I stand in front of my house and stare at the orange-yellow glow of the living room lamps lighting up the downstairs windows and the stained-glass cutout at the top of our front door. It’s cozy. Warm. Safe.
Home.
Even after what happened before I bolted through the back gate and skated to the urgent care clinic.
Inside, my dad is probably sitting in his comfy chair, reading a mystery. Dun dun dun. And my mom is checking on Poppy and Sequoia or writing in her dream journal. My family. So familiar in their funky ways. It’s funny how I can feel two things at the same time. That I can love them but not like them right now.
I brace myself and go inside.
“June!” My mom hangs up the phone in the middle of a conversation—probably with the missing persons department at the police station. She rushes to me. Draws me up in a hug.
But my dad is mad. I can see it in the creases on his forehead. “Where have you been?” he says. “We were worried sick. It’s one thing to take off in a huff to clear your head. It’s another thing to disappear for hours. You left without a flashlight or money or a helmet.”
“Believe me, I know. The police weren’t happy about it, either.”
“The police!” my mom shouts. “What are you talking about?”
“I got stopped by a cop for not having a helmet.”
“Oh, that’s great,” my dad mutters.
“Don’t worry. He let me go with a warning.”
“Well, good for you.” My dad yanks the band loose from his man bun and refastens it. A nervous habit. “This is unacceptable, June. We’re still getting settled here. It’s not like before, where you knew everyone in town. You can’t go traipsing all over Playa Bonita with no thought to the fact that your parents are at home worrying about where you are and who you’re with.”
“Ha! Right. Who would I be with? You just said it yourself: Everyone I know is six hours away from here. I don’t even have a phone to keep in touch with them. I go to school in our kitchen instead of across the street. I have zero social life.”
My dad talks right over that complaint. “It’s Sunday night. You know Sunday night is family night.”
“Poppy and Sequoia are sick in bed. What would we be doing for family night? Taking each other’s temperatures?”
“Where did you go?” my mom asks.
I consider lying but settle on the truth. “I went to the vigil at the pier. The one for the baby who died.”
“Oh, June! Why would you do that to yourself?”
I toe the frayed edge of the throw rug. The one my grandma once told me my mom learned to walk on. “I needed to be there.”
“You did not,” my dad says.
“It doesn’t seem like the best idea,” says my mom.
I remember the candles and the people and the songs and the prayers. I also remember the guilt and the sadness. “I’m glad I went. It helped me figure out some stuff.”
“What stuff?” My dad spits out the words like they taste bad in his mouth. Also? I’m sure he wants me to use more sophisticated vocabulary than stuff.
“I decided something tonight, and I think it’s important you know it, too.”
“Go ahead,” my mom says.
“I want to be vaccinated. Any shot I haven’t had, I want to have it. Meningitis. Tetanus. Whooping cough. Whatever I need.”
“Your mother and I chose not to have you kids vaccinated,” my dad says. “That’s the end of the story.”
“But what if my choice for my body is different than yours?”
“I’d say you’re sixteen and don’t get to decide.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Language,” says my mom.
“The consequences of vaccines are SIDS, seizures, autism, paralysis—” my dad goes on.
“The consequence of no vaccinations is death!” I shout. “And autism has been totally disproven. Are you even aware of a thing called science?”
“Science can be wrong.” My dad paces the worn hardwood floor like he’s giving me a kitchen school lecture. I’m waiting for him to roll out his chalkboard. “Research backfires. Look at the drug recalls happening all the time. Something that’s supposed to help you not have a heart attack ends up giving you cancer. There was a drug in the sixties called thalidomide that was supposed to help pregnant women not have morning sickness, and guess what? It ended up causing birth defects. Babies were born with malformed limbs.” He angles a hard stare at me. “Something might look good on paper or in the lab, and then ten, twenty years down the line, lo and behold, science was wrong. Nothing is guaranteed, and the only way your mother and I have to protect you is not to put any of it into your body in the first place.”
“And there’s no guarantee that not putting something into my body will protect me, either.” I fold my fists at my sides. Bang them against my legs. “I got the measles because of your choices.”
“And I still firmly believe that was the healthier option,” my dad says.
“June.” My mom reaches for me, but I flinch away. “The choices Dad and I have made for you and Poppy and Sequoia are because we want you to see things differently. We want you to think outside the box. There are too many sheep, doing whatever their neighbors and their friends do without thinking. The world and the choices in it aren’t so black and white. We want you to grow up to be a free thinker.”
