That was the beginning of many good days. Something changed in the air—a shift in the wind or a settling of the dust—and it seemed that the entire town had taken a deep breath and let it out in a sunny stream. Ethan wasn’t sure if his eyes were playing tricks on him or if Juniper’s face really was especially radiant when she skipped into the Malt that next afternoon, with a wicker basket in one hand and a watering can in the other.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she urged, dancing from foot to foot as Ethan slung his apron on the peg. “Project Invincible Summer starts right now, and anything slower than top speed is way too slow.”
“Okay, okay,” Ethan said. “I’m coming.” With a nod to Uncle Robert, who had just emerged from the kitchen, he followed Juniper out the door. They circled to the back of the store, where their bikes leaned against the wall, and he asked, “So, what’s the plan for today?”
Juniper shook the basket before hanging it from her handlebars. Ethan glanced inside and raised his eyebrows, surprised to find that it was filled to the brim with black seeds. “Sunflowers,” she declared. “By the time we’re done today, there will be sunflowers ready to grow all over town.”
Ethan made a face. “I don’t get why you chose sunflowers. They’re basically weeds.”
Juniper frowned at him as she mounted her bike. “They’re misunderstood,” she retorted. Then, as an afterthought, “But still beautiful.” Then she pedaled off down the lane, and Ethan had no choice but to follow.
Their first stop was a patch of dirt near the edge of downtown. The few blades of grass that poked from the earth were a sad, brownish hue, and Ethan wondered how anything could ever grow from such a helpless plot of land. But Juniper was already on her knees, her yellow skirt no doubt becoming ridden with stains. She scooped a handful of seeds from the basket and dropped half into Ethan’s outstretched palm.
“You know how to do this, right?” she asked.
Ethan shook his head. “My little sister tried to grow some tomatoes in our backyard once. They all died.”
Juniper winced. “All right,” she said. “Well, then, I’ll show you. Come on, kneel down.” Ethan did so carefully, making sure to avoid the dirtiest parts of the ground. June, utterly oblivious, shifted comfortably in the mud.
“First, you have to pull out the weeds,” she began, tugging at a few serrated stems and tossing them into the road, “or they’ll stop the plant from growing. Then”—she jumped up, reached into her bike basket, and pulled out a small bag and a shovel—“you have to add some fertilizer.” She reached into the bag and drew out a fistful of white pellets then sprinkled them onto the soil. “Swirl that around, would you?” she said, and Ethan did. “I’ve been watering spots all over for the past few days to make sure the soil is ready, so now we can just plant.”
Leaning over the small plot, she dragged the shovel in a straight line, creating a long, shallow ditch. When she finished, she tossed the shovel aside and dropped seeds in. She nudged Ethan, and he did the same.
“Next, you cover it with soil,” she said, smoothing loose dirt over the seeds and patting it gently down. “Then water it—you can do that.” Obligingly, Ethan took the watering can from her handlebar and tilted it over the row so that water flowed down in a gentle stream. Juniper grinned when he was done.
“That’s it?” he said, squinting at the wet dirt.
“That’s it,” Juniper confirmed. “All that’s left to do is wait. Now come on.” She gathered her supplies and loaded them onto her bike. “That’s one spot down, but we’ve got a whole lot more to go.”
They pedaled slowly toward the lake, taking their time in the lazy afternoon sun. “Where’d you learn to garden?” Ethan asked as they rode.
“I didn’t,” Juniper replied, then explained, “My mom had an amazing garden when she was my age. Rhododendrons, camellias, orchids, daffodils—you name it, she planted it. What’s it they call someone who’s good with plants? Oh right, a green thumb. Well, she had one of those, all right. She even won some prizes. Imagine that! Here she was, a girl in Ellison, winning prizes. She was something, my mom was. Or so I’m told.”
For a moment her smile faltered, and Ethan slowed his bike, unsure what to say. But before he could decide, Juniper shook her head and stood suddenly on her pedals, coasting for a moment before glancing back with a grin.
“Anyway,” she continued, her voice bright, “no one ever taught me how to do this stuff, it was just kinda natural. I guess I was just born with flower petals in my blood.”
Ethan nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I guess so.”
