Authors: Pete Hautman
The Big Crunch
BIG
CRUNCH
PETE HAUTMAN
For Mary, yet again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER
ONE
T
HE FIRST TIME
W
ES SAW
J
UNE,
he thought she was kind of funny-looking. She had these thick lips, a wide mouth, greenish-blue eyes that were a little too far apart, and her hair — a dark blond color — looked still wet from her morning shower. Wes thought she looked like a sea creature pretending to be human.
But that was the first time, language arts, the first class of the day on the first day of junior year, a quick look three rows over as he was checking out everybody, not just the girls. He knew maybe half of them. Most of the rest looked halfway familiar. It was a big school.
Later, remembering that moment, he seemed to recall that there was something else about her — an aura of hot maple syrup and fresh-turned soil — but he figured that was all in his head.
That first day in English — what this school called “language arts” — June did not notice Wes. She was too busy having the worst morning of her life, due to having a stupid argument with her insane mother on the way out the door, spilling cranberry juice on her jeans when the bus hit a pothole, and getting her hair crapped on by a pigeon as she walked into school. Also, she was ninety-nine percent certain that she would get her period before the end of the day and she’d forgotten to bring anything and she didn’t know one single person she could borrow from and
there were no tampon machines anywhere. She was already starting to hate Minnesota.
Her second class, studio arts, was a little better. Her hair finally dried from the emergency wash job in the girls’ restroom, and she made a friend, a chatty girl named Naomi. It was enough to get her through the second hour of the day. And, it turned out, Naomi was the sort of girl who was never without an extra tampon.
At lunch that day, Wes’s eyes once again landed on the fish girl. She was sitting with Naomi Liddell. Wes felt the sort of smug pity that comes with seeing someone else in dire straits.
Naomi Liddell had a history of glomming on to anyone who would so much as smile at her — it didn’t matter who. She would then proceed to inflict her grating, incessant monotone on her new victim. No one stayed friends with Naomi for long. The new girl already had that glazed look of one whose brain cells were rapidly turning to tapioca. Her hair looked better, though — not so flat and wet-looking, and lighter in color, and her eyes had this aqua tint that made him think of swimming pools. He decided to think of her as Aqua Girl, which was much nicer than Fish Girl.
June quickly figured out that sitting with Naomi was like having
LOSER
tattooed across her forehead. She imagined escape strategies ranging from faking an epileptic fit to plugging Naomi’s yak hole with a wadded-up napkin. June’s eyes drifted around the lunchroom as Naomi catalogued what various girls — none of whom June knew or cared about — had worn to school last year. Or maybe it was the year before. Or maybe she was reciting the J. Crew catalog.
As Naomi continued to attack her left eardrum, June thought about how every school she had been to — six of them in the past four years — was pretty much the same. Her father’s business required frequent relocations. June had learned how to recognize which kids were cool but not too cool, and which ones were the users, posers, geeks, skanks, preps, gangstas, macho-morons, punks, burnouts, and so forth. It wasn’t that complicated. The best-dressed girls were generally backstabbers, the best-looking guy was always full of himself, and the scariest, most tatted, most studded, most black-leathery person in school was inevitably shy and gentle and, once you got past the studs and skulls, not actually all that interesting.
Most importantly, she had learned early on that anybody eager to make her acquaintance the first day was almost certainly desperate for a friend, and therefore undesirable as such. There was always a Naomi, another barnacle clamping on, another harpoon, another anchor to drag … and the worst thing was that even if June stood up right then and screamed
“Bitch!”
right in Naomi’s face, the connection would still be there. She would always know that Naomi was out there, and would be clanking along behind her for the rest of her life and beyond. June knew why house-haunting ghosts dragged chains — those were the connections they’d made with the living.
