June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

tight blue dress, with her hair done up and her lipstick brighter than an apple. Lindie’s collar felt tight as Charlie Philips, racing by to catch a bit of the movie action, stopped to tip his hat. He turned and stumbled and watched June go, so taken with the sight that he didn’t even notice Jack Montgomery standing there beside him. Everyone was watching June. No one had seen a thing like it.

It was 9:06 when June finally dashed around the corner of Cherry and Pine, and 9:07 when Lindie slipped around it and hid behind Mrs. Holcomb’s boxwood hedge. The back of June’s sharp black heel had started to chafe, forming a blister she knew would punish her for weeks to come. But she pressed through, hiding her limp.
    She looked like herself again, a little hesitant, a little careful, and Lindie felt a relief she didn’t know how to name. Seeing June so altered by that famous man had made her far less predictable in Lindie’s eyes, which was why Lindie couldn’t resist following her. She figured as long as she came back to set jogging, Casey wouldn’t know she’d been slacking.
    They heard the roar of the bus before they saw it. Would Artie Danvers kiss her? Did she want him to? June straightened herself as the bus turned the corner before braking to a sigh at her feet. Would she kiss him back? The doors pushed open. The sun was hitting the windows, so it was hard to make anyone out, but the tall figure fourth in line was sure to be him. First was Mrs. Royce, back from her regular Friday night visit to her daughter’s down in Lancaster. Next, a mother and young son who passed June by, noses in the air, as if she didn’t exist. So the next person off would be Artie.
    But it wasn’t. It was the strange, lanky boy who always wore a baseball cap and whom the girls had once seen throw a tin can at a stray dog. After him came a middle-aged woman gathering up her knitting.
    June leaned forward after the knitter stepped off the bus. Surely, surely Artie was coming. He had simply let the ladies go out before him. June realized the bus driver was reaching to shut the doors and heard herself shout, “Wait!”
    The driver frowned.
    “My fiancé’s on this bus,” June said, realizing how unsure she sounded. “Arthur Danvers? He’s tall…he’s, he’s handsome.”
    The driver smiled wryly. “No one handsome on my bus today.” He closed the doors in her face, gunned the engine, and rolled off into the morning, leaving her in a cloud of fumes.
    June watched the bus go. Artie had fallen asleep on it. Any moment he’d wake up and yell, “Stop this bus!” and it would come screeching to a halt, and he’d dash off and come running toward her, arms outstretched, like something out of a Jack Montgomery movie. Lindie didn’t want June to marry Artie Danvers, but she wanted that grand romantic gesture for June’s sake. She couldn’t bear to see the way her friend’s shoulders slumped, how small she had so quickly become in the large and disappointing world.
    The bus drove off.
    June stood in front of the library until Mrs. Wilson, who held weekday Bible study in the main reading room—and was apparently of the belief that the St. Judians would rather study Proverbs 31:30 (“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised”) than watch Jack Montgomery film the first scene of
Erie Canal
—unlocked the front door and asked June if she’d like to come inside. June said no—she knew better than to be sucked in by Bible study—but neither could she stomach going home, or back to the movie set, or anywhere else in that godforsaken town, and so she hooked her shoes over her fingertips and headed west, letting her stockings fray along her soles, lifting her eyes at Lindie as she passed without a word.
    —
    By dinnertime, Lindie had learned a very rough whipstitch, and delivered the Cokes without incident, among a dozen other things. The crew had broken for the day, heading back to