The Opposite Of Tidy (34 page)

Jeremy and Royce were surprisingly old-fashioned when it came to having a teenage couple in the house. Junie had assumed that she and Wade would be given a bed to share, but no, when it came time to go to sleep, Jeremy led Junie up to a little attic room with a musty double bed tucked in the corner under the eaves, while Royce helped Wade get settled on the couch all the way downstairs in the living room. Their hosts had said their goodnights, and told both Wade and Junie that the dog would be sleeping on the landing and would be sure to let them know if there was any midnight wandering.

Junie was the last one up, finally lured down to the kitchen by the smell of dark, rich coffee.

“Good morning, princess,” Jeremy said as he poured her a cup. “Did you notice the pea I placed under the mattress?”

“I must not be a princess, because no,” Junie said, “I didn’t notice it.”

“But you still have your prince,” he said with a wink.

“Morning,” Wade said as she took a seat beside him. “I actually tried to come up to see you, but Lucy stopped me.”

“We said she would, didn’t we?” Jeremy gave the dog a pat on the head. “We don’t know how you two got permission to stay here overnight, but we can do our part to make sure that it is a perfectly innocent experience. You have plenty of time before you need to submerse yourself in the murk of such things.”

Junie had spun the same lie as the night before, telling her father over the phone that she was staying at the hotel, and leaving a message for her mother at the hotel that she’d be staying the night again at her father’s. Junie held Wade’s hand under the table as they ate big bowls of hot oatmeal with maple syrup and cream poured overtop.

“Not many kids like oatmeal,” Royce commented from across the table, where he was drinking muddylooking green tea, a piece of dry toast abandoned on his plate.

“We’re just thankful that you let us stay over,” Wade said.

“Can I move in?” Junie added. “I’d be happy if I never went home again.”

Jeremy leaned against the counter behind Royce, frowning. “Better not have brought that woman’s people out here.”

Wade shook his head. “No one followed us.”

“Better be sure about that.”

Royce winked, his pale face coming to life with a grin. “You never know, you just might be worthy of a little paparazzi, what with all the hype.”

“Why do you say that like it’s a good thing?” Jeremy growled.

“Oh, come on, Jer. A little excitement does a body good.” Royce took a sip of his tea. “I remember when Marlon Brando took us all out to the Brolly pub. Remember that? And the paparazzi showed up out of nowhere—”

“Vultures to the carcass,” Jeremy muttered.

Wade glanced at Junie.

“Didn’t mean you,” Jeremy added, when Royce shot him a look.

“Didn’t think you did.” Royce waved him away. “I’m not dead yet. Go get me the photo album with the paisley cover. That’s got the pictures of Brando.”

“Wait.” Wade got up. “Let me go out to the van and grab my camera. I’d like to shoot this, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” Royce grinned. “What’s a frail man have to do with his long last days but star in the story of his life? That is what this will be, isn’t it? The story of my life? You won’t go selling the footage to Kendra?”

“Never,” Wade said. “I’m way more interested in seeing your pictures of Marlon Brando. Never mind Kendra.”

The mention of the queen of daytime talk TV set Junie’s heart thumping. She would have to go back home, to another day consumed by
The Kendra Show
.

“Can’t you guys adopt me?” Junie asked as Wade left.
“Can’t I just live here in the purple house and pretend that I don’t have any other family? At least for a little while?”

“Absolutely not,” Jeremy barked, startling Junie with his tone.

“He means that you’re meant to live your own life,” Royce offered. “All of it. Not just the easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy bits.”

“I mean, you don’t abandon your family when it gets hard.” Jeremy looked away from Royce as he said this. But then he looked back, and smiled sadly at his partner. “I mean, you feel all the hard feelings. And you do the best that you can. And you do not, under any circumstances, run away.”

Wade came back with his camera, and the moment passed. But it wasn’t lost on Junie. She knew Jeremy was a man of few words, so to hear him talk so frankly about something so difficult felt exceptionally precious, as if she’d found a beautiful, sparkling geode inside of a hard, grey stone.

While Wade set up his camera, and Jeremy went to get the photo album, Junie sat with her worries piled in her lap like a tangled ball of yarn. She could get through this. If Jeremy and Royce could cope, then she would too, and with something that wouldn’t kill her. Not really. And when she finally got through it, she would be stronger. At least she hoped so.

They headed back to Vancouver shortly after breakfast, and by the time they pulled onto Junie’s street, it was already
filled with media trucks and curious onlookers hoping for a glimpse of Kendra herself. It was the last day that the crew would be at the house, and Junie was eager to see what progress they’d made since she’d left.

Wade reluctantly went off to school, and Junie went in through the back, in search of her mother. She found her, surrounded by cameras, in a heap on the living room floor where her easy chair used to be. Nigel was standing by, his pressed pants not yet creased by the day, his face set in an even expression, revealing nothing. How he could deal with this kind of thing day in and day out and not be disgusted was beyond Junie. She was disgusted, and this was her own mother. She stood in the doorway, and was pushed aside in a flurry as Charlie ushered Kendra into the room.

