“Fine. And it’sJune. Please.”
“June. Got it. Parents are the worst at keeping nicknames too long, aren’t they? I still—”
“No, you don’t,” I interrupt.
“—call FlintSnuggybottoms.”
She smiles at me.
June snickers.
I shake my head, but I’m not pissed.
While Opal did indeed call meSnuggybottomsone time after I moved in with her when I was in high school, she only brings it upwhen she’s around kids who need to know I’m not scary and they can count on me.
“My mom named meJuniper,” June says. “I told her if she keeps calling meJunie, I’m telling my friends I want them to call me Nip. It’s so much better thanPer, you know?”
“That would be something,” Opal says. “But not original. Flint, what year was it that you had that girl named Virginia in your class? The one who wanted everyone to call herVag?”
June’s eyes bug out.
“Two years ago,” I reply mildly.
“And then the boy who wanted everyone to call himPeenie?”
Now she’s making shit up. “I’m not allowed to discuss that.”
Opal turns to look at June. “Sorry, sweetheart. The school put a hard limit on nicknames after that. But I hear kids these days are changing their names to whatever they want so long as it’s not a word that seems likely to make someone uncomfortable. What would you name yourself if you weren’t a Juniper?”
June’s mouth opens, then shuts. She frowns before turning to stare out the window at the scraggly landscape around us.
One good thing about taking June home?
We’ll get there about the time the sun sets over the bluffs, and there are clouds on the horizon tonight.
Should be gorgeous.
And while I have a decent view at the gatehouse, the view from Tony’s old house is unbeatable.
“You’re making friends, June?” Opal asks.
She shrugs.
Kid finally got her chance to fill in tonight after weeks of playing equipment manager without much hope this day would come, and she kicked the game-winning goal. Got smothered in the middle of a team hug for it, but I know that doesn’t mean she feels like she fits.
I see her every time she hands a water bottle to someone beating themselves up at halftime over a missed kick or a lost ball. She doesn’t justhand over the water bottle. She squats next to them, says something—I’m starting to pick up on what—and then claps them on the shoulder or squeezes their arm or fist bumps them before going on to the next player.
But I don’t know if she’s doing it because it makes her feel like she fits or because she’s doing her best despite knowing she should be on the field instead of the sidelines.
I looked up her old high school and her old team, and it gave me a minute of feeling like an impostor.
Hell’s Bells isn’t state bound. We don’t play top-tier teams, never mindbeatthem regularly. I don’t know soccer so much as I was the guy standing there when they needed a soccer coach, and everyone knows if you want something done, you ask me.
Once I moved back here, I realized it was up to me to find a way to fit in. Never quite made it in high school.
Hard to when everyone knows you’rethat runaway. The kids who wanted to hang out with mebecauseI ran away from home aren’t the kids I wanted to hang with. And the kids I did want to hang with thought I was a bad influence.
So maybe I overcompensate now.
