“WILL YOU DRIVE ME TO THE CRESCENT STREET IN Wayzata after school?” I asked Juno almost the instant I’d climbed into her car, a 2001 Mustang BULLITT that she’d bought herself for her sixteenth birthday. Juno loved old things, but it wasn’t exactly a steal by the time she paid to get it up to contemporary safety standards—as required by her parents.
Juno knew all about Talley’s list. Over the last week, Dad and I had been sitting shiva, which is what you do when you’re Jewish and someone in the family dies. You stay home, and people come over to pay their respects. Juno came every day after school. Together, we’d watched two dozen episodes of I Love Lucy, and a few of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to boot. You’re not supposed to watch TV during shiva, because you’re not supposed to do anything that would distract from your grief. But we were watching because I was grieving, so I thought it was okay.
“Sure,” Juno said.
“Thanks. I don’t know what we’re looking for. It could be a house, or a stoop, or a mailbox. I guess I can ring every bell, if it comes to that.”
“Whatever it takes,” Juno said. “I’ll drive the getaway car.”
She was looking in the rearview mirror and backing down the driveway as she spoke, which I thought of as an act of incredible coordination. I was convinced I’d never be able to do it myself without crashing into anything, which is why I barely ever practiced driving. The only reason I even had a driver’s permit was because Talley insisted. She told me a story about women in Saudi Arabia who had been prohibited from driving for years. They fought for the right to drive, just like the men could. But now they had the right to drive, I’d told Talley. What did it matter whether I took my driver’s test and got my license or not? So I remained Juno’s passenger, which was totally fine by her. She loved driving.
I could hear music playing in the background, really softly. Usually the volume was turned way up when I got into the car, and Juno would be jamming out to her current favorite, whatever that was. She tended to fall in love with one band, and then play them in a loop for weeks on end. Unsurprisingly, she preferred the oldies. Right now Fleetwood Mac was the band on repeat. Stevie Nicks was singing—the goddess, Juno called her. Her voice was just a wisp. I knew Juno herself couldn’t hear it.
But I could. This very song had been playing in Juno’s car that morning, when my phone rang and I ignored the call.
My breaths were coming quickly. The thing about losing someone you love is that it’s not a one-time shock. It’s over and over and over again.
“Sloane?” Juno said. “You okay?”
“I’m scared to go back today. What if someone asks me something, or just, you know, looks at me, and I start crying?”
“Then you start crying. People will feel bad, and probably offer you a tissue or something.”
“I’m going to be such a spectacle,” I said.
“For a few days, yes. But they’ll get used to having you back.”
“I guess.”
“I know it’s hard,” Juno said. “I don’t like going to school on regular days. But I’m really glad you’ll be there today. I hated being there without you. When you got into the car just now, I felt like . . . well, it was like that feeling you get when you’re at a restaurant and you’re really hungry. You’re practically ready to eat your own arm. Then the food arrives at your table, and you take your first bite and it’s even more delicious than you thought it could be.”
“That’s a good metaphor,” I said. Then I added, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I reached out to turn up the volume on the car stereo a bit, loud enough for Juno to hear. I’d heard her mom say cochlear implants were modern-day miracles. If Juno had become deaf fifty years ago, there wouldn’t have been a surgery for her to have to get her hearing back. But it wasn’t perfect.
“Once in a million years, a lady like her rises,” the goddess sang. It was a line from “Rhiannon,” a live version. Juno pulled into the school parking lot and slid into a spot in the back row. She always parked in back, because there was less of a chance that someone would squeeze into a neighboring spot, open a door too wide, and scratch up one of the BULLITT’s precious doors.
Juno shifted into park, but she didn’t cut the engine, not till the song had ended.
And he still cries out for her, don’t leave me now.