Although June is cordial to Lily, she’s never warm. Lily doesn’t understand why she resents her so much, and Kidd employs hyperbole to show how much Lily wishes June would soften toward her. 

I’m here to tell you, if I was dying on my cot in the honey house and the only thing that could save me was June’s change of heart, I would meet my death and shoot straight to heaven. Or maybe hell. I wasn’t even sure anymore.

In this melodramatic moment Lily imagines herself dying in the honey house, with the only cure possible being June’s willingness to accept her. She almost believes that June would let her die rather than accept her, and would do so so quickly that she would “shoot straight to heaven.” The hyperbole in this passage stretches Lily’s reaction to June’s coolness and resentment into a dramatic, theatrical claim. She treats June’s approval as being so unlikely that it would be like witnessing a miracle if it ever occurred. Her language turns June’s reluctance to embrace her with open arms into an obstacle large enough to decide life or death.The extreme phrasing also highlights the childish way Lily thinks about acceptance. She uses death as a stand-in for rejection here because she truly feels like she might die if she has to leave the Boatwright house, and she sees June as her final obstacle.