THE FOREST WAS cool, and Luke and I moved silently. After the meadow, the needles underfoot felt good, although it took a certain talent to walk barefoot in the brush. We stepped over broken branches, avoiding pine cones and brambles.
Good thing my feet knew what to do, because my head was full of stormy thoughts. Eva was embarrassing me again. It was just a sign, wasn’t it? The way she looked—red and irrational—was just like that day at the softball game. Except then everybody had been watching. And everybody had heard Eva yell at Lauren’s mother. And Tina—my best friend—had stood next to Lauren, staring at me.
I breathed in the smell of cedar and forced my thoughts back to berries. I concentrated on the small flowers around me, spotting not blueberry but blackberry blooms that would ripen in a month. Bleeding hearts and fiddlehead ferns pushed up around the rotting logs and moss-covered rocks.
“Come on,” Luke said. “This is a really cool place.”
The main trail was wide and clear behind the old camp, but as we climbed higher, the trail dwindled. New shoots sprouted where no one had stepped in a long time. Wherever the sun pierced through, a tangle of birch seedlings, briars, and cornflowers reached for the light. Blueberries needed sun, too; the rocky soil was a good sign.
“This way,” Luke said, and pushed aside a low branch.
It was a faded trail—perhaps just a fox path—but you could see it if you knew what to look for: snapped branches, scuffed-aside leaves, bent seedlings.
The trail curved along the cliff’s edge. We were maybe twenty or thirty feet above the lake, and I was careful where I put my feet.
Luke stopped and waved his hands like a magician. “Ta-da!”
All around us were low bushes with tiny leaves and light green fruit. I studied them for any hint of blue.
“Not yet,” I said. “But soon.” Holding on to a branch, I smiled into the sun. My toes warmed on the rocky cliff’s edge.
“That’s not all, though,” Luke said. He stripped off his shirt and walked to the edge.
I took a small step closer. It was easily thirty feet down. My hands got damp just thinking about how high up we were. A pine leaned over, its roots like octopus tentacles clinging to the dirt. I looked again—I didn’t want Luke to think I was a wimp. Six feet below was a worn-down ledge, like a diving platform. And beyond that, a narrow, jagged way to climb back up from the water.
“I checked it out from the boat,” Luke said. “The water is forty feet deep, and there are no rocks.”
“You going to jump?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You, too.”
“I don’t know about that.” Jumping off the low rocks around Luke’s island was one thing, but this was different. The water would hurt, like hitting pavement.
“Come on,” Luke said. He started down to the ledge. “Sometimes you just have to go for it.”
As Luke reached the jumping spot, the sound of voices broke beyond the trees. Sam Costa, Tina’s older brother, and a couple of his friends came down the trail, yelling and shoving each other. I backed away from the edge.
“Hey, look who’s here,” said Sam. “Luke and June.”
“Where’s Tina?” I asked.
“Home watching Tim and the farm stand,” he said, kicking off his sneakers. “Aren’t you kids too little to go cliff jumping?”
“No way,” Luke said. I didn’t say anything.
“Go on, then,” Sam said. “Jump!”
Luke looked back up at me and grinned. He would have jumped anyway, but now he would go down in style.
Luke gave a war whoop and jumped, waving his arms and legs. The boys hollered, too. I watched Luke’s splash, holding my breath. Then he surfaced, shook hair out of his eyes, and yelled, “Awesome!”
Sam climbed down to the ledge for his turn and waited for Luke to climb back up. I leaned back against a tree. Why did these guys have to come along? If Tina had come too, she would have known how to handle her brother’s teasing. Except maybe I couldn’t count on her to stand up for me anymore. I scratched a mosquito bite on my leg.
Luke pulled himself up to the top. “Don’t you want to try it?” He shook his wet hair.
“Not this time.” I moved farther back.
“Aw, come on,” Sam said. “You chicken?”
“I just don’t feel like it.”
“What a lezzie,” one of the other boys said.
I stiffened.
“That would be her moms,” snorted Sam.
Their loud laughter landed like a punch. I only have one mom, I wanted to say.