By the time the sunset smeared pink and orange across the horizon, they had planted sunflowers in thirty-two spots around town and, despite his efforts to stay clean, Ethan was covered in dirt. Now he and Juniper sat on the dock, their bare feet dangling in the lake and tall glasses of lemonade—courtesy of Gus—in their hands. Juniper had a streak of soil on her forehead.
“The town will be so pretty when it all grows in.” She sighed and took a long sip. “I’ll betcha when you come back next summer, you won’t even recognize the place.” Ethan didn’t reply, and she frowned. “I mean,” she said quietly, “you are coming back next summer, right? At least to see the sunflowers?”
Ethan paused. Truth be told, for the past few weeks he hadn’t thought of his life more than a few hours in advance. The summer seemed endless in Ellison. But in less than two months, he realized, he would be in the car headed back up to Arcadia, back to his dad and the twins, to the track team and his friends, and even Samuel Hill. It would be his sophomore year. But as he sat by the water and sipped his lemonade, that life seemed a thousand years away.
He glanced over at Juniper, who was staring at him with watery blue eyes, still waiting for an answer. He chewed on his bottom lip and felt the silence between them as a weight on his shoulders. His glass was sweating into his hand.
Finally, with a small sigh, he shook his head. “Well,” he said softly. “I guess I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Ethan shrugged, keeping his gaze focused on a ripple in the center of the lake. Juniper pulled her feet out of the water and hugged her knees to her chest. The dirtied hem of her skirt landed in a damp spot on the wood.
“Maybe I asked the wrong question,” she said softly. “Maybe what I shoulda said is, what don’t you know? Whether you can come back, or whether you want to?”
Ethan felt shame warm his cheeks under Juniper’s prying stare.
“Well?”
Setting down his glass, Ethan turned to her. “I meant what I said, okay?” he said, harsher than he intended. “You’re great, June. All of our adventures so far—they’ve been great. But it’s not easy to be here. For me.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She ran the heel of her hand against her freckled forehead. “I’m trying my best. And for the record, it’s not easy for me to be here either.”
“It’s not the same.”
“How is it not—” She paused. “Know what? Never mind. I’m being unfair.”
“June,” Ethan began, but she held up a hand.
“Really,” she insisted. “This isn’t about me. I should know better than to expect anyone to wanna stick around. Anyway, no use thinking about all that now, right?” She pushed herself to her feet and picked up her half-filled glass. Her lips curled back into a small smile. “Back in a flash. I’m gonna get some more lemonade.”
“How high did you say it was?”
Ethan craned his neck to stare up at the towering hickory tree. Juniper sidled up beside him, shielding her eyes with one hand.
“A hundred and twenty feet,” she said. “It’s a doozy.” She walked in a circle around the thick trunk, thoughtfully eyeing the lowest hanging branches.
“Wow.” Ethan whistled. “And remind me again—why is it called Big Red? I’m pretty sure this thing’s not a redwood.”
“It definitely isn’t,” Juniper agreed. “There’s this old town story, though—sort of a legend—about how it got its name. See, back like a hundred and something years ago when Ellison was founded, there weren’t a lot of people living west of the Mississippi yet. So people didn’t know the trees out west real well. Anyway, two guys from town were out exploring and they found this tree, and they saw how tall it was, and one of them said to the other, ‘Say, this is one heck of a tree,’ and the other one replied, ‘Sure is, wonder what kind,’ and the first one had a cousin or uncle or someone who’d been to California, where there are redwoods, and so he said, ‘You know, I heard that there are these real huge trees called redwoods in California. I betcha it’s one of those.’ And so they called it Big Red, and that’s the name it’s kept to this day.”
She let out a breath, and Ethan fought back a smile. She had provided a very animated re-enactment of the scene, complete with ridiculous voices and robotic arm movements.
“Anyway,” she continued, rubbing her hands together in preparation, “that old legend doesn’t matter. Today, we just have to climb.”
“Right,” Ethan agreed, nodding. “Just climb.”
Juniper took a deep breath, licked her lips, and took a few long paces back. With her eye on the nearest branch, she sprinted forward, launched herself into the air, and missed completely, collapsing to the ground with a surprised grunt. Ethan stared at her for a moment as she sat in silence and stared dazedly at the ground, then burst suddenly into laughter.
