Ethan had never liked NBC News. John Cameron Swayze had a funny way of talking where he pursed his lips but never properly opened his mouth and ended up sounding incurably congested. He'd always sort of reminded Ethan of an unhappy fish. Back home, his family always watched See It Nowon CBS, even though Edward Murrow's ratings had been dropping since '54. The Harper household was very anti-Swayze.
Uncle Robert, on the other hand, was NBC's biggest fan. He reclined on the couch every evening with a pack of Camel cigarettes and smiled in self-satisfaction as the logo flashed onto the screen and the white letters spelling out Camel News Caravan switched to John Cameron Swayze's fishy face. Ethan and Aunt Cara would sit dutifully in the living room, each staring at different points on the wall and pretending to be actively engaged in the monotonous news report as cigarette smoke strutted boisterously about the room and invaded their noses and eyes.
That night, Friday the 17th, there was breaking news.
The pre-recorded intro came on as usual, reminded households across the nation to "sit back, light up a Camel, and be an eyewitness to the happenings that made history in the last twenty-four hours."
"Today's news, today," Uncle Robert muttered in time with the recording, a cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth. He rearranged himself in his chair.
The image on screen became one of Swayze, leaning against his desk with a map of the world as his backdrop. "Ladies and gentlemen, good evening to you," he began in his nasally voice. Ethan suppressed a groan. "Controversy has risen in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, as a law set years ago was broken by a young girl. Erica Spencer, a fifteen year old schoolgirl from Hope Hull, was arrested this afternoon while, quote, 'running errands for her mother.' Erica, a Negro girl, refused to give up her seat on the public bus when asked by the driver to move in order to make room for a white woman. This story is reported for us now by David Brinkley, NBC News, Montgomery."
Ethan frowned, leaning forward in his seat as Brinkley, the other, less frequently aired anchor of Camel News Caravan, appeared on the screen. He opened with a short greeting, then the picture cut to a slightly blurry school photograph of smiling, dark-skinned girl. Footage of Montgomery buses rolled across the screen, and Brinkley spoke.
"As per the law in Montgomery, colored passengers must sit at the back of the vehicle, leaving the front seats open for white passengers. Today, fifteen-year-old Erica Spencer defied this law. When asked by the driver to relinquish her seat to a white woman who had just boarded, she refused, stating that there were other people standing, and the woman would not be alone. Police officials were called to the scene, and Ms. Spencer was taken into custody."
Swayze returned, his lips pursed. "This event follows in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case last year, in which the 1896 ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in relation to public education. Ms. Spencer's defiance raises an important question for all Americans to consider: is a full expulsion of the Plessy v. Ferguson case on its way?"
Ethan gaped at the television screen, the image of Erica Spencer burned onto the back of his eyelids. He blinked.
"Robert," his aunt said harshly, casting her husband a frantic glare. He scrambled to his feet and dove for the set, turning the dial before Swayze could move on to the next story. Now it was on CBS, where Murrow was conducting an interview with Groucho Marx. Usually, the Person to Person program was Ethan's favorite; tonight, he just wanted Swayze to come back on and tell him more.
"Uncle Robert," he ventured, "would you change it back?"
"Quiet," his uncle snapped. "I'm listening." And he stared at the set so hard that sweat broke out on his forehead. His Camel lay forgotten in an ashtray on the coffee table.
**********
The sky was falling.
At least, that's how it sounded. Something was exploding outside Ethan's window like a million tiny shards of broken glass crashing against pavement. He rolled over in bed with a groan, pulling a pillow over his face.
"Go away!" he growled at the collapsing atmosphere.
The thundering stopped for a moment, as if considering his command. When it started up again, it was accompanied by a wind chime voice.
"Wake up, Ethan Charlie Harper! It's Saturday morning, so I know you don't have work. Our invincible summer isn't gonna wait!"
Ethan opened one eye at a time and drew the pillow under his chin. He knew who would be standing outside his window, grinning a grin of lopsided pearly whites. Still, when he gathered the strength to turn over onto his side, the sight of Juniper Jones, her freckled nose pressed against the glass, gave him a start.
"Are you awake?" she asked, her voice muffled. "Come on, hurry hurry hurry!"
Taking his time, Ethan climbed out of bed and shuffled to the window. When he opened it, Juniper stuck her head through immediately. "Come on, Ethan! Come on come on come on come on come on come on!"
"Juniper, what are you doing outside my window at seven o'clock in the morning?"
She rolled her eyes. "We're going on our first adventure of course. Will you please hurry up?"
