Chapter 1: Behold1 Behold
I AM A WONDER TO behold.

At least, that's what Mom said when she saw the clumps of hair on the bathroom floor. She took one look at my bald head and my bare feet itching under all that shed weight and announced, "Junebug, you are a wonder to behold." And then she pried the pink Bic razor from my fingers and took it to her own head. That's the thing about Mom. She is a woman of action.

Her dark waves fell and mixed with my blond ones, and altogether we made an unruly mess. But it was a mess on the floor and not on our heads, so that was that.

She was not a wonder to behold. Honestly.

All that hair had been hiding bumps and divots and a scalp so white it was almost gray. She scratched at it with her glittery purple nails, exploring the whole craggy moonscape.

"Mom, you look sensational," I said, our brown eyes hooking on each other in the mirror. It was not true. Sometimes you have to tell a little lie to call a bigger truth into being. This summer I am summoning all our truths.

Truth #1: I will not be the girl who pulls out her own hair because she's running from the anxious thoughts in her head.

Truth #2: Mom and I will own our power as fierce, independent females.

Just because her boyfriend, Keith, dumped her last week does not mean Mom has to turn into the lonesome librarian. He wasn't even supposed to be her boyfriend in the first place. He stopped by to try to sell us insurance and stayed three years! We can be happy without him. Together. On our own.

Here's Truth #3 (the secret truth): I am tired of being the nervous mouse girl who is scared all the time and runs from everything. And I'm sick of waiting for the right things to happen. This summer, I am going to be a lion. And I will make happily ever after come to me.

Ten minutes later:

I stand in front of my dresser mirror and stare at my "melon," as Mom calls it. I hate my hair. Mom lied. I am no wonder. I look like a visitor from another planet. I feel like that all the time, but now my outsides match my insides and I'm not okay with it. I turn my head left and then right, but the view's no better. I'm no lion. I am a pale white thing in a pale white room. I turn away from the mirror before I have to watch myself cry.

My head itches to be itched, but I tuck my fingers into my palms. That's what got me in trouble in the first place. First the itch starts on the inside, from all the prickly thoughts, and then it spreads outside like a creeping vine until I can feel it all over me, like poison ivy. So I scratch. But once I start, I can't stop. And then the scratching isn't enough. So I pull. I yank and yank until, with a tiny satisfying ping of pain, a hair or five come away. For a sweet second, I'm numb. The worries go quiet. I can stop rocking in place. I can be still, inside and out.

What nobody gets is that hair-pulling is satisfying with a capital S. Each strand is a pull-chain in the tub. Yank on it and a little of the worry leaks out. It keeps me from overflowing... or it did. I knock on my bare head with my fist, once, gently, like I'm knocking on a door. Hello, anybody home? This was a colossal mistake. Why did I think that because my hair is gone the itchy worry would be too? What am I going to do when it starts and I've got nothing to use to stop it? Can you drown in your own thoughts?

I pace, following the swirls in the grain of the wood floor, back and forth, back and forth. There is a patch of morning light in the shape of a diamond. I stop. Crouch. Stick my hand over it so the diamond is on my palm. It is warm as a hug. I wish I could carry it with me, that warm patch of light.

"Junebug, you better be dressed and on the curb in two minutes!" Mom yells from the kitchen just as the toaster oven dings. I can smell the cinnamon and butter from here. Mom makes an excellent croissant French toast, which most of the time we eat in plastic bags filled with syrup in the car. We are always late. It's the most dependable thing about us.

When I settle onto the cracked leather of Thelma's interior, the tag from my T-shirt slides up, touching a spot on my neck I did not know existed. I flinch. I did not anticipate the tag issue. Without my hair in the way, it is a lightning rod, a buzzer to my senses like that game Operation, where you have to pull out the organs with tiny tweezers. I tug at my collar while Thelma coughs and rumbles and sighs. When Mom curses her whole existence, Thelma finally vrooms to life. Thelma's our Ford. She used to be red, we think, but now she's mostly rust--the color of a rotten orange. But we love her. Seven years ago, she got us all the way from New Orleans to Nashville. Thelma is the means of all our great escapes.

Ants go marching up and down my back. No, it's just the tag. I wriggle my shoulders up and down, up and down. My therapist, Gina, likes to say my mind has a mind of its own. It fixates on the strangest and most unreasonable things. I worry about the tag. I worry that I will keep worrying about the tag. I worry that it worries me. It is the worry-go-round, a hamster on a wheel.

I try my favorite car trick to stop the thoughts. I crack my window and let the wind blow straight in my eyes until they fill with tears and the maple trees blur, their green leaves waving like peacock feathers. I would like to be a peacock--so bright and beautiful that people are drawn to me.

Mom rolls her own window all the way down too. She finds a Ray LaMontagne song on the radio. I don't know how she can seem so easy in herself, with her hand out the window riding the waves of the wind. She is the yin to my yang.

Nick, Mr. Ex #2, was a musician, and he sounded just like Ray on the radio. He is how we ended up in Nashville in the first place. He lasted the longest, ages four to eight in "June time," but he was also the worst. He was the slowest to realize that nobody can stick with Mom without getting me in the bargain. When he finally showed himself for what he was, Mom kicked him to the curb. But it was too late for me. Not all shadows dissolve in the sunshine. He's been my shadow for years. But I don't like to talk about that.

We're only a five-minute drive to the Columbia Public Library, where Mom works. It's just south of the teeny tiny downtown of Franklin that has been our home these past seven years just outside Nashville. At ten till ten on this Saturday morning, we pull into the library's parking lot, more potholes than road, and bump along to the employee slots under the row of crab-apple trees around back. I tip the plastic baggie into my mouth and suck out the last few drops of syrup.

"Ick, June." Mom shudders.

I smack my lips. "Don't yuck my yum."

Like bank robbers, we kick Thelma's doors open and launch ourselves out, bald heads and all, into the damp morning heat. Summer, here we come.

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Excerpted from The Summer of June by Jamie Sumner
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