The Big Crunch (10 page)

The thought of being vaporized calmed him. His breathing eased, and he could feel his heart slowing. Fish Girl. Maple syrup girl. Girl with the black eye — and blue eyes, two different
blues. He didn’t even
know
her, not really. For all he knew, she might be a drug addict, a toenail biter, a polka music fan. He was sure that if he got to know her better, there would be
something,
because there always was — like with Izzy, there had been lots of things.

For the next few blocks, he thought of all the things that had been wrong with Izzy. Her embarrassing laugh. Her obsessive gum chewing. Calling him goofy names that made no sense, like Winky and Weebles. Always making him explain why he did things. None of that was why he’d broken up with her — no, that had been more about making space for himself because he was suffocating. And now there was Aqua Fish Spider Girl stirring up feelings that his time with Izzy had only hinted at. He had never been in love with Izzy. It had never been as if he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Was that the test? The true test of love? What
was
the test? Would he have taken a bullet for Izzy? Maybe. But not because he couldn’t live without her, but because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself. That wasn’t love. He didn’t know what love was, not really. But he was sure that what happened inside him when he was around June was something he’d never felt before.

June sat in the car for a long time thinking. She did not need another head case in her life, and Wes … clearly, there was something wrong with him. She’d noticed that before with other guys. The really intense ones — the ones that were interesting — were all unstable. But she’d never met one quite like Wes, who seemed
so ordinary from a distance, but then when you got closer, it was like he was burning up inside, and that made her feel as if she was burning up inside too, and she didn’t need that. She really didn’t need it.

Later, at home, she called Jerry back and talked to him for almost an hour. He made her laugh, and he had his own intensity. It was all about politics, but it was intense. A more comfortable, less invasive brand of intensity.

They made plans to go out Saturday night. June decided it would be okay for Jerry to see her with her black eye. It wasn’t all that black anymore. More grayish yellow. But it was okay because he believed her story about hitting the doorknob with her face. Besides, Jerry did not look at her the way Wes did. When Wes looked at her she knew — she
knew
— that he was absorbing every detail. With Jerry it was more like he was seeing the
idea
of her. She could leave out one of her contacts and he would never notice. Wes had noticed right away. Those eyes of his. So hungry.

She thought she understood why he had run, but she couldn’t put it into words. He ran because he had to, and —

“June?”

For half a second, June didn’t know where she was. Then her bedroom came into focus and she realized that the voice had come from the phone pressed against her ear.

“Jerry,” she said.

“I thought we got disconnected,” he said.

“Sorry. I was just thinking about something.”

“What?”

“Just stuff. What do you want to do tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. A movie?”

“That would be nice.” It would be easy. They would sit in the dark and watch the movie and not talk or even touch each other. She could do that. With Jerry.

A
FTER A COUPLE HOURS
of laying on the old guilt trip for his violating house arrest, Wes’s mom eased off, and he spent the rest of the weekend in zombie mode. He was so out of it — he’d been out of it for weeks, apparently — he was taken by surprise when his dad came home with a Christmas tree.

“Christmas? Already?”

“Duh-uh!” said Paula. “It’s only like break starts on
Thursday
!” She glared at him, then added, “I got you something really nice,” letting him know he had better reciprocate.

The next day, Wes obtained permission from his jailers to go to the mall. He wandered from store to store for an hour and saw lots of cool stuff that June might have liked, but he had no idea what to get his own little sister. He finally bought her a gift certificate at the bookstore. She liked to read. He would wrap it in a big box so she wouldn’t know what it was. He didn’t find anything for his mom and dad. He knew he wasn’t thinking straight. June’s face kept popping up, and he kept shoving it back, jamming it deep into the folds of his brain, stuffing the cracks with a cerebral version of black cotton fuzz, which he seemed to have in abundance.

By Monday morning, his head was packed with the stuff — the
fuzz
— and he headed for school with a muted sense of dread.

He saw Jerry almost right away.

“Hey,” Wes said.

“Hey,” Jerry replied.

That was pretty much it. First period, June was absent. The day passed. He got piles of makeup work in each of his classes, and lots of ribbing from the two Alans, and Calvin, and Robbie. He didn’t see Izzy except once from a distance. After school he ran into Jerry again outside by the buses.

“Hey,” Wes said.

Jerry nodded and gave him a tight smile.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Wes said.

“ ‘S’all right.” Jerry’s shoulders relaxed.

Wes said, “So, how’s the campaign going?”

“I’m taking a break until after break,” Jerry said.

“Cool. So … how’s June?” His voice did something weird. He hoped Jerry hadn’t heard it.

“She’s okay.” He seemed suddenly eager to talk. “You know, she was sick all last week, but I saw her Saturday. Only she had to leave this morning for San Diego with her parents, some family emergency thing. They’ll be gone over break. I bought her a necklace, but I guess it’ll have to be a New Year’s present instead of for Christmas. She texted me from San Diego. It’s eighty degrees there. You want to see the necklace?”

Wes didn’t, but he said, “Sure.”

Jerry opened his backpack and came out with a small blue satin and felt jewelry box. He opened the box. Inside was a gold chain with a pendant made of two interlocked hearts.

Wes almost said,
Isn’t that kind of corny?
But he caught himself just in time.

“Nice,” he said.

“You think she’ll like it?”

“Sure. Girls like that kind of stuff.”

Jerry beamed pathetically and put the box back in his pack. “You taking the bus today?”

Wes looked at the metal tube filled with kids.

“It’s not that cold,” he said.