“June,” he gasped, “you missed by a mile! Come on, you can do better than that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d never climbed a tree in your life.”
Juniper pursed her lips, getting to her feet and dusting off the seat of her blue jeans. “Well, you see,” she began, offering Ethan a sheepish smile. “That’s kind of—sort of—a little bit the case. I have no idea how tree climbing works.”
Ethan gaped at her, thoroughly appalled. “So, let me get this straight. You, a girl from a forest lake town, not only can’t swim, but have also never climbed a tree?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Juniper Jones. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who makes less and less sense the longer I know you.”
“Good.” Juniper grinned widely, her teeth uneven between her rose petal lips. “Making sense is for nerds and grown-ups. I am way more interesting.”
“And you also can’t climb a tree,” Ethan reminded her. He held out his arms. “All right, come on. I’ll give you a boost.”
He squatted down beneath the branch, lacing his fingers into a secure foothold. Juniper looked at him dubiously.
“I just—I just step on?”
“You just step on. What, are you chicken?”
“I am not chicken.” Juniper stuck out her tongue, then put one hand on Ethan’s shoulder and one foot in his outstretched hands. Grunting with effort, Ethan stood, raising Juniper high enough to climb onto the branch easily. She shrieked the whole two seconds up and scrambled hurriedly onto the tree. With a quick running start and a lucky leap, Ethan pulled himself up beside her.
“There you go,” he said, smiling at her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Not at all. Let’s keep going.” She got to her feet, her arms spread as she teetered precariously on the branch. Thankfully, the branches were fairly close together, good for climbing, so she found a handhold above her and stepped up to the next level. And the next one, and the next. Soon, Ethan was staring up at her from ten feet below.
“Would you look at that, you’re a regular monkey,” he remarked. Juniper looked down, first with a grin—then her gaze strayed past Ethan to the faraway ground, and he could’ve sworn that she turned nearly the same color as the leaves on the tree.
“Ethan,” she said meekly, her eyes wide. “We have a problem. I think—I think I’m afraid of heights.”
“Oh God.” Ethan stood and climbed as quickly as he could to where Juniper sat, straddling a thick branch and hugging the trunk for dear life. “Come on,” he said, attempting to peel her arm away from the bark. “Come on, let’s climb down.”
But Juniper shook her head fiercely. “No,” she snapped. “I’m not coming down. I’m going to climb this tree if it kills me. Which”—she glanced down again and gulped—“it very well might.”
“June,” Ethan started, but she cut him off.
“Don’t ‘June’ me. I’m climbing this tree, Ethan Charlie Harper, with or without you.”
After a moment of hesitation, Ethan found a hold above his head and reached his free hand out to Juniper. “Well, then,” he said with a sideways smile, glancing skyward. “What are we waiting for?”
They didn’t make it all the way up the tree. At about the three-fourths point, Juniper made the mistake of looking down and promptly vomited onto the branches, only narrowly missing Ethan’s head.
“I think we should stop here,” she croaked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Ethan nodded, and, climbing to a sturdy branch closer to her, stood up and surveyed the view.
“Whoa,” he murmured. “June, you have to see this.” He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and scanned the treetops. Beside him, he heard Juniper pushing herself to her feet.
She gasped. They hadn’t climbed all the way up, but they were still above the rest of the forest. For miles they could see only a carpet of green—and just in the distance, faintly outlined against the afternoon sun, were the buildings of some faraway city.
“Incredible,” Juniper whispered, her voice wobbling slightly.
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed, turning just in time to see the sun hit her eyelashes and turn them gold. “Yeah, sure is.”
“Do you realize,” Juniper said, as they pedaled away from the Malt, “that if we check another thing off the list today, we’ll be a whole quarter of the way through? How crazy is that?”
Ethan raised an eyebrow, swerving to avoid a pothole. “You’ve been keeping track?”
“Of course. I go back to the clearing every day after our adventures and check another one off the list. And we’re almost half of halfway there. At this rate, we’ll definitely finish before you have to go home. And if we don’t, well, I’ll just get Noah to hold you hostage in town until we do.”
She shrugged, grinning that crinkle-eyed grin.
“Then we’d better get going,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “What do you say today I teach you how to swim?”
