slip away from Laney’s grasp. She hasn’t asked me for the details of what happened that morning, and I’m pretty sure she knows the last thing I want to do is talk about it, but I don’t want to give her an opening.
Everything has changed and everything is the same. Everything in this room, anyway. The only addition since June’s death is a few plastic bags placed side by side on the desk, filled with all of the valuables salvaged from her car—a creased notepad, a beaded bracelet with a broken clasp, the fuzzy pink dice that had hung around her rearview mirror. The last bag contains a bunch of pens, a tube of lip gloss and a silver disc. I pick it up to examine it when I notice the desk drawer isn’t shut all of the way.
I draw it open and poke around. There are some papers inside, National Honor Society forms and a discarded photo of her and Tyler that she’d taken off the corner of her dresser mirror and stashed away after their breakup. And on top of everything, a blank envelope. I pull out the letter inside and unfold it. It’s her acceptance to Berkeley, taken from the bulky acceptance package and stored away here for some reason I’ll never know. Tucked in the folds is also a postcard, bent at the edges. The front of it shows a golden beach dotted with beachgoers, strolling along the edge of a calm blue-green sea, above them an endless sky with California written in bubbly cursive.
The only time I ever heard my sister raise her voice with Mom was the fight they had when Mom insisted June accept the full scholarship she’d received to State. Mom said we couldn’t afford the costs. It would’ve been different before the divorce, but there was just no way to fund the tuition now, not when Dad had his own rent to pay, and the money that had been set aside was used to pay their lawyers. Besides, she reasoned, June should stay close to home. There was no reason for her to go all the way across the country when she could get a fine, free-ride education right here.
When June was informed of this, she and Mom had screamed at each other, no-holds-barred, for over an hour, until they were too exhausted to argue anymore and June had finally, in defeat, retreated to her room. She didn’t speak to our mother for an entire week, but she accepted the scholarship and admission to State and never mentioned Berkeley to us again.
I turn the postcard over, and it’s like all of the air has been sucked out of the room.
Laney notices, because she lifts her head and says, “Harper? What is it? Harper.”
I’m too busy staring at the back of the card to answer. Written there are the words, California, I’m coming home, in June’s handwriting. Nothing more.
Laney pulls it from my hands and reads it over and over again, her eyes flitting back and forth. She looks at me. “What do you think it means?”
It could mean nothing. But it could mean something. It was at the top of the drawer, after all. Maybe she meant for it to be found.
California was her dream. She wanted out of this town more than anything. She must have been suffocating, too, and we’d drifted so far apart that I never noticed. I never took it seriously. No one did. And now she’s dead.
“It’s not right,” I say.
Laney frowns. “What’s not right?”
“Everything.” I snatch back the postcard and wave it in the air. “This is what she wanted. Not to be stuck in this house, on display like—like some trophy. She hated it here, didn’t she? I mean, isn’t that why she—”
I can’t finish; I throw the postcard and envelope back into the drawer and slam it shut with more force than necessary, causing the desk to rattle. I am so angry I am shaking with it. It’s an abstract kind of anger, directionless but overwhelming.
Laney folds her arms across her chest and bows her head.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “I don’t know.”
“How did things get so bad?” I whisper. Laney doesn’t answer, and I know it’s because she, like me, has no way to make sense of this completely senseless act. Girls like June are not supposed to do this. Girls who have their whole lives ahead of them.
We stand next to each other, my hands still on the drawer handles, when the thought comes to me. It’s just a spark at first, a flicker of a notion.
“We should take her ashes to California.”
I don’t even mean to blurt it out loud, but once it’s out there, it’s out—no taking it back. And as the idea begins to take root in my mind, I decide maybe … maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
“Harper.” Laney’s using that voice again, that controlled voice, and it makes me want to hit her. She’s not supposed to use that voice. Not on me. “Don’t you think that’s kind of a stretch? Just because of a postcard?”
“It’s not just because of a postcard.”
It’s more than that. It’s about what she wanted for herself but didn’t think she’d ever have, for whatever reason. It’s about how there is so much I didn’t know about my sister, and this is as much as I’ll ever have of her. College acceptance letters and postcards. Reminders of her unfulfilled dreams.
“Your mom would totally flip,” Laney points out, but she sounds more entertained by the prospect than worried. “Not to mention your aunt.”
I don’t want to think about Aunt Helen. She’s just like everyone else downstairs, seeing in June only what they wanted to see—a perfect daughter, perfect friend, perfect student, perfect girl. They’re all grieving over artificial memories, some two-dimensional, idealized version of my sister they’ve built up in their heads because it’s too scary to face reality. That June had something in her that was broken.
And if someone like June—so loving, kind, full of goodness and light and promise—could implode that way, what hope is there for the rest of us?
“Who cares about Aunt Helen?” I snap.
Laney hesitates, but I see something in her eyes change, like a car shifting gears. Like she’s realizing how serious I am about this. “How would we even get there?”
“We can drive. You have a car.” Not much of a car, but more than what I have, which is nothing. Laney’s dad is loaded but has this weird selective code of ethics, where he believes strongly in teaching her the lesson of accountability and made her pay half for her own car, and so after some months of bagging groceries, she’d saved up enough to put half down on a beat-up old Gremlin.
“My Gremlin is on its last leg. Wheel. Whatever. There is no way it’d make it from Michigan to California.”
“Yeah, but still—” I’m growing more convinced by the second. “That’s what she wanted, right? California, the ocean?”
Laney just stares at me, and I wonder if this is how it will be from now on, if I am always going to be looked at like that by everyone, even my best friend.
I don’t care. She can stare at me all day and it won’t change my mind. There were so many things I’d done wrong in my relationship with my sister, but this. I could do this. I owe her that much.
“I’m going to do this,” I tell her. “With you or without you. I’d rather it be with.”
I expect