Knowing that June was thousands of miles away helped him relax. He did not have to think what to do next, or what not to do. He walked home letting little thoughts — fragments of memory and intention — flicker across the surface of his mind. He thought about how clean he had gotten the garage last fall, and what June would have thought if she had seen it. He thought of a clever thing he might say in language arts, and wondered if she would get it, whether she would laugh. He tried walking perfectly, making each footfall exactly the same. He caught himself smiling, and he realized that he was imagining her watching him with her aqua eyes, and that because she was so far away, he did not have to stop himself from thinking of her.

After the first hour in the air, the land changed from white to brown, a crazy quilt of earth and dead vegetation. When they flew over a city, or a large town, the homes and highways and fallow crops looked to June like an infection, out of control, sending out invasive tentacles in every direction. That was Mr. Reinhardt’s fault, with his petri dishes full of mold and germs, talking about how bacteria “colonize” their medium. She liked
looking at the rivers, those dark, purposeful arteries and veins, always flowing. There was a lake, and another river, and something moving swiftly across the land. A shadow. The shadow of the airplane.

She wondered if Wes had ever been on an airplane. He would like it. Not the part about being stuck in a seat for hours, but the part where places come and go so quickly.

Her parents, sitting in the two seats to her left, were talking about this and that. June heard her dad say something about Omaha, Nebraska. She leaned forward, looked past her mother, and asked, “You’re going to Omaha?”

“I got a call from Omaha-Benford Bank,” he said. “They have an account that’s having some cash-flow problems. The bank’s on the hook for about sixteen million. It’s a nice gig, but things are going so well at Sani-Made, I’m thinking of staying on in Minnesota.”

“The Sani-Made board of directors is talking about making your father CEO,” said her mother. “A permanent position.”

“You mean we wouldn’t have to move again?”

“If I get the job,” her dad said. “I’ll know more next week. It’s not a sure thing, but it’s looking very positive.”

“Good. I don’t think I’d like Omaha.”

“Oh, Junie,” her mother said. “You’ve never even
been
to Omaha!”

“Have you?”

“Well, no.”

Her father said, “The point is, whatever happens, we go forward. ‘There Is No Reverse Gear in Time Machine.’ ”

“Dad! Enough with the one-way time machine already!”

Elton Edberg laughed and said, “Next!”

June sat back and stared out the window and gingerly, cautiously, delicately — as if she was performing surgery or defusing a bomb — allowed herself to think about the future.

C
HRISTMAS CAME AND WENT.
Wes got a sweater he liked, a shirt he hated, and a bunch of other stuff. He hung out with the two Alans a few times, lost more money at poker, went with Paula and his parents to visit various relatives, ate a lot of food, and caught up on the schoolwork he’d missed during his suspension. There were long periods of time when he didn’t think about June at all. It was during one of those periods — one morning a couple of days before school started up again — that his mom called him to the phone. He figured it was Alan Hurd, trying to get him involved in another poker game, but when he picked up the phone, a small voice, very far away, said, “Hi.”

Suddenly, there was no air in the room. Wes hunched over the phone, as if to keep anyone from grabbing it away from him.

“It’s me,” she said.

“Hi,” he said.

Paula, wearing her new Christmas pajamas and eating a bowl of cereal, watched him from the kitchen table. He turned his back to her.

“Happy Almost New Year’s,” June said.

“Happy New Year.”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I just had breakfast.”

“What time is it there?”

“I don’t know. Nine thirty, I guess.”

“It’s seven thirty here.”

“In San Diego.”

“La Jolla, actually. We came here because my aunt was dying. She died three nights ago.”

“Sorry.”

“She had cancer. My dad’s half sister. I never really knew her. The funeral is today.”

“Oh.” His throat felt tight.

“We fly back tomorrow. New Year’s Eve.”

“Oh.” Like trying to breathe through a straw.

“Do you want to do something when I get back?”

“I don’t —” Wes tried to take a breath, but his chest refused to expand. “Okay,” he managed to say.

June laughed. “Don’t sound so eager!”

“Sorry. Um … when?”

“New Year’s Eve?”

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t care.”

“I maybe know about a couple of parties.”

“I guess … look, let’s just talk when I get back, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I gotta get off the phone now.”

“Okay. Bye.” He clicked off, then forced himself to stand up straight and breathe.

Paula was staring at him suspiciously.

“You
were talking to a
girl,”
she said.

Wes glared at her.

Paula said, “You want to know how I know?”

“Not really.” Actually, he did.

“Because you’re acting all weird.”

“I am not.”

“Yes you are. Like your stomach hurts.”

June stared at her phone. She had asked him out. He had said, “Okay.” Was that okay? She would break up with Jerry when she got back. She had broken up with guys before. Besides, Jerry had his political campaign to focus on. They’d had fun, seen some movies, done some other stuff, made out a few times…. It wasn’t like they were engaged or anything; she’d only known him four months. Not even. She could maybe do it over the phone. Would that be okay? Probably not. She had read someplace that the telephone breakup was bad. It would have to wait until she got back.

It wasn’t as if she had a choice. Some things just had to happen, like two trains heading toward each other on the same track. It wasn’t like you could swerve to avoid the collision. It wasn’t like you could stop.

T
HEIR FLIGHT LANDED AT NOON
on New Year’s Eve, just as the snow began to fall. By the time they got home, there was half an inch on the ground. June unpacked and bathed and tried to pick out an outfit for herself, something Wes might like. Not too girly, but something that would leave him no doubt that she was a girl. In the middle of the winter in January, that was nearly impossible. She finally settled on a thick but close-fitting sweater and a pair of jeans that showed off her butt but didn’t make her legs look too skinny.