Prologue

It’s 2017.

April 12, 2017.

Where in the world is June Brooks right now?

She’s at home, sitting on her bed, staring into her closet.

Inside her closet is It.

Well, it’s really just a black dress. But It represents so much more than a black dress usually would.

Her mother’s funeral, for example.

The fact that she’s moving away tomorrow, and so there’s nothing else in the closet but that black dress, for another.

She was only fourteen. Fourteen is too young to be an orphan.

Orphan is such a funny word. When you hear the word orphan, you imagine a small child, alone in the world.

In fact, according to Merriam-Webster, an orphan is defined as, “a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents”. So, technically, June is an orphan. She knows this, because she looked it up.

Lottie, June’s younger sister, has been crying all morning. Asking for Mama. The only thing that she knows is that Mama was here four days ago and is suddenly absent, and perhaps if she screams loud enough, Mama will come back.

June can hear her father trying to hush Lottie, a near-impossible task, as Lottie is three years old and her tantrums seem to go on forever, or at least until she tires herself out.

What was it like to be an orphan? June didn’t exactly know, she had only been at it for four days. It was quite unexpected, as well; she imagined that quite a few orphans at least had some time to prepare for the possibility. Like if their parent got sick, or injured, they might have some time before, to come to terms with it.

It was a car accident that took her mother, though. It was fast, at least June knew that her mother didn't suffer.

She simply blinked out of existence, like a lightswitch turning off.

June slid the black dress around herself, over her shoulders. Black wasn’t her color; with blonde hair and gray eyes, she looked better in blue. At least, her mother had said so.

But you don’t wear blue to a funeral.

She pulled on her black flats, slipped her phone into her pocket, and walked out, unsteady feet tripping over themselves. She touched the walls for support, the bare walls where pictures had once hung. Pictures of her and Lottie and their parents and friends, that were now stacked in boxes and sitting in the back of the mover's van her father had rented.

The drive to the funeral was completely silent. Even Lottie didn't dare make a fuss.

It was a long day, filled to the brim with tears and condolences and people dressed all in black. Mourning.

June wasn’t sure how she felt. She supposed that she should feel sad, but she just felt empty.

That night, she knew, was the last night she would sleep in her bed. The last time she would live in her childhood home.

Her worst fear was that noplace else would feel like home.

But without her mother, she wasn’t sure that she would ever feel at home again.