The Big Crunch (12 page)

June was sitting on the porch swing with Jerry sprawled across her lap. June looked up at Wes and did this thing with her mouth and eyes. He understood that she was telling him to be cool. A second later he realized that Jerry was sobbing.

“T
HERE’S NO WAY HE CAN GO HOME LIKE THIS.”
Wes had grabbed Alan from the kitchen and pulled him out onto the screen porch, where Jerry was now on his hands and knees, puking, with June standing over him helplessly.

Alan was nearly as drunk as Jerry. He said, “Wow. It’s freezing out here,” as if he had completely forgotten it was winter.

Wes said, “Listen, Alan, you’ve got to let him stay here tonight.”

Alan was looking through the glass doors into the kitchen, where Calvin Warner was pouring beer directly from the tap into his mouth; half of it was running over his chin and dribbling onto the floor.

“My mom’s gonna kill me,” he said in a moment of sober realization.

“When does she get back?”

“Two days.”

“You’ll be fine,” Wes said.

Jerry unleashed another cascade of lime-green vomit.

Alan looked at him and grimaced. “You think he’s empty yet?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Wes said. “Here, I got his car keys. Don’t let him drive.”

“Whatever,” Alan said, taking the keys.

June was bending over Jerry, saying something in a low voice, then helping him stand up.

Jerry looked blearily from Wes to Alan, his cheeks wet with tears and his chin wet with something else. “I’m really sorry, man.” He threw one arm over June’s shoulder, lurched toward Wes, and captured him with the other arm. “I love you guys. You guys are the best. I know you’re gonna be, like, the happiest couple on the whole damned planet. I’m happy for you, really … I … I … uh-oh.” He bent forward and threw up on Wes’s feet.

Alan said Jerry could crash on the fold-out sofa in the basement, but at the moment it was in use by the Jell-O shot-powered hip-hop contingent. June and Wes propped Jerry in an unoccupied corner.

“You guys, you guys are the best,” he kept saying. “I love you guys.”

It was embarrassing.

June whispered in Wes’s ear, “If I don’t get out of here in about ten seconds, I’m going to start throwing up myself.”

“Me too,” said Wes.

They found their shoes by the front door. Wes put his sneakers on his bare feet — he’d thrown his vomit-soaked socks in the trash — and they walked out of the house into the snow.

“Wow,” said June.

The flakes dropping from the sky were enormous — each one was a clump of individual flakes.

“Listen,” said June. “You can hear them hit.”

Wes listened. Even with the deep bass emanating from the house, they could hear the clumps of flakes landing —
chuff, chuff,
chuff
— the softest, quietest sound imaginable, multiplied tens of thousands —
millions
— of times.

“Let’s walk,” June said.

Being outside in the snow made June feel clean again, as if the party had been nothing more than a bad dream. She held on to Wes’s arm and they walked slowly down the sidewalk, kicking through snow so light and fluffy that walking through it felt effortless. They didn’t talk. It felt exotic and daring, the not talking. Especially after what had happened with Jerry, the blubbering and vomiting and everything. How could they not talk about it? But she felt no desire to revisit the events of the party. There was no need. It was like her dad always said:
Next!
It was enough to be walking side by side with Wes, holding his arm and bumping shoulders, snowflakes gently landing on their faces, sometimes perching on her eyelashes for a moment before being blinked off. She imagined stopping and piling the snow into a huge mound, then tunneling into it and huddling together in their igloo, pressing their bodies together for warmth.

“I love snow,” she said, and it was true — although until that moment, she had always hated it. “I could walk like this all night.”

Wes didn’t say anything for a few steps, then he said, “All night?”

“Well, for a long time anyway.”

“Uh … me too … except my feet are kind of cold.”

“Oh!” June said, stopping. “I forgot. No socks!”

They ran the five blocks back to the car, slipping several times, but never quite falling. Once they got inside, the windows fogged
up in an instant. Wes started the engine and waited for it to warm up.

June said, “I’m sorry I forgot about your feet.”

“You’re sorry you forgot about my feet?”

It was the funniest thing either of them had ever heard; they laughed so hard the windows got foggier, even with the defroster blasting. After they stopped laughing, June said, “Take your shoes off and give me your feet.”

“Really?”

“Come on.”

Wes toed off his wet sneakers and twisted awkwardly in the driver’s seat to put his bare feet on her lap.

“Ew, they’re all wet!” June used her mittens to dry his feet, then rubbed them with her hands.

“Your hands are hot,” Wes said.

“I can’t believe you walked all that way with no socks.”

“It wasn’t that cold, at least at first.”

“You have nice feet.”

“Nice, stinky feet?”

“They don’t stink.” She sniffed his toes, then laughed. “I mean, I’ve smelled worse.”

They sat there without talking for a while as the car warmed up, June idly running her hands over his feet.

“Your middle name isn’t really August, is it?”

“It’s John. Totally boring.”

“You know how I got my little scar?”

“Grizzly bear attack, right?”

“I was five. You know how moms are always yelling at you to not run with scissors? I was running with scissors. So cliché.”

“Not cliché. Classic.”

“Like your middle name.”

They sat listening to the defroster.

Wes said, “What if nothing ever had to be different?”

“Like what?”

“Like we could just sit here forever. Take turns giving each other foot rubs. We’re connected now, you know. Invisible threads.”

June nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. “I think we were connected a long time ago,” she said.