"Well, gee whiz, don't have a cow." Ethan yawned. "I'm still in my pajamas, so can you cool it for a minute while I go get dressed?"
Juniper blew out an exaggerated sigh. "Fi-ine," she grumbled. Her lips molded into a pout, but she leaned dutifully against the sill and waited.
Ethan was conscious of her gaze as he ruffled through the closet for a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her eyes followed him out the door of his room and seemed to drill through the wall until he'd reached the sanctuary of the pink-tiled bathroom. There, he dressed quickly and splashed water onto his face, then stared into the mirror as he smoothed back his hair with one hand.
The glow in his dark eyes was almost manic, and it didn't dim when he blinked. Had two weeks in this town already driven him out of his mind? Shaking his head, he passed a hand over his forehead, which seemed to have darkened from all the days spent walking in the sun. He figured he could almost match the Spencer girl tone for tone.
When the rosy walls became too much to handle and he figured he had left Juniper waiting long enough, Ethan returned to his room with his pajamas rolled under his arm. He opened the door slowly and nearly fell to the floor in surprise—Juniper Jones had climbed through his window and was now lying on his unmade bed as if she owned it, her nose buried in a recent issue of Krypto the Super-Dog.
"There you are!" she cried when he stepped inside, sitting up and tossing the comic onto the bedside table. "I thought you might've drowned in the toilet."
Ethan rolled his eyes. "Keep it down, wouldya? My aunt and uncle are still asleep, and I don't think they'd be too cool with finding a girl in my bed."
Juniper blinked innocently. "Why not?"
"Because—are you really—never mind."
"O-okay, Ethan," Juniper said, getting to her feet. Today, she had traded her usual full skirt for a cuffed pair of jeans, and the colorful plaid print of her collared blouse matched the ribbon that was looped through her ponytail. As Ethan dropped his pajamas onto the foot of his bed, she held out her hand.
"Come on, city boy," she teased, tugging him toward the window. "I'm gonna show you just how great this town can be."
Juniper had parked her baby blue bike a little ways down a path behind Aunt Cara's house that Ethan hadn't even known existed. "There are forest paths all over town," Juniper explained as they walked. "We're outdoorsy folk, here in Ellison."
Her bike, which she said was named Stella, leaned against a tree, a picnic basket swinging from its handlebars. She righted it, then bit her lip and studied Ethan through squinted eyes.
"Well, seeing as you don't have a bike, you can just stand on my pegs. The ride's not too far."
Ethan eyed the metal pegs skeptically. "Where are we going, anyway?"
"The Lake. That's with a capital T and L. It's actually called Lake Aspen, but come on, that's so dull."
Ethan didn't think "The Lake" was anymore interesting, but he didn't say so. His dad had told him stories about growing up on the lake, about swimming and fishing and boating in the summer months and trying to ice skate after the odd winter snowstorm, but since arriving in Ellison, no one had so much as mentioned it to him. He'd begun to wonder if it had just dried up years ago.
"So this path loops around through the trees and ends up by the water," Juniper was saying, mounting the bike and placing one foot against the pedal. "Come on, Ethan. Hop on."
Frowning dubiously, Ethan stepped forward and placed one foot, then the other, onto the pegs, wrapping his fingers gently around Juniper's bony shoulders. The bike tilted a little bit.
"All right," June said, a mischievous smile stretching across her face. "Let's tear ass."
She hopped up onto her pedals and took off down the road.
Ethan had intended to keep his grip light, but as Juniper took off at a breakneck pace, he found himself holding on for dear life. Hot air blew her hair into his face and brought tears to his eyes. When he looked up, the trees were bent into natural mosaics and he thought that he must not be in Ellison anymore. Juniper laughed that wind chime laugh and it brought up a carbonated happiness in his stomach until he was laughing too, the sound spewing out of him as if it was surprised, hesitant at first, then growing until his entire body shook.
When Juniper screeched to a halt at the edge of the lake, Ethan tumbled from the bike and rolled, giggling, into the grass. Juniper stood over him, looking childishly pleased.
"Glad you're having fun, silly goose," she sang. "But you've got to get up off the ground. That was only the beginning."
Ethan climbed to his feet and brushed loose dirt from the seat of his pants, then trailed Juniper alongside the glittering water and toward a shingled gray boathouse. At the door, she handed him the picnic basket and rapped lightly against the wood.
"That you, June?" a gruff voice asked from within.
