first time I’d realized that there was poor and then there was poor. And we were the second kind. Most people around here aren’t exactly rolling in dough, but there’s a difference between the people who live closer to town and the ones who stay hidden in the hollers. We were the ones who learned to read from the meth addict down the road, if we learned at all; the ones who wore not just hand-me-downs but clothes that didn’t fit or came covered in stains of unknown origin. We had a hungry, feral look about us, even on the rare times our bellies were full, which made us instantly recognizable targets. Or it would have if our mama’s reputation hadn’t preceded us. Our status as the poorest of poor white trash trumped only by our mama’s penchant for casual violence. Everybody remembered the kid who’d thrown a rock at Cal down by the river one day. No one could say if he’d actually meant to hit Cal or it had been an unlucky throw. Hadn’t mattered to our mama, though. Next time we’d seen that kid, he’d been sporting a busted-up hand and scared, skittish eyes. Never would come within a country mile of either one of us again.

Usually Junie rode the bus home from school, often going home with Izzy on days I worked past dinnertime. On the few occasions I picked her up from school, it had always been controlled chaos when the bell rang, and today was no exception. Kids spilled out of the doors like marbles shot from a cannon as I slid into a parking spot. I noticed a few security guards near the buses, and I wondered if they were a new addition or if I never had a reason to notice them before. Either way, I guessed they wouldn’t look too kindly on an adult approaching the kids, even if I did appear relatively harmless. Which meant I needed to intercept Hallie before they noticed me.

Junie and Izzy had been an almost closed loop of friendship. A fact that always made me nervous. I told myself my anxiousness stemmed from worrying about what might happen if the friendship blew up and Junie was left adrift and alone. Or wanting her to have more friends so she wasn’t isolated. Growing up, Cal had been my only anchor, and now, as an adult, I still had trouble broadening my circle. Felt unmoored without Cal close by. I didn’t want that for Junie. Those reasons were both true. But they weren’t the truest one. Still, Junie and Izzy’s friendship wasn’t completely impenetrable. There were a few girls who hovered on the outside edges, who received birthday party invites or sat with Junie and Izzy at lunch. The one I knew best, Hallie Marshall, had been to the apartment a few times, had shown up in social media pictures next to Junie and Izzy.