The Happy Birthday Song ✓

Chapter Twelve

Monday, May 19th 2014

Kangaroo Point, Brisbane

2:03 PM

Today was Junie Bennett's twenty-first birthday and she was crying. 

She didn't know why. Well, she did. But she did not know why she was crying because of it. It was silly really. She had been standing in front of the mirror in the midst of popping an earring in when it had slipped out of her grasp and onto the floor.  

Junie had been crawling around on the carpeted floor in an attempt to locate the earring, when she came across a tattered looking wooden box. Curiosity getting the better of her, Junie momentarily forgot her quest for the missing earring and pulled the lid off the small box. Inside, she saw an assortment of trinkets, paper and a stack of photographs clumped together with an elastic band.

She had tentatively reached in and took out a sheet of paper. She smiled. It was one of her primary school report cards. That aching yet warm sense of nostalgia wrapped its tendrils around her heart and slowly squeezed. The teachers had painted a rather negative view of nine-year-old Junie Bennett.

Her teachers often made statements they could not back with sufficient evidence. They claimed she was too argumentative but she did not see how proving why she was right was being ‘too argumentative’. They claimed she was stubborn but she did not see how refusing to apologise to Dora Seymour for pushing her when she had pushed Junie first.

They claimed she was meddlesome and Junie certainly did not see how choosing to investigate where Ms. Hornsby really went for her ‘quick errands’ was meddlesome. It came to be that she would venture off to the far end of the sports field to smoke. In hindsight, Junie realised that maybe she should not have taken the picture of Ms. Hornsby smoking and sneakily dropped into the principal’s office.

She did feel rather guilty when Ms. Hornsby was nearly fired because of it. The teacher had asked her why she had reported her to the principal and Junie had shrugged and recited the law that specified smoking in public places was illegal. Thinking about it, maybe that was why Ms. Hornsby chose to humiliate her with that large badge on her tenth birthday.

Junie dropped the report card and rummaging through the box, she pulled out the photographs. The aching warmth intensified with every picture that she went through. Junie paused at one particular picture. It was taken two weeks before her twelfth birthday.

It showed Junie and Dylan with their arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning so beamingly bright at the camera. They were sat, perched on top of the highest slopes in the skate park. That day was retained in her mind so deeply because it had been in that moment as she watched Dylan attempt to execute a three-sixty ollie and fail that she knew.

She knew that if searched for a thousand years, for a million miles in a billion universes she would never find anybody even remotely close to the sheer and complex brilliance that was Dylan Mercer. 

Junie came across another picture, this one had been taken almost three years ago on their high school prom night. They were standing just outside the hotel the prom was being held. Junie was smiling at the camera, dressed in a long strapless purple dress, her red hair had been styled up into an eloquent bun with some flowers pinned in.

Dylan had his arm around her waist, his hand resting on her hip and the other hand stuffed in his trouser pocket. She remembered how handsome he looked in the black and white tuxedo. She had been staring straight at the camera, wearing a wide grin.

Dylan was not looking at the camera, instead his attention was on her. He had this look of adoration in his ocean blue eyes that stole her breath. Biting her lip, Junie placed the photographs down and continued rummaging through the box.