"Yeah, hiya, Gus!" Juniper rocked onto her toes, and a moment later, the door swung open to reveal a muscular but aging man who stooped through the doorway with a sense of slowly fading glory. His teeth sliced a white line through his salt and pepper beard as he offered the energetic redhead a crooked smile.
"This the boy you were telling me about?" he asked. "The Harper boy?"
"That would be me." Ethan stepped forward and shook Gus's outstretched hand.
"Knew your dad growing up," he said, nodding briskly. "Great guy. Miss him 'round here." He grunted. "Anyway, bet you kids want to go out on the lake. Come with me."
They followed him into the dimly lit boathouse, where a line of rowboats were tied up along the dock.
"This one!" Juniper cried, diving for a wooden boat that looked exactly like all the others. "Welcome aboard the SS Juniper," she said, as Ethan climbed in after her. "It's named after me."
Ethan couldn't help but smile.
"That's right," Gus affirmed, unhooking the SS Juniper's rope and tossing it into Ethan's lap. "And she's a real star out on the lake. You kids treat 'er right out there." He leaned off the dock and pushed aside the wooden doors, revealing the lake in all its cerulean glory, then handed Juniper a pair of oars.
As she positioned them above the water, Ethan reached out tentatively. "Do you want me to—?"
Juniper snorted. "Please, city boy. Leave the real work to the girls who can handle it." And with a surreptitious wink, she cut the oars through the water and sent them gliding out into the glassy blue.
The air smelled different in Ellison. Ethan had noticed this the first day he arrived, but here, sitting across from Juniper as she propelled them across The Lake, he was more aware of it than ever. He took a breath and thought he must be inhaling the entire forest, that saplings must be sprouting amid the bones of his rib cage. Juniper chatted up a storm as she rowed, and though he tried to listen, he found himself mesmerized by the rhythm of his lungs. Trees surrounded them, casting their long shadows across the water. It was a dance of the senses, touch and smell and taste, and another sense: a feeling inside that here, there was peace.
"And, we've arrived," Juniper announced, snapping Ethan from his reverie. She lay the oars across the bow and reached for the picnic basket. "From here drift."
Ethan craned his neck, taking in the sunlight and the tumbling leaves and the mist of the water as it carried them along on timid waves. "Wow," he said.
"Wow is right." Juniper paused for a moment to glance around the lake and smile. "This is my second favorite place in the whole entire town."
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Second? What's your first?"
"Oh, no you don't." She wagged a finger in his face. "That's for another day. For now, take one before they get cold." She pushed the basket toward him and, looking in, he saw that it was filled to the brim with biscuits. "I wasn't really sure what was good for breakfast," Juniper explained with a shrug. "But everyone loves biscuits, right?"
Ethan stared at her, with her wild red hair and big blue eyes, hunching over a basket full of biscuits, and maybe the absurdity of their makeshift friendship hit him all at once, or maybe there was something leftover from the bike ride, but suddenly he found that laughter was spilling relentlessly from his lips. He doubled over until his face was nearly pressed against the damp wooden floor, until he was coughing and nearly crying, until Juniper had joined in and their combined glee made the little rowboat quake.
When the guffaws had subsided into spurts of loud chuckles, Ethan clutched his aching stomach and took a shivering breath. "I don't know," he gasped, "what's actually so funny."
"Neither do I," Juniper replied, brushing tears from her eyes. "But by gosh, isn't that just the best way to laugh?"
It took another short eternity for them to catch their breath enough to handle Juniper's breakfast. They sat on the lake and ate soft, flaky biscuits dipped straight into jars of strawberry jam, and their eyes met every now and then but for once, even Juniper was silent. They ate until their happy-sore stomachs were filled to the brim, and then sat there as the boat drifted in lazy spirals across the lake.
Then: "I want to tell you about my invincible summer."
Ethan had been dozing off, lounging awkwardly along the stern of the boat, but Juniper's voice startled him awake. He shielded his eyes against the sun and gazed up at her as she traced circles onto the legs of her jeans.
"Go for it," he said.
She took a deep breath. "I love this town," she began, "I love it with every little bit of me. But I've never really had any friends here, except Gus, who is old and has a bad knee, and Elvis, who is my pet canary. Since I could write, which was maybe when I was five, I've been planning this—this perfect summer where everything would be right and I would do everything that I've ever wanted to do. Then last year in school we read this essay by this one French guy named Camus, and the essay was really boring and I didn't understand half of it, but the point was there was this one line where he said, 'In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.' And by gosh, I thought that was brilliant. I thought it was exactly what I'd been trying to say with my list, except I'm only barely sixteen and I don't really use words like invincible. But when I read that, I thought—I thought, that's what I want. I want to find a summer so invincible that even in the winter when it's cold and snowy and dark and I'm stuck in the house all day, I can think about it and make the sun come out for a while.
