12. June
CHAPTER TWELVE
JUNE
The park has food trucks every Friday, lined up along the gravel lot behind a row of old maples with leaves that are barely, barely turning yellow at the edges.
The canopy is green with the faintest blush of ochre creeping in, backlit by a sky that can’t decide between blue and flat gray.
Below the trees, the trucks are lined up in a row: the taco one with a hand-painted menu in vermillion and gold, the Greek truck under a faded blue awning, and the newest one selling crêpes has the longest line.
And at the far end of the lot, there’s a truck selling bougee ice cream. It’s white with a pastel-striped awning and a menu board painted in bubble letters.
The white assaults me first, then the shape, and then my skin goes cold from my scalp to the soles of my feet. Nothing about it screams “childhood ice cream truck,” but I’m gripped with terror anyway.
Just ignore it. Just a normal truck. Only over-priced cow’s milk.
I find the picnic table farthest from it and sit so the truck is behind me.
Ignore ignore ignore.
Cinna isn’t here yet, so I spend a minute taking some deep breaths to calm myself.
I pull out my phone, check the time, then shove it back in my jacket pocket.
I pull it out again. The latest text from the unknown number is still there because I haven’t decided if I need to delete them or show the police.
Would they even care? I bet they get reports of online bullying all the time but that doesn’t mean they can stop it.
I’ve gotten four now since the last Mixed Media class. Each one has been worse than the last, and the most recent one was bad enough that I couldn’t sleep afterward.
I wish I could ignore all of it.
Cinna arrives in a wash of pale blue. Blue sweater, white jeans, honeyed hair catching the late-afternoon light. She drops onto the bench beside me and immediately leans in, bumping her shoulder against mine.
“You look stressed,” she says.
“I’m always stressed. It’s my identity.” I hold up my phone and angle the screen toward her. “Just another text last night.”
She reads over my shoulder and I watch her face change. The warmth drains from her forehead first, then cheeks, then mouth. Everything falls until her mouth is hard and determined.
“June, have you told anyone? Campus security? Your mom? We can’t let this keep happening.”
I sigh and set my phone down. “Yeah, and say what? Someone in their revenge era thinks I’m…
” I gesture vaguely at the screen. Reading them out loud would make them real in a different way.
On the screen they’re contained but spoken.
They’d fill the air between us and I’d have to breathe them back in.
I’ve never been called a whore. I’ve only slept with two guys my whole life…
“Maybe if you tell authorities, they’ll stop,” Cinna says. “Or at least threaten the person. Say you’re calling the cops on them.”
Somehow, I doubt the person would care. And again, what can the cops do? They might not even be able to trace the number.
“I’m sure it’ll stop soon. Whoever this is will get bored. I just need to ignore it.”
Cinna nods vacantly. Normally her attention feels like a warm lamplight.
Today, though, she seems elsewhere. Her fingers keep picking at the edge of her sleeve, rolling the blue fabric between her thumb and forefinger.
Her eyes drift past my shoulder like she’s waiting for something, or she’s seeing her own thoughts and they’re concerning her.
“Hey.” I nudge her knee with mine. “You okay?”
Her eyes snap back to mine. “Hm? Yeah. I’m good. Just pissed on your behalf.” She smiles, but the smile arrives a few seconds late.
Before I can gently probe into what’s wrong—because I know my friend, and something is wrong—her phone rings.
She glances at the screen and her entire face tightens, chin to hairline. She stands. “Sorry. One sec. I-I have to take this.”
She walks about twenty feet away toward the maples at the edge of the lot, her back to me, phone pressed to her ear.
Her free hand wraps around her waist. The burnt sienna light filtering through the leaves makes her look like a figure in an old painting.
Girl facing the forest. Oil on canvas. I watch her for a moment, then look away as staring feels intrusive.
“June Belrose. In the wild.”
I glance up to find Vienna.
Vienna Ravene. Junior. Self-appointed queen of Alaria’s social food chain, and the only person I’ve ever met who can make a compliment sound like a death threat. We’re not friends. We’re not enemies either. We exist somewhere between mutual respect and irritation.
I met her my freshman year at a gallery reception where she told me my dress was brave.
I told her that was a word people use when they mean ugly.
She said, “Show me your work.” I could’ve ignored her, but I was bored, so I showed her some pieces I posted on my socials.
