“I did?”
“You came into the bathroom the other day when I was showering,” I remind her. “I thought you were going to yell at me about grad night.”
“Oh.” She waves her hand. “I don’t remember. It must not have been a big deal.”
I get up from the counter and rinse my plate at the sink before sticking it in the dishwasher. The air in our home hasn’t been clear for days (weeks?), and I feel like Mom knows it. I just can’t understand why she won’t talk to me about it.
“You okay?” I give her my full attention for a moment, admiring the single white streak that sweeps from her temple and weaves its way through her braid. She doesn’t bother to hide it, and there’s a certain confidence, even rebelliousness in that. I heard Law tell her once to color it, and she laughed. “I earned it,” she said. The thought makes me smile now.
“Fine, fine.” Mom’s lips curl to match mine, but her eyes are sad.
“You don’t seem fine.” I wrap my arms around her neck and hang on tight for a moment. She smells of oatmeal soap and fresh mint from the sprig she puts in her morning tea. There’s a ceramic pot of peppermint in the window above the sink, and she clips and crushes a few leaves in her steaming mug every morning. The aroma of it brewing is the smell of my childhood. I breathe her in, let go. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I just haven’t seen much of you these last few days. Gotta soak up the time we have before it’s gone, right?”
She means before I’m gone, and I feel a stab of guilt. “I’m going to college,” I remind her, “not dying.”
“God forbid.” She laughs.
It feels wrong to leave her in such a strange mood, but I don’t really have a choice. I need to arrive at the community center by eight thirty to set up for the first class at nine, and I’m already running late. I leave with a promise to help her in the garden (my mother’s love language) on Saturday and drive faster than strictly necessary on my way into town, shaking off my worries as I go.
I unlock the double doors of the community center and bypass the gym to climb the wide staircase at one end of the building. At the top is the banquet hall turned art studio, a monstrosity of a room that spans the entire footprint of the gym below. Brick columns hold up the high ceiling, and tall, narrow windows span the entire south side. It’s amazing in the morning when the sunshine pours in and the dust mites dance in the golden glow. Shelves have been built against the north wall and they’re sagging beneath the weight of jars of paint, boxes of fresh canvas, and plastic totes filled with everything from cracked crayons to old buttons.
My first task is to set out cups of water to clean the brushes, refill the palettes, and make sure everything is ready to go when Tanya, the Arts and Crafts Director, breezes in just a couple minutes after nine.
At the end of my last shift I had left a wide tray with plastic cups on the counter next to the sink, and I start there now, filling each container half-full of water. I’ve never really considered the state of Jericho’s water, but after my conversation with Sullivan, I find myself watching the faucet with a critical eye. I can’t help myself—I lift one of the cups to my nose and sniff. It smells like chlorine to me, and faintly medicinal, not at all like our well water, which is trace mineral and earth. We run it through a water purifier, but the smell lingers.
City water is different. It’s pumped through the water treatment plant, of course, and we all trust it comes out the other side safe and drinkable. Last spring they flushed the water main and for an entire afternoon the water ran brown. It smelled sharp and dirty then, like rust and damp cellars. Unhealthy. And a couple of years ago there was a notice about nitrates in the water. Pregnant women, small children, and the elderly were advised to drink bottled water instead. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but Sullivan’s story of poisoned wells fills me with a sense of helplessness.
“Hiya, June!”
I turn to see one of the campers skipping toward me, blond pigtails bouncing. She’s often the first through the doors in the morning, and I give her a big smile, shaking off any lingering doubts about the quality of Jericho’s water. “Good morning! Wanna help?”
* * *
The day passes in a blur of activity and the never-ending chatter of small children, bright dust, and spilled paint. After Tanya has left and I’ve locked up, I sit on the steps outside the community center and let the late afternoon sun raise goose bumps across my skin. Heat can do that—can make you shiver—just as surely as cold. I rub my arms to get rid of the prickling sensation and study Jericho spread out before me.
Suddenly I’m on my feet, leaving the community center and my car behind. It’s a Friday afternoon in early summer and you can tell because Jericho is a ghost town. People leave work early, head to the lake, have a beer in the sun. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a tumbleweed cartwheel across the street, but for once I’m grateful for the stillness.
The library is lukewarm, the air close and thick. It’s also jarringly quiet, a reminder that even when no one is around the world is filled with sounds. Birds and a light breeze shaking the leaves, and cars in the middle distance. But in the library, there is just the sound of my breath. For some reason it’s faster than normal, my heart beating high and hard. I came here because I wanted privacy, and I’m not even sure why. Or who I’m hiding from. I just know that I don’t want the history of our home computer to betray the things I’m searching for.
“Hey, June.”
Cora startles me, emerging from between the stacks with a children’s book in her hand and a wide smile on her face. I’m a lifelong regular of the Jericho library, but it’s been a while since I’ve popped by. I’d volunteered for the summer reading program when I was in middle school, but high school made me too busy for books. Still, Cora is an old friend, and after I gasp at her sudden appearance, I wrap her in a tight hug. Her dress is shockingly bright and printed with red and yellow birds in flight. She smells of essential oils: geranium and eucalyptus, if my nose can be trusted. Cora feels like every good thing from my youth wrapped up in one sparkling woman.
“It’s good to see you,” she says. One raised eyebrow scolds me: It’s been a while.
“You too.” I give her a smile of my own. “I saw you at graduation. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say thanks in person.”
“The handshake line was a mile long. It was too hot to wait in the sun.”
“I would have left, too.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I just want to use a computer,” I say. No books today, and I can tell she’s a little disappointed.
Cora puts the book on the circulation counter before turning to face me, hands on hips. “We close at six on Fridays and I have plans, so make it zippy. Then promise me that you’ll be back sometime when we can catch up.”
“Cross my heart.”
“Got your library card?”
I shake my head and Cora reaches behind the counter. Grabbing a lanyard with a laminated card clipped to the end, she thrusts it at me. “Use this. Guest username and password are on the card. Search history is saved, so you’d better not be looking up porn or how to dispose of a body.”
“You know me so well.”
Cora laughs. “Don’t worry, I don’t have you pegged as the murdering type.”
“There’s a type?”