"And like I said, I love this town. But no one here cares about winters and summers and essays by French guys. I've lived here almost my whole life and told half the population about my dream, and maybe one person has looked at me after and said 'oh, okay, June, that sounds cool.' And that was Gus, except like I said, he has a bad knee, so he can't—but anyway, I'm probably just off my rocker, and you probably don't care about anything I just said, but the thing is, Ethan Charlie Harper—the thing is, when I saw you at The Malt that day, I looked at you and I just—I just saw summer. I saw my invincible summer."
She wrung her hands and studied them, seeming determined not to meet Ethan's eyes. "Anyway," she said, her voice a tiny whisper now. "I just wanted to explain."
For a long moment, Ethan didn't respond; he simply stared at Juniper Jones in something akin to wonder—with maybe a little bit of confusion thrown into the mix. She tried to keep her head down, but it wasn't long before his gaze coaxed her back to the surface.
When their eyes met, Ethan smiled. He held out his hand. She took it shyly, and he squeezed. "Well then," he said, feeling in the curve of his lips the sensation of starting over, "we'd better get started, Starfish. Deal?"
A grin broke out on Juniper's heart-shaped face, and it seemed as if rays of sunlight were escaping between her teeth. She gave his hand a hefty shake.
"Deal."
**********
"That one looks like a rabbit."
"No way, it's definitely a platypus."
"Juniper, not every cloud can look like a platypus."
"Says who, the cloud watching police?"
Ethan elbowed Juniper in the side, a gesture she returned with a smack to the chin. They were each lying on one of the two center benches, their shoes discarded and their feet trailing through the water. The clouds took a stroll overhead, blissfully unaware of everything outside of their pale blue sanctuary.
Sighing, Ethan lifted himself into a sitting position, twisting once in each direction to snap the cricks out of his back. Juniper remained where she was, her eyes closed and her hands folded across her stomach. A peaceful smile tugged at her lips.
In the past hour, in between cloud watching and biscuit eating, Juniper Jones had laid bare her invincible summer, piece by piece. Ethan wasn't sure how she remembered it all. She wanted to have a race through the entire town, but holding kites. She wanted to organize a sock hop night at The Malt. To plant sunflowers on every front lawn in Ellison. To paint a mural on the empty left wall of the general store. To climb to the top of Big Red, allegedly the tallest tree in all of Alabama. She wanted to go to the movies in Montgomery, learn how to use a record player, read twenty-one books in a week, put on a puppet show. And the list went on. She'd scatter her ideas through their conversation like she was coming up with them one by one, or maybe dredging them out of eleven years of memory.
"And that's why Mrs. Westbury has warts on her feet," she'd say. "Also, I want to knit scarves for all five of Mr. Callahan's new puppies. I don't know how to knit, though. Oh, that too! I want to learn how to knit."
Ethan wasn't sure how, but something about the upside-down and sideways way she spoke made sense to him. He mentally made note of all her summer plans that were plausible—when she suggested holding her breath for two hours, he carefully dissuaded her—and did not once wonder if he would actually follow through with her on all of them. She made it all seem effortlessly possible.
At one point he had said, "You know what we should do? We should get a really long piece of paper, like a scroll out of an adventure flick, you know, and we should write everything down. We can hang it on the wall in the boathouse or something, maybe, and every time we finish something we can check it off."
Juniper had grabbed his arm and shook it, squealing, "Yes! Ethan Charlie Harper, you are an absolute genius!"
Now, Ethan crossed his legs on the bench and glanced over at her, lying there with her eyes still feigning sleep. On a whim, he passed a hand over her face. No response. He poked her in the side. Only the slightest twitch. "Hey, Juniper," he said loudly, "I think you're dead. Hope you don't mind, I'm gonna toss your body into the lake now."
He reached toward her with both hands and was mere inches away when she leapt to her feet and then dropped heavily onto her butt, rocking the boat so hard that water splashed them both across the side.
"No, I can't swim!" she shrieked, then snapped her fingers. "That's another thing! I need to learn how to swim."
Ethan snorted, shaking his head incredulously. "You're telling me," he said slowly, "that you've lived in a lake town your entire life...and you've never learned how to swim?"
"Well, no one ever taught me!" Juniper crossed her arms and huffed, then muttered, "Also, the lake water is really cold."