“Morning, kid,” Charlie muttered. “Excuse us. Coming through.”

“Morning, darling.” Kendra smiled at her. She was good at that. Actually seeing people, if only briefly.

“Good morning, Kendra.” It was the first time she’d addressed her by name, and it felt weird. Kind of like calling a teacher by their first name, when she didn’t actually even know the first names of most of her teachers.

“Marla, dear!” Kendra bent over Junie’s mother, placing her hands firmly and sympathetically on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “Tell us what’s going on.”

“I didn’t want to get rid of it!” she wailed. “I wanted to keep it. As a reminder of where I came from!”

“But you don’t need any reminders like that,” Kendra said. “You have your memories. Your story will always be yours.”

Junie’s mother looked up. “But I burnt it. I didn’t mean to burn it. It meant so much to me.”

“Here we go,” Junie whispered under her breath to no one in particular. She couldn’t watch. Not one more minute of it. Not one more second. She backed out of the room, called her father and asked him to pick her up at the end of the block.

Junie didn’t have to wait long, and she was relieved to see that her father was alone in the car.

“How’s the three ring circus?”

“As to be expected.”

“I’ve been seeing what the news crews can catch.” He turned the corner, going in the opposite direction from the fray. “Mostly just about
The Kendra Show
being in town. But some shots of the house.”

“Yeah?”

“Saw her dancing on the front lawn, watching that old chair burn. It looked like it was shot from a helicopter.”

Junie could not escape it. Wherever she went, her mother and her mountains of clutter followed her. Even here in her father’s car, where she had been hoping to find peace.

“Dad?”

“Junie?”

“Can we not talk about it?”

A pause. Then he looked at her and grinned. “Sure, sweetheart. Want me to take you to school?”

Junie shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

“You can’t keep missing days.”

“Dad. Please, please, please don’t make me go there. It’s Friday. Just let me have one more day off and then I promise I’ll go back on Monday. Okay?”

Another pause. “You go back on Monday. No questions asked.”

“Fine.”

But Junie wasn’t sure that she really would go back. She wondered if this whole Kendra experience had actually and seriously ruined her life to the point where she’d need to drop out, or transfer, or finish online. She wondered if the glorious gift of an intervention had, in fact, demolished her, while at the same time healing her mother. If that was what was happening at all.

“Do you have to go to work?”

“I can skip too, if you want to hang out.”

Junie winced at the way he said it, so eagerly and so casually that it was clearly forced. He wanted so badly to be her friend, her “bud.” And Junie just wanted somewhere else to be for the day, and it didn’t matter if it was with her father or holed up in the reading room at the public library.

“That’d be nice, Dad.” Junie heard the fakeness in her voice, but she couldn’t do anything about it. “Thanks.”

They went for coffee at the Buckled Star, where if anyone recognized her as the victim of Kendra’s attentions they didn’t say anything about it to her. Her dad sat across from her in one of two comfy chairs, eyes bright, waiting for the conversation to begin. Junie didn’t want to disappoint,
but she was just not in the mood to struggle through an awkward conversation in which her father pretended to know a thing or two about her, and she pretended to care about his job and his life with That Woman, and both of them ignored the elephant down the street that dominated their thoughts. Instead of putting them both through the pain, Junie picked up a newspaper from a coffee table and offered him the business section.

“Want this?”

“Sure,” he said with a little audible relief. “I’ll check on my meagre stock portfolio.”

Junie picked up the front section. A seventeenyear-old boy had fallen or jumped to his death from the suspension bridge, a famous tourist attraction. He’d sailed from a dizzying height through the air to a sudden death on the jagged rocks below. Police were interviewing witnesses to see if they could figure out what had happened. Junie had been to the suspension bridge a handful of times. She’d stood at the same lookout, her hands on the railing, never feeling the urge to fling herself over. But she could understand it now. Once he was dead, nothing else would have mattered. It would be a blissful, silent void.

Not that she wanted to kill herself.

But she could understand craving the quiet. She could understand needing a final, lasting peace. She wondered if Royce was looking forward to that at all, or if he was worried about leaving Jeremy behind.

Junie glanced up at her father. He’d put his reading glasses on and was scrutinizing the stock pages, column after column of numbers about which Junie had no clue.
Did he feel about That Woman what Jeremy and Royce felt for each other? Would he be sad if she died? Would he be lonely for her?

Her father looked up and met her gaze. “Want a muffin or something?”

“No thanks.”

“You ate at the hotel?”

Junie dropped her eyes to the paper and didn’t exactly answer. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Well, I’m going to get me a Danish. Live on the wild side.”

“Whoa, Dad. Better not let the yogurt-and-fruit police find out.”