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When we arrived at Valleyfair, seeing the roller coaster made me miss Brenda and Maureen, but I was making peace with the fact that everything would. The smell of Bubble Yum gum, which’d been Maureen’s favorite until she heard it was made out of spider eggs. Peyton Place reruns, which Brenda and I had watched religiously. Every good song that came on the radio. The whole world was a reminder that my best friends were no longer here, but it was also a reminder of how great they’d been.
It was funny, I’d never realized before how much alike the two of them looked, Beth and Junie. They had the same red hair, freckles, and wide grins, even similar curves despite the age difference. It gave me a burst of joy how much like sisters they looked, followed by a gut punch when I remembered that’s why Ed had picked them, because they’d reminded him of his first girlfriend, the one he’d murdered.
And so it went, first our new shelves and then Claude’s filled up with forever memories of the two best girls this town ever saw. That summer, the summer of ’77, everything had edges. The sharpness took my friends, but it cut away the blinders, too. And once you understand the truth, there’s no living any other way.
Beth’s parents hovered near her—they always seemed to be near her, and who could blame them?—but she was standing on her own, staring resolutely at the new shelves. I could tell she’d made up her mind. She’d be moving to Berkeley soon. I’d miss her, but I was fiercely happy for her, too, and for anyone who got to know her. She was going to shake some stuff up out there in the big world.
Junie huddled in a circle of her friends in the far corner. They looked so tender, those thirteen-year-old girls, nearing the starting line of their own open-field sprint from child to woman. Junie’d caught a terrible glimpse of how that run used to be, how it had been for Brenda and Maureen, Beth and me. The people in this room would make sure it was different for Junie’s group, the girls and the boys. No more looking away.
