this is the longest thing ive ever written and the read time is probably 10-15 minutes, i wrote it for creative writing class theres probably a lot of mistakes and a lot of wrong-ness but i hope to one day turn this into a far grander, far better piece but for now here it is.

3 Months of June

I remember the beginning. It was quite possibly the strangest, and yet most amazing night of all the seventeen years that I had walked this planet. In all my seventeen years, I had never found anything that mattered. I had never been anything that mattered. Everything was bland, everything was repetitive, superficial, sickeningly perfect. Nothing ever mattered. And then something finally did. She did. She mattered.

The way we met was quite possibly the biggest contradiction of our whole story. It was dark out, and I was trying to find my way home. A sticky summer night that left my shirt clinging to my skin and my hair all over the place, I was hurrying along the trail in the woods that I had traveled on all day to get home. My legs were covered in cuts, my arms in mosquito bites, and my forehead in sweat. And yet, I still did not regret my day’s journey, for I had been meaning to escape away from the boring lego town I called home for a long time. The woods were my go to place, to get away from all the same boring houses lined in a row, all the same people who pretended to care, all the same routines day after day. That would all change that night. Needing a bathroom break, I stumbled off the path, and after an unexpected fall through some bushes, I came across a clearing. This clearing, I quickly discovered, was actually the campsite of someone unseen. A makeshift bed, a cardboard box full of unperishables, a bag of clothing, and a stack of books all lay hidden (poorly) by some fallen trees. Curiosity got the better of me, I had to snoop around. I knelt down next to the books, the only thing I was interested in actually looking at, being an avid reader myself. Books were another one of my few escapes, my ticket to places that weren’t the deadbeat town I lived in. “Wuthering Heights”, a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems, and “The Clockwork Orange”, were at the top along with many very old copies of some of the most famous classics. As I reached the bottom of the stack, I found what looked like a journal. Just as I picked it up, a voice sounded behind me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I jumped up and dropped the journal, startled. Standing in front of me was a girl, who looked like she couldn’t be much older than I was. She was dressed just like any other girl from my town, wearing all black, a hoodie, leggings, and converse. But this girl, she was not just like any other girl from my town, no matter what she wore. She was strikingly beautiful, the kind of girl that made you stop in your tracks, made you want to shut up and listen, made you hurt in a way you never knew you could. With her raven black hair, blue eyes, and perfect facial structure, she looked the way that I thought freedom left.
Do you remember the moment in time when your life changed? That was the moment for me. It sounds stupid, it sounds hopelessly romantic, it sounds nauseating, but the minute I laid eyes on June Summers, something shifted.
Paralyzed, I stood gaping at her, for a few beats, until I realized how idiotic I must look.
“I… I’m sorry.. I didn’t mean to go through your things.. I just..”
“You didn’t meant to go through my things but you went through my things. You might want to work on your logic and come up with a better excuse,” she said, her voice tinged with playfulness. That was her signature thing I would come to learn. Everything was a game, and she loved playing, because she always won. I didn’t realize I became a player in the game until much later, when it was too late to back out, when she had already intoxicated every last inch of me.
“I’m Spencer. Spencer Walsh. I live in Grand Hall, right outside the woods. I was just walking back home and then I just.. had to.. I fell through some bushes and.. Your stuff.. I was curious.” I stumbled over my words. I had no control over it. She found that amusing. She studied me for what felt like hours. I watched her as she laid down on her “bed” on the ground and patted the dirt beside her.
“Okay, Spencer Walsh, come lay and watch the stars with me.” I was in shock. I had met this girl less than 10 minutes ago and here she was, telling me to lay with her? And yet, I did it. I laid down, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off her skin, and yet still, I itched to close even that small gap. I had only been laying there for a second, when she sprang up.
“How cliche of us. Don’t you hate it? Why did you do what I asked you to?” The look on her face was intense, deep. I didn’t know how to answer her, but I didn’t even have to, because she carried on seconds later.
“That’s my biggest fear. Becoming a cliche.” We held eye contact for several more beats, and her eyes held a look of great pain. How badly I wanted to comfort her, to give her some relief, and yet what do you say to help someone you don’t even know? I would never learn the answer to that question, because the truth is I would never truly know her. I decided to join her, in talking about fear.
“My biggest fear is never amounting to anything. Dying without leaving an impact. Being boring. My whole life has been boring, my town is boring, I am boring. And it terrifies me. That I’ll be like this forever. I just want to leave, I want to travel, do things, meet people, be something and someone. Instead, I’m stuck in a never-ending boring cycle of the same repetition, stuck in what my dad wants me to be and how he wants me to live. I want to break the cycle, and my biggest fear is that I won’t be able to,” the words tumbled out of me. I didn’t realize I had said so much, opened up so much until I noticed her staring. I worried she would think I was crazy, I did after all have much more than most, and it was clear just by looking at me. I lived in Grand Hall, one of the richest towns of Pennsylvania, my clothes were all pure cotton of the most expensive brand, and yes, I knew I even looked fit to play the part of your average teenage rich lacrosse playing private school boy. But she saw through that. I know she did because of the two words she said that night.
“I understand.” We lay in silence for what felt like hours after until I realized I had to go home. Begrudgingly, I stood, not knowing how to say a good bye, still not really coming to terms with how strange the night had been. I did not know her name yet. I did not know anything about her. All I knew was that she never wanted to be a cliche. I now know that thats all she ever was. I walked home that night with a heavy weight in my chest, thinking I would never see her again, thinking the one time I met someone who didn’t just want to talk about the football game or the awards show or the latest party had just slipped away from me. That is until I got home later that night to the usually empty house and found the note in my back pocket, that I had no clue when she had time to write or how she put there. On a square piece of paper in small cursive letters was written, “Meet me by the pond. Tuesday. 5 p.m.”