Juniper waved her hand dismissively and shook her head. “We can do that anytime. I actually have something else in mind.” With a sudden skid of dust, she made a sharp right onto a side lane. “Follow me,” she called over her shoulder. “We’re going to Alligator Hill.”
That was the first time Ethan had properly seen Alligator Hill in broad daylight. As they rolled their bikes to its base, he looked at the giant slope and thought there was no way anything could actually be so green.
“Come on,” Juniper piped, laying her bike carefully in the grass and beginning the trek to the top. Ethan followed. Clovers bowed beneath his feet, leaving a vague impression of footsteps up the side of the hill.
When she reached the top, Juniper was panting heavily. She stood still for a moment, her arms wide and her face turned up to the sun. Unlike everywhere else in the town, there seemed to be a cool breeze up here. And no dust. With every breath he took, Ethan felt only fresh air.
“All right, then,” Juniper said, softly for once, almost reverently. “Let’s get started.”
She dropped suddenly to the ground and sat cross-legged. She nodded at Ethan, and he did the same.
For a long moment she said nothing, and simply stared at some point over his shoulder. He glanced back and saw nothing but treetops. “June,” he tried, “are we—”
Juniper shook her head and blinked as if awakening from a trance. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I just get lost up here. Anyway.” In typical Juniper Jones fashion, she clapped her hands twice. “This is the one thing on our list that I’ve actually done before, but everyone who comes to this town needs to do it at least once. I think you’ll love it.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “And this is . . .”
“Easy.” She flopped back into the grass, limbs askew. “We’re going to roll down Alligator Hill. And I promise you, it is the best hill roll that you will ever have. Lie down.”
With some trepidation, Ethan lowered himself carefully into the grass. As much as he was questioning the sensibility of rolling down this very steep hill, he had to admit that the grass was incredibly soft. He curled his fingers through it and squinted up at the sun.
“Are you ready?” Juniper asked, nudging him with her foot. “You’re going first.”
“I—what?”
“Oh, don’t be a baby. You’ll be fine, I promise.”
Nodding slowly, Ethan inched closer to the edge, where the calmly-sloping top dipped suddenly into nothingness. “You sure about this, Juniper?” he asked, his voice thick with doubt.
“As sure as I am that root beer floats are the best drinks ever known to man.”
“Fair enough.” And before he could hesitate, he flipped over onto his side and took off rolling down the hill.
There was something about rolling down hills that all kids, and anyone who has been a kid, could attest to: no matter how hard you tried to keep your mouth shut so that grass didn’t fly in, you couldn’t help but laugh. It bubbled out of your lips in golden spurts, and maybe you got a few daisies caught between your teeth, but in the moment, it just didn’t seem to matter.
That was how Ethan felt as he rolled down Alligator Hill, locked in a tunnel of green, his heart racing ecstatically in his chest in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. When he reached the bottom, he was dizzy and panting and suddenly, inexplicably happy.
He lay there at the base, one hand on his chest and the other fiddling with the blades of grass beneath him. His eyes were closed, and he could have drifted off to sleep just then—but before he could, a shrieking orange tornado hurtled down the hill. Juniper’s ponytail whipped furiously and her pink checkered dress was tangled in her legs. Ethan snorted, so amused by the strange sight that he forgot to scramble out of the way and Juniper rammed right into him.
“Ow!” he cried as her elbow caught him in the stomach.
Juniper leapt to her feet, then, with a dizzy stumble, fell immediately back to the ground.
“Ethan,” she gasped, shaking her head, “you’re supposed to move.” He glared at her from where he lay.
Sighing, she offered him a hand and pulled him into a sitting position. He pressed a hand to his stomach as she eyed him eagerly.
“Well?” she demanded. “Wasn’t that just a blast?”
“I’m not sure if my stomach hurts more from the spinning or from your incredibly bony elbow,” Ethan muttered.
Juniper rolled her eyes. “Please, you had fun. Just like I knew you would.” Shaking a few blades of grass out of her hair, she jumped up again, pulling Ethan with her. He felt the ground tilt beneath him just a little bit more.
“Come on,” she beckoned eagerly, squeezing his hand. “Let’s do it again.”
She took off running up Alligator Hill and Ethan watched, stupefied, as she sprinted straight into the sun.