"Ha! Maybe we should call you 'Chicken' instead of 'Starfish.'"
She gasped. "How dare you!"
"Don't flip, you goof," Ethan said playfully. "Look, I'll teach you to swim, all right? That one at least should be easy."
She shoved his shoulder again, but this time with a hint of a smile. "Fine. Chameleon." Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Chameleon," she repeated. "I'm Starfish, and you're Chameleon."
Ethan frowned. "How come?"
"Because," said Juniper Jones, "you're the quiet type. Not too noticeable. Not in a bad way, of course—it's just that I think back where you're from, you don't have a problem fitting in." She paused, suddenly troubled. "But not here. Here in Ellison, things are different, and you stick out like a sore thumb."
Juniper's watch read twelve noon when Ethan realized that his aunt and uncle didn't know where he was.
"Relax," Juniper assured him, "I'm sure they don't think your dead, or anything. But if you want, we can head on back in a little while."
Ethan nodded, distracted now because the thought of his aunt and uncle had reminded him of the Camel broadcast the night before. Erica Spencer, the smiling schoolgirl, had been gone from his mind for these few quiet hours—now, she suddenly reappeared. He glanced sideways at Juniper as she drew two more biscuits from the basket.
"Think fast," she said, and tossed one at Ethan. Hardly paying attention, he made a weak grab for the flying object, but it flew through his fingers and splashed into the lake. Juniper glared at him. "Way to go, spaz. Guess that one's fish food."
Ethan said nothing for long enough that Juniper became preoccupied with the biscuit in her hands. When he finally decided to speak, her mouth was full.
"June, you've got jets, right?" he asked, as she swallowed. "You know things about, you know...things."
"Yes, Ethan," Juniper replied solemnly. "I know many things. About things."
"Oh, cut the gas. Look, I don't know if you watch the news—maybe not—but anyway, on NBC last night, there was this one report. This girl named Erica, she was...she was arrested because she wouldn't move when a white lady wanted her seat on the bus. And I just—I don't get it. Why would they arrest her for something like that? I mean, sure it's rude, but—"
Ethan paused when he saw the way Juniper was staring at him, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape. She'd finished the biscuit, but she swallowed again.
"That's—that's just how it works around here, Ethan," she murmured. "In Ellison it's a little different 'cause the town's so small, but in the big cities? Montgomery, Birmingham? It's the law. A—a colored person's gotta give up their seat if a white person comes along. Everything is separate. That's just the way it is."
Ethan blinked slowly. He looked down at his hands, several shades darker that Juniper's, and thought about that bus. "I don't understand," he said. "Why?"
Juniper looked at him strangely. "Say, Ethan, where did you say you're from, again?"
"Arcadia," he said. "Small city up in Washington. You probably haven't heard of it—most people haven't, I bet. My parents call it Washington's secret paradise."
She tilted her head. "Paradise, huh? And up there, you don't hear about this kind of thing? Because this is what happens down here, Ethan. All the time."
"I don't know." Ethan frowned, lacing his fingers together in his lap. "My mom's talked a little bit about what it was like growing up in the South—she's from Mississippi—and I heard about the court case last year, with the schools, but I guess it all seemed so far away. Back home, nobody talks about politics much, except during the war when a couple local boys got drafted, and I barely even remember that." He paused. "I guess that's why my parents like it there, if they grew up in places like this."
A sudden sadness had fallen over Juniper's features; her blue eyes were misty. "That must be nice," she murmured, then shook her head. "I thought you knew. About all of it. And how on Sunday, when Noah was five seconds away from pounding you, that was because, well—" To finish her sentence, she looked down at his hands too.
"Oh."
"Yeah. I can't tell you why they're like that. I've been trying to figure it out too. The way I see it, you know, people are like the different paint circles on a palette. You've got your reds and blues and greens and yellows, and they're all different but you need all of them to make a painting. But 'round here, they don't see it that way." She shrugged. "They never have. And last year, when that boy—sorry, I mean—"
Ethan frowned at the sudden shock of panic on her freckled face. "What?" he asked quickly, leaning forward. Juniper shook her head and licked her lips, settling back onto her bench.
"Nothing," she assured hoarsely, picking up the oars and slipping them into position. "You, um—we should go."
"Juniper," Ethan warned. He grabbed one of the oars before she could slice it through the water. "What boy? What happened?"
"It's not important," she said, folding her hand over his. "None of it is. I promise." She forced a dim and tired smile. "Let's just go back to shore."