It could have been different. I could have not gone. I could have forgotten about that night, that girl, I could have stuck to my boring but safe ways. I could have let the rest of the summer play out just as all the others, going to parties, playing lacrosse, drinking stale beer, kissing random lips. I could have gone to my father’s alma mater school, Columbia University. I could have studied finance and business, I could have gone on to take over my father’s business company, I could have made him proud, the grand CEO he was. Instead, I went. The pond was a short walk away from where we first had met. I waited 30 minutes, and she had still not come. I was just beginning to lose hope when there she was. Eyes glimmering in the sun, smile beaming, she was contagious and I caught her. She said nothing, just grabbed my hand and led me off the trail into the woods. She knew her way around and we walked for a while, never stopping, never talking. I watched her the whole time we walked, finding more beauty in her than a botanist would find in Kuekenhof Gardens with its famous collection of 7 million tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. We stopped at the top of a hill, and that’s all it was, I thought at the time. We had walked at least a mile for a hill. I didn’t even have time to question it before she pointed down towards the bottom of the hill. There, I saw it. In the distance, stood a carousel. She looked at me, winked, and ran. Her hair flew behind her, her legs hitting the ground quickly, and I stood watching, until I snapped out of it and ran, too, wanting to share the moment with her, wanting to feel the same as she was. The carousel was long abandoned it seemed, as it was all rusted, with most of the paint chipped away. The once beautiful carousel horses now looked gray and sad, frozen in a past time. I had so many questions. Who was this girl? How did she find this place? Where was she from?
Thousands of things I wanted to ask, and all I managed to say was, “Wow.” I never did get the answers to any of my questions. She laughed and so I laughed and we were laughing together until she stopped.
“You are a carousel horse. You are stuck going around and around in circles. Your smile is painted one, your movements mechanical. I am your miracle, I am time. I will help you break your cycle, I will help you escape, I will help you reveal the deepest parts of yourself, the non-boring parts. You may think that this carousel is overrun by old age, but you are wrong. This carousel is overrun by experience. And those are two very different things.” With that, she threw back her head and laughed, jumping on to the carousel, running around, ducking between horses. I chased her. I don’t think I ever stopped chasing her, even after we climbed off the carousel, even after we walked home her fingers intertwined with mine, electricity crackling. The problem with chasing June Summers was that she didn’t want to be caught. It was all part of the game.

