The ceremony was in the gym of Jericho High, parents beaming up from folding chairs below the narrow stage where the graduates stood on bleachers. The entire place creaked and groaned in a chorus of metal on metal as we shifted our weight and shook out tired legs. But there were only forty-eight of us commencing, and the valedictorian was Lexi DeJong, who everyone knows would rather pluck her own eyebrows bald than speak in public, so we were in and out in just under an hour.
Afterward, there were sugar cookies and punch in the bright foyer of the newly remodeled high school. The punch dyed everyone’s lips an unnatural shade of crimson so that we looked like a bunch of discreet cannibals, dabbing our mouths with embossed napkins. The good people of Jericho adhere to a family planning policy of “the more the merrier,” so several of my classmates’ much younger siblings were running around the room, making an unholy ruckus.
Shedding my robe when it was all over felt monumental somehow; this wasn’t just my graduation, the end of my time at the mercy of the backwater Jericho school system. No, this is the beginning of everything, a rebirth of sorts. I’m gone, baby, gone. Or I will be in twelve weeks and three days, when I pack everything I own into my little black car, drive away to the University of Iowa, and never look back. Iowa City is merely a stepping-stone, a launch pad to bigger and better things. Maybe I’ll do a semester in England, a leap year in Spain or Thailand. Maybe I’ll nab a prestigious internship in our nation’s capital, where I’ll learn how to right the wrongs in the world from the inside. I could pursue a career in political science, art history, nursing, or architecture. I could wander the earth.
My mom never presses me about what exactly I plan to study in college, but Lawrence doesn’t miss a chance to make me feel like a failure for not having it all mapped out. He believes it’s his fatherly duty to be on my case. But to me he’s less of a father figure and more of just… Law. “Lawrence” to Mom, “Dad” to Jonathan, and I avoid calling him much of anything at all. His well-rehearsed “A goal without a plan is a wish” speech falls on deaf ears.
Yet, if Lawrence saw me drunk last night, ponytail askew and reeking of booze, I’m a dead girl walking. No matter that I’m almost nineteen years old and weeks away from freedom. Never mind that I have never, not ever, done anything like this before.
I push myself off the floor and squint at the clock on my nightstand. 7:24. At least it’s not noon. I wonder what time I got in, when the after-party dissolved and the eleven of us disbanded to sleep off unfamiliar hangovers. I hope my friends all made it home okay.
My bed is mussed up, sheets whipped into a twist that makes me believe I at least started out there. It looks so inviting, I crawl right back in, clothes and all, to try again. I can ignore the cello, my mother’s passionate rendition of a new song I do not recognize. Sometimes she writes her own stuff, and this piece is building to an intense, bitter crescendo that will be hard to tune out. But before I can bury my face in the pillow, there is a furious rapping at my door.
“June? Hey, June, you up?”
“No,” I call, my voice scratchy from bonfire smoke and laughter. I remember that now: laughing and laughing and laughing. I have no idea what we were laughing about.
“Are you decent?”
“No.”
I hear the handle jiggle anyway. It is an antique glass knob that needs WD-40 and a few hard turns of a screwdriver. I know exactly how to fix it, but I don’t because you can hear someone open my door from almost anywhere in the house. It’s an alarm system of sorts. Not that anyone is in the habit of sneaking into my room. Who would? Lawrence avoids anything that bears even a hint of femininity, Mom is welcome with impunity, and Jonathan knows to knock. I bolt upright at the sound of him breaking this unwritten rule and am rewarded with what feels like a blow to the head. He finds me with the heels of both my hands pressed against my temples.
“That bad?” Jonathan says. I can hear the smirk in his voice.
“Worse. Was this your doing?”
“Pretty sure you swallowed all on your own.”
I chance a peek and find my brother lounging against the doorframe, looking smug. He’s obviously enjoying this.
“How did we get home?” I ask, closing my eyes again. The light glaring off my polished floorboards is too much.
“I drove.”
“You were sober?”
“Of course.” As if it’s a given. Sobriety is never a given with Jonathan.
“How’d I get up here?”
“I dragged your ass. That’s how.”
I sigh. “Does Lawrence know?”
“No. He was out cold.”
“Mom?”
When Jonathan doesn’t answer, I look up to find him staring at me, one eyebrow cocked in that jaunty way that makes all the girls in Jericho and several neighboring towns catch their breath.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.” It’s impossible not to know. Mom’s music is a far better indicator of her mood than the words she says or the look on her face. While you can still glimpse remnants of her storied hippie past—her penchant for bare feet, bangles, dresses that shift like shadows around her tall, slender frame—these days Rebecca Baker is buttoned up tight. It’s hard to get a genuine emotion out of her, except for when she is playing her cello.
“We can deal with Mom later,” Jonathan says, striding into my room. He opens my closet and yanks a shirt off a hanger, tosses it at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Get dressed.” He glances over to where I’m still huddled on the bed. “I mean, in something other than last night’s clothes.”
“I’m sick, Jonathan.”
“No, you’re hungover. It’s not the same thing.”
“I need a shower.”
“I know. It’ll have to wait.”
Even though Jonathan is younger than me by less than a year, he has always felt like my older brother. When we were little, people assumed he was the oldest because he was bigger than me by the time we were toddlers, and now at eighteen he can easily pass for midtwenties.
“Wait for what?” I say, already bowing to his will, though crawling out of bed is the last thing on earth I want to do.
“Cal called.”
“So?”
“Something came up. They need help.”
I groan, but one leg is already curving off the side of the mattress, reaching for the floor. “What do they need me for?”
“I don’t know, but Beth was crying. I think it’s bad this time.”
Grabbing the clean T-shirt Jonathan has thrown onto the bed, I wave him out. “Give me five minutes.”
* * *
Cal and Beth Murphy live on the far side of the little lake that Jericho was named for. It’s more of an oversized pond than a lake, a blue-gray smudge of spring water that bubbles up from the prairie and is ringed by gnarled oak trees and cattails that wave in the breeze. There are a few old docks scattered along the banks, and one gravel boat ramp that allows fishers to send out the odd aluminum skiff. Years ago, someone stocked the lake with bass, bluegill, and walleye, and optimistic fishermen still sometimes cast a line and hope for the best, but there isn’t much to catch anymore.