Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder (Happily Ever Homicide, #1)

by Gracie Ruth Mitchell

I think we all think about weird things sometimes, but we’re never sure exactly how weird other people are, and we don’t want to give ourselves away for fear that we’re the strangest one in the room.

We all keep the dead in our own ways; they never leave us. Not really. The parting of life from a body can never erase memories or teachings or likenesses.

I don’t know how it’s possible to miss someone and resent them, to love them and hate them all at the same time.

“I guess I just wanted to tell you that. That I’m doing my best to thrive, and that I’m trying to let go of the past.”

She was a defiant personality; asking her to behave wouldn’t have done much. I was the same way in high school, but I like to think I grew out of it; I’m not sure she ever did.

I don’t want to expend energy and effort trying to be the person he remembers, because I’m not that girl anymore. But it’s also sort of scary being truly myself in front of someone that was so important to me at one time, no matter how simple my feelings for him were.

Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns is a strange, eerie little piece that for some reason I love. It fits my current mood and location, telling the story of Death as he plays his fiddle to call the dead forth from their graves on Halloween night, making them dance until morning, when they return to the ground.

Sometimes I feel like staying in my room all day too.

But I know better now. The reason this kind of neighborhood is the American dream is not that it’s fancy or aesthetically pleasing or whatever. Human beings like those things, but what we really crave is stability. We want to go to bed at night and know that things will still be okay when we wake up. We want to rest easy. And that’s the feeling a white picket fence gives off: safety. Stability.

I don’t know why anyone would choose to sit when they can sprawl, but to each their own.

“She always says you’ll never come across anything in life that’s too difficult for you. Never more than you can handle.”

“Have you not been back here since you graduated?” She shakes her head. “I never really wanted to come back. Not a lot of happy memories.” The smile she gives me is simple, peaceful—not full of self-pity but acceptance. “Still, it hasn’t changed much, has it?”

Something about his expression—or lack thereof—has me backpedaling. “Sorry,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Guess that got pretty dark, huh?” Ugh. This always happens. I always open my mouth, something weird pops out, and whoever’s nearby gets scared away. To my immense surprise, though, Aiden just shrugs. “Not really,” he says. “Even so…” He gets to his feet, yearbook in hand, and heads in the direction of his bedroom. But as he passes me, he looks down. Then, in a voice so matter-of-fact it can only be the truth, he says one thing: “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

there’s a little bit of darkness in all of us. I’m convinced that’s true. We couldn’t shine so brightly as human beings if we never knew the shadows.

As a child I never realized that my home life wasn’t normal; I never realized that my mother was only minimally functional. It wasn’t until I got older that those things occurred to me. But just because I didn’t know, just because it seemed perfectly fine to me, doesn’t mean I wasn’t deeply affected by the way I was raised. My upbringing helped shape who I am—dark, light, and everything in between.

But I’m here. I’m alive. And I’m going to do great things in this life of mine. I don’t need to leave a huge legacy; I don’t need to change the world. But I’m going to make my little corner of life a really excellent corner.

I’m not afraid of death or what happens afterward—whether it involves an afterlife or a hole in the ground. Those things don’t frighten me. But thinking about other people dying—thinking about other people being lost, forgotten, becoming nothing more than a faded memory…” I shake my head. “It makes me unbearably sad.”

She’s bold and unapologetic; sometimes that’s all it takes to bring out the insecurities of the people around you.

And anyway, Juniper’s beauty isn’t the kind you can capture in a jar and save for a rainy day. It’s not a conventional prettiness. It’s the type you have to experience, the type that doesn’t really reveal itself until you understand her a bit better.

droning on about symbolism that only maybe was intended by the author. I don’t like the way we teach objectively things that are so subjective. One person might read the same book five times and come away with five different interpretations, based solely on what they were going through each time they read the book.

I don’t know if the carpet was blue because the author wanted to portray something sad. But if that’s how it seems to you, what can you take away from that? If you’re finding hints of sadness in everything you read, what can that tell you about yourself at this point in time?

Those are the lessons that are going to help you in your day-to-day life anyway. In fifty years you’re not going to need to know about symbolism in classical literature. But you’re definitely going to need lots of tools for figuring yourself out, for deciphering your own emotions and understanding your own mind.

“You’re allowed to be sad.” I find it’s remarkable how many people don’t think they’re allowed to be sad.

It’s her naked mind on display, both light and dark, strange and familiar, and she’s done something incredible with it. She sees her shadows; she weaves them through her fingers. She knows their value.

But she doesn’t drown in them. She remains sunshine—not soft, gentle sunshine, but abrasive sunshine with sharp edges. That’s how she channels her demons, both in her poetry and her life: she uses them to make her light shine brighter in contrast.

I’ve always been this way. Show me the most beautiful woman in the world and I’ll acknowledge that she’s pretty, but show me a beautiful mind if you want that prettiness to really affect me. Beauty alone is not enough to make my pulse race and my body react.

I don’t know that a quiet life is in the cards for Juniper Bean. She is the stone in the stream that the water must rush around. And those people, whether they want to be or not, are history-makers. Any time your presence causes people to change, you’re making history. Sometimes small history, sometimes grand—always worth paying attention to.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. It’s fine that he knows. No matter what he thinks, I’m okay. I can be okay no matter what anyone thinks.

“Aiden doesn’t like women because they’re pretty,” Caroline says—as if she hasn’t contributed to this mess enough already. “He isn’t really attracted to them physically until he’s attracted to them mentally—ow!” She breaks off, rubbing the back of her head.

Hunger, especially as a child, has many different sources, but two of them are the lack of money to buy food and the lack of an adult figure to prepare that food.

the past I’ve sort of appreciated the weird way attraction works for me; I’m literally incapable of being attracted to women I don’t at least find interesting.

What freaks our brains out is seeing something dead that still has hints of aliveness about it. It’s the same as the concept of the uncanny, right? Not Freud’s uncanny—Uncanny Valley.”

I’ve worked hard for my entire adult life to provide a safe space for myself—my home. It’s something I didn’t have as a child, so safety is priceless to me now. And

My heart aches for the hungry and the cold and the lost. It aches for the people I can help and the people I can’t. My aching heart is the catalyst behind most of my life’s actions.

I don’t really become attracted to someone physically unless I’m attracted to them mentally.”

But how is it possible that our thoughts don’t change our bodies on a cellular level? It seems inconceivable that the workings of my blood and bones and organs aren’t affected by the knowledge I obtain. How can information that shakes your reality be limited to the thoughts that dwell in your mind?

And is love more than the sum of its parts? If you lose all the parts of yourself that someone fell in love with, will they still love you? Is there a love that says simply I love you because you exist?

You’re allowed to feel angry, my therapist has told me time and time again. You’re allowed to feel compassion for your mother while also taking issue with how she treated you. You’re allowed to love someone while also being glad they’re no longer part of your life. You can understand why someone treats you badly while also refusing to allow them to treat you that way. Those things are okay. I

I cry for myself, because I’m sad, and because I’m learning that I’m allowed to be unhappy.