She was right. She was my miracle in countless ways. I spent every day of that summer with her, exploring all the woods that there was to explore. Not only did we explore physically, we explored our minds. More appropriately, I drew her a map of mine, and she never gave me a hint to help with the labyrinth that was hers. I told her everything I could. I told her about how my parents never knew what I was doing because they were never home, I told her about my friends and the way they only talked of sport scholarships to party schools, I told her about how the only time I ever felt truly alive, truly significant was when I was writing. I told her about my dreams of going to NYU, about becoming a writer, about never staying in one place for too long, about my idea of true love and how I wanted a love that would ache me so deeply I would have no room for anything other. Countless times I tried to figure out something about her, her parents’, her real home. Countless times, I got the same response.
“My name is June Summers. I’m 17 years old, and you don’t need to know every detail of someone’s lives to know their soul.” She didn’t understand, though, that I wanted to know every inch of her, even more than her soul. She didn’t understand that I loved her even though I knew it wasn’t true love, because it has to be shared to be true. She didn’t understand that she broke me away from everything I had always thought I knew. She didn’t understand how much she was going to hurt me. That’s what I thought back then. Now I know that she did understand, she just didn’t care.

I had grown used to the game of June Summers. I had become familiar with the ‘catch me if you can, even though we both know you never will be able to’ way that she functioned. I bore my soul to her, and she took it, but even though her words were pretty, they were just painted lies. I never knew her, but I thought I did and so when she told me that there were three things I needed to do for us to truly be friends, I did not even hesitate. This particular game of favors she started on one of the coolest nights of the summer. We were sitting by a small river that we had come across on an earlier adventure, our feet splashing in the water.
“Do you love me?” The question came out of nowhere. I had been waiting for this conversation for days, weeks now. I did not want to be the one to bring it up in fear of breaking the fragility of our friendship, the only thing tethering me to even the smallest slivers of her world. When I did not answer right away, she grew irritated.
“A true friendship can only be upheld by the power of secrets, the power of trust, and the power of love. If you do not love me, then I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me so now, for I have no interest in one of those cliche friendships that are all built on lies.” She turned away, upset. I had no idea where this had come from, but whatever had upset her could not have compared to the burning in my chest when I realized she didn’t mean the question the way I wanted her to.
“I love you almost as much as I hate this town.” It was true, and yet she couldn’t even begin to fathom just how true. She smiled, then.
“Then, you will do three things for me. For us. First, you will mail a letter to the address I give you, no questions asked, that’s where the secret part of our friendship comes in because you’re not allowed to read it. Second, you will help me bury something of mine, something that I want gone, this is where the trust comes in because I’m entrusting you to trust me. Third and most important, you will get us both fake ID’s, and as much money as you can, because I’ve decided that on the 23rd of August, you and me are getting out of here and going to New York together, and never looking back.” I was in awe, at how spontaneous it was, at how much confidence she had in me, at how easily I gave in. I never once thought of doing anything other than what she told me to that night. I was mesmerized by her, caught by her, in love with her. Love is a strange thing. I always thought it meant happiness, light, flowers, rings. That summer, I learned that sometimes it was more sorrow than happiness, more dark than light, more dirt than flowers, and more broken glass than rings.

The letter was mailed out to an address in the state of New Jersey on the 3rd of August. My fingers itched to tear it open, to read every last word, to get one clue no matter how tiny as to who this girl that I was so ready to leave my whole life behind for was. I didn’t. I should’ve, but I didn’t, in fear of her seeing right through me, in fear of messing everything up and losing her, and in the deepest part of me, in fear of learning something I didn’t want o know. We buried the bag of what she told me was her past that she was trying to be rid of on the 13th of August. Heavier than I expected, I dug and dug, a hole in the ground, and then covered up the bag with layer after layer of dirt. I did not stop to think about what was in the bag, I was too busy watching her skip flat stones on the lake next to the hole, too busy noticing the way the moon reflected off her hair. On the night of the 22nd of August, I carried a bag with two new passports, two licenses, and two birth certificates, all detailing the lives of one boy and one girl, the lives that we would begin living the next day. I met her by the pond where I had learned the first, last, and only true thing about her that first day in the early days of July; her name. She looked over the papers, beaming, ecstatic. My stomach exploded with what I could only describe as millions of doves flying. She was happy, she was proud. That’s all that mattered.
“Thank you, I will never forget just how much you did for me, Spencer Walsh,” she whispered, in the last few minutes of that night. In that moment, she leaned over and kissed me, for a second, touching her lips to mine, softly. Has your world ever stopped spinning? My whole universe stopped. She stood and walked away, before I had the chance to say anything, before I had the chance to kiss her back, before I even realized what happened. Though I didn’t know it yet that was the last time I would ever see June Summers again.