“Hey, knock it off,” Luke said.
“Don’t worry, man,” Sam said. “We’re going to take back Vermont.”
Take back Vermont? I was shaking and red-faced. What did it mean?
“Better think again.” Luke snapped up his shirt.
“Vermont doesn’t belong to anyone!” I stepped toward Sam, as close to the cliff’s edge as I dared.
He didn’t flinch. “No freaks allowed.”
“Let’s go,” Luke said. He grabbed my clenched fist and held on.
With my arm stretched like a lifeline to his, we moved fast, shoving branches, crashing over logs. I was glad for the dark woods. Sweat ran down my face, and I wished I had jumped, jumped into the cool lake, away from Sam.
It was like the end of sixth grade again and the softball game that had turned me into an outcast. Lauren had called someone “gay,” and Mom told her not to use that word, and Lauren’s mother said, “Don’t tell my child what to do,” and then Eva yelled, “We won’t keep quiet about homophobia” and Lauren’s mother yelled, “Stay out of our lives, stay out of our bedroom!” And then Eva just had to say, “As if what happens in our bedroom affects yours”—and I wanted to die.
That was when a line had been drawn. You were either for gay people or against them. Mom and Eva and I had looked like the players nobody wanted on their team. Lauren and Tina were on the popular side, that’s for sure. I remembered, too, that Mom and Eva had been stunned by the silence. Nobody said anything, not even Tina’s mother. I had thought she was Mom’s friend—they were always talking about teachers, going together to PTA meetings. It didn’t make sense.
Everything had been easier before Eva moved in. When Mom needed a break, it was Joe who came over and played Chutes and Ladders with me, and Monopoly, too. Sometimes he’d bring over sheets of butcher-block paper and we’d draw. I’d add eyes to his interlocking swirls and lines. And then he’d give them funny names like Impatience and Confused, and make up stories about our drawings. I was usually asleep by the time Mom got home; it never mattered who she was with. But then Luke’s mom had moved out, and Joe was around less. And then Mom met Eva.
I dropped Luke’s hand to slap mosquitoes away. What did “Take Back Vermont” mean? Someone had been angry enough to plant a sign in front of our shop. Luke didn’t think that way, though. I suddenly missed his hand in mine.
Luke fell in step next to me. “Don’t let those guys bug you. That’s just talk.”
I pictured Lauren’s mother’s angry face. “What about the sign?”
“Maybe it means the Abenaki are going to take Vermont back from us white men.”
I looked at him strangely.
“Or”—he slapped a branch away—“Vermont’s got to go back to the days of no electricity and wood-burning stoves.”
I started to catch on. “No, it means let’s take Vermont back to when everybody had to grow their own food and shovel snow by hand.”
“Let’s go back to the days of outhouses!” shouted Luke. “A ban on indoor plumbing!”
I laughed. “That’s it! That’s what they want! No more toilets and hot tubs!”
“We’ll have to wash in the lake,” he said. “Race you!”
We broke into a run across the meadow.
Blue lights flashing outside the marina stopped us.
“What happened?” Luke asked.
A cop was talking to Mom and Eva. Joe was there, too, looking sleepy. Mom must have motored over and woken him up.
“Oh, June, there you are,” Mom said, and pulled me in for a hug.
“You were worried?” Luke and I always went wherever we wanted. “You said come back at lunch.”
“I did, I did.” But Mom didn’t let go.
“What’s going on?” Luke asked.
“Thank you for your time.” Eva was shaking the police officer’s hand.
“We’ll keep an eye on things,” he said.
Joe patted Luke on the back. “You go home and let these gals talk things over. I’ll watch the shop for a bit,” he said to Mom and Eva. “Remember, I’m just a boat ride away.”
It was strange enough that Eva hadn’t gone to work—we’d been gone an hour at least. Even now she didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Why hadn’t she gone? Why didn’t she just leave Mom and me alone, instead of causing a scene? I turned back and watched Luke row out to their island. Suddenly, I wished I had stayed on the stool in the marina shop, just selling sandwiches and pie.