“News flash: I won’t get to grow up to do anything if I die from polio at sixteen.”
My dad glares at me. “That’s some extreme hyperbole.”
“How can you say that when a six-week-old baby died from the measles? When I ended up in the hospital because of it?”
He shakes his head, and some strands of hair come loose from his hair tie. “You are not a six-week-old baby. You are a healthy, strong sixteen-year-old girl. And the fact that you’re standing here right now is proof you didn’t need the measles shot. You’re better off having contracted the virus and created natural immunities. You’ll come to see that eventually. This is a lesson from the world, and the world is your classroom. Listen to it.”
“The world?” I throw my hands up in the air. “Please. The kitchen is my classroom. That’s the whole problem. It’s boring, and nothing happens there besides scrambled eggs and dirty dishes.”
“Oh, don’t pull that. You spend plenty of time outside. Hiking. Surfing. You know your mother and I encourage it.”
“But I want to meet people. And do real school things like joining clubs and going to football games and the prom. I can’t do that by going to school in our kitchen with my sister and brother. Don’t you get it?”
“Nobody is stopping you from making friends. Have at it.” My dad riffles through a pile of papers on the table. “We just got a brochure yesterday.” He tosses it to me. “Take an art class. Volunteer for a beach cleanup.”
I crumple the brochure in my hand. “Teenagers don’t go to beach cleanups to meet people. They make friends at school. If I get my vaccinations, I can go to Playa across the street.”
“Juniper,” my dad huffs, “even if you could attend the school across the street without vaccinations, we wouldn’t let you go. That is not how we’ve chosen to educate you and your siblings. And since you’re a minor who would need parental permission to enroll, that’s how it’s going to stay.”
“So I’ll never have a social life.”
“We’ll be starting field trips again soon. You’ll meet other homeschool kids,” my mom tries. “And honestly, June, every one of those things you mentioned about high school is entirely overrated. I went to a traditional high school, and all I got was four years of bullying and a nervous tic.”
“Well, Mom, I’m not you. I’m me. And I don’t really care about your tragic teenage years right now.”
She sinks dramatically to the couch. Shakes her head at my dad. “I don’t know what to say here.”
“I do,” my dad says, pointing at me. “You will be homeschooled and that’s that. Vaccines are not an option in this family. You are receiving a perfectly fine education, not to mention the kind of practical guidance that will prepare you for the real world.”
“Are you even listening to yourself? You want to prepare me for the real world. You tell me to think outside the box. To stand up for myself and my beliefs. But when I tell you I believe something different than you do, you can’t handle it. You don’t want me to be my own person with my own ideas. You want me to be just like you.”
“June,” my mom says in her sad, defeated way.
“I have a question. If I stepped on a rusty nail, say it was lodged so deeply into my foot that you had to take me to the ER, just like you had to do when I had the measles, and a doctor there said I needed a tetanus shot, what would you do? Would you say no thanks, we’ll rub some of our sham essential oils on it and hope for the best?”
My mom laughs sarcastically. “I don’t know where you think you’re going to step on a rusty nail.”
I hold up my hand. “Wait. That’s what you got from what I said?”
My mom rubs her temples, trying to stave off a stress headache.
My dad sputters, “For one, we’d have to hear a darn compelling argument to be willing to inject you with anything.”
I stand up straight. Square my shoulders. Look him in the eye. “You love your convictions more than you love me.”
“That’s not true,” my mom says.
“Are you sure about that?” I look at her hard. “Because it doesn’t feel like it. Maybe you need to think about it.”
“I don’t need to think about any such thing. All the choices we’ve made are because you are our top priority.”
“Whatever. I’m going to bed.”
“Good,” my dad says. “Because this discussion is over. I’m tired of fighting with you about this. It ends right here, right now.”
I pound my way up the stairs, not even caring if my heavy footsteps wake Poppy and Sequoia.
In my room, I take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle of it. On one side, I write down the alleged cons of vaccines, according to my parents: autism, paralysis, allergic reaction, Big Pharma, government scam.
I write the pros: NOT DYING. NOT CAUSING OTHERS TO DIE.
I underline that sentence. Add exclamation points, pressing the pen so hard it makes holes in the paper. I crumple the list in frustration. Toss it across the room.
My dad said we’ll never discuss this again. I’ll obviously have to figure out a way to do this on my own. Dr. Villapando told me to get a good attorney. He wasn’t serious. But I am.
I’m going to sue my parents.