The next day, I packed everything into a small knapsack. I had left my fake documents with June. I left a short note for my parents, keeping it simple, saying thank you but that I was on to the next chapter of my life, and that I hoped I would see them again one day. I walked my usual way on the trail to where we agreed to meet. I had no regrets, no inhibitions, I was a walking high, feeling more elated than ever in my entire life. I thought of the kiss, of what it could mean and would mean, of the future I would have with June. I thought of how she had changed me, made me realize I didn’t have to live life by the rules, made me realize it was okay to not fit in. I got to our usual spot, and sat, waiting for my own little mystery of a love to appear. I waited, and waited, and waited. I didn’t think anything of it, June was always late, that’s just how she worked, she liked keeping you waiting, keeping you strung out. It wasn’t until I had sat for two hours under our favorite shaded tree that something fell in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t until I had realized that there was no way for me to know that she was actually planning on leaving with me that I realized she wasn’t coming. It wasn’t until I saw that piece of paper that I had carelessly overlooked laying on the ground next to me did my mind shut down. June Summers had left, the night before, stolen off into the night, probably right after the kiss. June Summers had left and not looked back, leaving behind only a newspaper article to tell the truth of who she was.

I read over the piece of paper not wanting to believe my eyes. According to the article, the girl that went by the name of June Summers, the girl with raven black hair and piercing blue eyes, had been missing from a nearby sanitarium for two months. According to the article, she was “extremely dangerous”, a “highly manipulative sociopath”, and had “been put away for the murder of 5 people, deemed criminally insane.” This was not my June Summers. My June was full of love, emotion, life. She was not a cold, manipulating killer. She was the love of my life, I loved her and she loved me, and we were supposed to be on our way to New York City. They say that grief comes in 5 stages; the first being denial. I sat for 20 minutes trying to convince myself the picture was photoshopped, trying to convince myself this was a joke. I sat for 20 minutes until I turned the paper over and saw in that same small cursive handwriting from that very first note ‘I wish I was sorry’. I called the police 10 minutes after, my voice shaking.
“I’d like to report information on the missing psychiatric patient from Harrisburg State Hospital. I’d also like to confess about assisting in helping her to escape, and to cover up a murder.”

The letter that I had emailed was a forgery of June’s parents informing the lead psychiatrist in June’s case that they had found her dead, having hung herself in the bathroom of their home. The bag that I buried contained the dead bodies of June’s parents, the past that she was trying to rid herself of, the loose ends she was tying up. The license, birth certificate, and passport have been unable to be tracked, leaving the existence of June Summers to be a mystery. They say that grief comes in 5 stages. Mine came in my magic number, 3. I skipped the anger and the bargaining. After attempting to deny what was the indisputable truth, I fell into a deep abyss of darkness. My parents hired a lawyer, the best in state, and my trial went smoothly, with me being sentenced to years of psychiatric counseling. After years of sitting in rooms with blank walls trying to come to terms with the fact that I was mentally manipulated by a highly intelligent sociopath, that I was in love with a person who never existed, that I had assisted in the escape and crime of a highly dangerous criminal, I finally came to terms with what happened. I fell for her, or maybe the idea of her, since she, herself, did not exist. There are times where I still think that it couldn’t all have been a pretense, that some part of her did have a soul, a soul that I knew, a soul that I loved and that loved me. The time I have had to think about my summer of June has led to me one conclusion. I was not sorry that it happened, I was not sorry for myself, I was not sorry for the time I wasted. Instead, I was thankful for having my eyes opened, and my life redirected, even if it was by someone who was putting on a show. No, I realized the only person I was truly sorry for was her. I was sorry for her, because I knew that she killed those people, she did those things, she broke all those hearts, all because she didn’t have one of her own.