She told me my paintings had “interesting energy, for someone who clearly looks like she doesn’t sleep enough.
” I told her she had interesting taste in lipstick for someone who clearly peaked in eighth grade.
She laughed, which I later learned she almost never does in public. After that we started talking whenever we crossed paths.
She’s standing to my left with a coffee in hand, red lips, platinum hair that’s almost white in the fading light. She’s wearing an ivory coat and behind her, several feet away, there’s a cluster of girls I half-recognize from the Art History program. They’re standing in line for the crêpe truck.
“Oh, hey.” I sit up straighter on the bench and give her a smirk. “Aren’t you a little far from your throne?”
“Even queens need tacos.” She sits beside me without asking, crosses her legs, and sips her coffee like she’s treating this picnic table like a magazine shoot opportunity. “I heard the texts are getting worse.”
News travels fast at Alaria.
Great.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“People.” She examines her nails. They’re burgundy today. Alizarin crimson, if I’m being precise, which I always am. “The question isn’t who’s talking about it. The question is who’s doing it.”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here stressing, would I?”
Vienna tilts her head, and those rust-brown eyes lock onto mine. It’s the closest to a sympathetic look I’ll ever get from her. She opens her mouth to say something but gets cut off by one of her groupies.
“Hey, bitch,” the one with hot pink hair yells. “What’re you doing? We’re next in line.”
Vienna shrugs and stands. She leans in close to whisper, “Imagine if it’s someone you know.”
It’s like a gut punch. My fingers curl into my thighs because I’ve never once considered that. Someone I know wouldn’t…
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
She shrugs again and sips her coffee. “Sometimes the person holding the knife is the one standing close enough to get you.” She winks and then walks away.
I stare after her with my pulse beating loudly in my ears.
Vienna has a talent for saying things that sound like threats and claiming they were advice.
Was that a threat? Is she the one sending the nasty messages?
She’s so hard to read, and the ambiguity sits in my stomach like something I shouldn’t have swallowed.
Right now, I can’t think of any legitimate reason Vienna would target me, especially since she’s an art history major. She doesn’t create her own art and wouldn’t care about getting into an exhibition. Currently, the only students that have been targeted were part of the gallery show.
But… I could actually see her being super vindictive.
Did I do something to deserve her wrath? If so, why target other students too?
I don’t know. This is all so messed up, and I’m too drained to think about it now. Also, Cinna has been gone too long.
I no longer see her, so I get up and walk toward the maples. The trees thin near a low stone wall that borders the lot, and that’s where I hear her voice. Or rather, hear the voice on the other end of the phone call.
It’s her mother’s voice, audible from ten feet away because the woman has no volume control. I can’t make out every word, but the tone is unmistakable. She’s disappointed about something.
Cinna’s side of the conversation is monosyllabic. “Yes.” A pause. “I know.” A longer pause. “I’m trying, Mom.”
Her voice on that last word is so small it breaks my heart. It’s the voice of a girl who learned that the right answer is whatever keeps the peace, and peace is defined by the person on the other end of the phone.
I should turn around because this isn’t my conversation to hear.
But Cinna tells her mom, “I got an A on the critique. I told you that already,” and her mother’s response is loud enough for me to catch fragments: “… not about one grade… consistently… your sister never had to…”
Cinna’s shoulders curve inward and she’s suddenly swallowed in her sweater, like it’s two sizes too big. Her free hand hangs at her side, fingers opening and closing around nothing.
The call ends. She lowers the phone and stands there with her back to me. I watch her reassemble herself. Shoulders straight. Chin up. Her hands smooth out every wrinkle on her sweater.
She turns and sees me, and my heart jumps into my throat. “I’m sorry,” I say, apologizing for spying and on behalf of her mother.
For two seconds, all of her hidden emotions bubble to the surface: eyes glassy, lower lip pulled between her teeth, looking younger than twenty. Looking like the girl who used to bring extra cookies up to Aeron’s room—just so innocent, sweet, and wanting to be needed.
“Hey,” I say softly. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I just came to check on you.”
“I’m fine.” She blinks and forces a half-smile. “My mother’s just being my mother. You know her.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“It’s nothing. She has high standards. I understand where it comes from.” She laughs, but her eyes are wet. “It’s just, like… is it so hard to just say ‘you did good’? Once?”