Wes, who classified himself as a semi-cool semi-geek, could have told June who was who and what was what in about five minutes, but at that time he was on the other side of the lunchroom catching up with the two Alans — Schwartz and Hurd. Alan Hurd had spent the summer working at his uncle’s resort up on Otter Tail
Lake, where he was in charge of cleaning fish, among other things. He claimed to be able to fillet a walleye in twelve seconds. He also claimed to have hooked up “every way you can think of” with a hot nineteen-year-old who worked at the resort doing child care and water aerobics classes.
The other Alan, Alan Schwartz, confessed that the only action he’d seen all summer was a copy of
Penthouse
he’d grabbed out of his next-door neighbor’s recycling.
“How come you were digging through your neighbor’s garbage?” Alan Hurd asked.
“There was no excavation involved. It was recycling, not garbage.” Alan Schwartz shoved an entire mini-taco into his maxi-mouth.
Wes said, “How come you didn’t just go online for your porn?”
Alan Schwartz scrunched up his face and swallowed. “My dad put all this spy crap on my computer after he got that one bill.”
Alan Hurd laughed. “Sex is way better in the flesh.”
“In your dreams,” said Alan Schwartz.
They both looked at Wes, as if he could render judgment.
Wes said, “I broke up with Izzy.”
Alan Schwartz inserted a second mini-taco into his mouth and said, as he chewed, “Are you out of your freaking mind?”
Fortunately, June had just one class — and lunch period — with Naomi Liddell. After lunch was trigonometry. She’d signed up for that because she already knew trig from her last school, so she could count on at least one easy A. She sat on the window side toward the back to get a look at the other students. Mostly boys. Mostly disappointing.
June knew that she would probably be moving to some other school next year, if not before, so she didn’t have a lot of time to establish herself here. The important thing was to find a group of girls she could hang with, and a guy. The two things were related. For example, if she joined the book club — there was always a book club — and hung out with them, her choice of guys would be limited to the dark and moody Chuck Palahniuk/Kurt Vonnegut/ Life-Sucks-and-Then-You-Die brooders. If she took up with the high-fashion crowd, she’d end up with some guy with a thumb ring, always playing with his hair and agonizing over the length of his jeans. And if she tried out for cheerleader like she’d done at the school before last, she’d end up going to prom with some jock. Which was not necessarily bad, but she didn’t want to spend every Friday night in October sitting on cold aluminum bleachers watching boys channel their inner Neanderthals.
What she hoped for was a guy who was reasonably intelligent but not too geeky or obsessive. A guy who smelled okay and had a sense of humor. In short, somebody she could have fun with, but not miss too much when her folks pulled up stakes and moved her to Butthole, Missouri, or Armpit, Tennessee. She considered joining the drama club. Naturally, the male wannabe actors would all be gay, ADD, clinically insane, or all three, but she might hook up with someone on the stage crew. She’d once had a boyfriend who did lighting, and he’d been okay if you didn’t mind the nail biting and the nervous laughter. At least he’d known how to fix stuff.
As June was having these thoughts, another part of herself looked on with arms crossed and a knowing smile.
So you’re just a boy shopper looking for a love stud
, said Sarcastic June.
There were several alternate Junes: Sarcastic June, Scornful June, Guilty June, and Fearful June. She also had Pragmatic June, who could say,
I did not choose to be here. I just want to have some fun, and get through the day, and move on.
You have no true feelings
, said Scornful June.
You are hollow inside.
“I do too feel,” June whispered.
Like you would even know what real feelings are
, said Sarcastic June.
June feared that Sarcastic June was right. Her feelings lacked depth. She knew that some people experienced feelings of such power and intensity that they could do anything — climb a mountain, commit hara-kiri, sacrifice a loved one — anything. June could not imagine herself doing anything like that. Her emotions lay upon her like a thin, moist film, easily evaporated, never present in quantity.
You’re a robot
, said Scornful June.
You go through the motions without caring about why.
There is no why,
said Pragmatic June.
Like you would know,
said Sarcastic June.
“I have no soul,” said June.