Wes thought back to the time they had met walking home. She was right; he had felt it even then. He said, “Do you think, like, years from now, it’ll still be there?”

“The connection?”

“The connection.”

June considered, then said, “I don’t know.” She really didn’t.

“Maybe it’s like a radio signal. As long as one of us is sending, we’re connected.”

“What about when we’re asleep?”

“We connect through our dreams. Like we could be a thousand miles apart and I’d still know you were there.”

June felt her heart lurch, and for a moment she imagined it — a thousand miles between them. All too real.

She said, “We could just stay here, like you said.”

“We might get hungry.”

“We could order a pizza.”

“Do they deliver pizzas to cars?”

“Why not?”

They talked about living in a car, and other things, as the windows slowly cleared.

“Look,” June said.

Wes turned his head to look out the windshield. A police car, lights flashing, had stopped in front of the party house.

“Right on schedule,” Wes said.

W
ES LOVED DRIVING IN THE SNOW,
at night, hardly any traffic, the tires squeaking softly, sliding just a little on the turns, big clumps of flakes flattening on the windshield for a moment before being swept aside by the wiper blades. They drove randomly through the neighborhoods, not talking much. Many of the houses still had their holiday lights burning.

“We’re inside a snow globe,” June said.

And that was what it felt like.

“You know what we need?” June asked.

At that moment, there was nothing Wes wanted more than to be driving in the snow with June by his side.

“Hot chocolate,” June said, answering her own question.

Hot chocolate, to Wes, meant stirring instant cocoa into a mug of milk and heating it up in the microwave. June had something more elaborate in mind.

Standing in the kitchen, he remembered the day they’d bonked heads at the SA, the first day they’d kissed. Now, watching June, he could feel that same energy, that same force that had brought them together that day. Almost as if the air was buzzing.

“You want to get the milk out of the fridge?” she said as she placed two saucepans on the counter.

Wes opened the refrigerator and found a carton of milk. Whole milk, not skim milk like his mom always bought.

June was peeling the wrapping off an enormous bar of chocolate with some foreign name. She could feel Wes’s eyes on her as she broke off a chunk and began chopping it to bits with a knife.

“You want to put a little water in the small pan?”

“How much?” Wes asked.

“Just a splash,” she said. Wes was sure she could tell by the way he handled the saucepan that he wasn’t used to cooking. “Put it on the stove and turn the burner to low.”

Wes did so, then awaited further instructions. She told him to measure two cups of milk into the other pan. As he did that, she brought the cutting board to the stove and scraped the chopped chocolate into the pan with the water.

“I need a whisk,” she said. “Top drawer, left of the sink.”

Wes opened the drawer. “What’s a whisk?” he asked.

June laughed. “A wire thing, like for stirring.”

Wes sorted through the various kitchen tools and came up with something that looked sort of whisklike.

“That’s it,” June said.

As he handed her the whisk their fingers touched, and he realized that it was the first time they’d touched since she had rubbed his feet in the car. Again, he felt the force pushing him toward her, but he resisted. For the moment, thinking about it was enough.

“What next?” he asked.

“Put the milk on the stove.”

Wes was beginning to feel more comfortable — he hadn’t screwed up or broken anything yet. He loved the way June moved,
the way she was intently whisking the chocolate, like it was the most important thing in the universe.

“You have to keep stirring,” she said. “You want to pick out a couple of mugs? The cabinet next to the fridge.”

This is like a dance,
Wes thought as he moved past her to get the mugs, almost but not quite touching. She stopped whisking for a moment to turn up the heat under the milk, then went back to stirring.

“All these mugs have the names of companies on them,” Wes said.

“Places my dad’s worked. My arm’s getting tired. Can you stir for a while?”

Wes took over the whisking.

“Just keep it moving,” June said. “I’ll get the whipped cream.”

It was awkward at first, but he quickly got the hang of it and kept whisking the melting chocolate as June added dollops of warm milk. He loved that they were doing something together — not just being together, but having a goal, even if the goal was hot chocolate.

“I like the way you whisk,” June said, and he felt it all up and down his spine.

They sipped their hot chocolate on the sofa in front of the flickering gas fireplace, talking about things. Later, thinking about that night, Wes could not remember what they had talked about. He did remember that when he took his first sip he got whipped cream on the tip of his nose, and June had laughed, then wiped the glob of cream off with the tip of her index finger and put it in her mouth. And he remembered the clock on the wall chiming midnight.

“It’s here,” June said.

Their New Year’s kiss was soft as snowflakes colliding. Their lips came together lightly, and they stayed that way for so long — nothing touching but their lips — that June thought she might pass out. And then they drew apart and looked into each other’s eyes, and it was magic.

Wes and June were sitting on the sofa in the living room, Wes’s arm resting lightly across her shoulders, their feet propped on the coffee table — he was wearing a pair of Mr. Edberg’s argyle socks, her feet were bare — when they heard her parents’ car pull into the garage. Wes took his arm back and sat up straight as Mr. and Mrs. Edberg walked in the door.

Mr. Edberg saw them sitting there. He didn’t say anything at first. Wes had no idea what to expect.

After a moment, Mr. Edberg said, “Happy New Year,” and tried for a smile, but gave it up. Both of them looked dead tired.

“Happy New Year,” said both Wes and June.

“I like your socks,” June’s father said.

“Thank you, sir,” said Wes.

“Not going to call me El?”

“That would feel too weird, sir.” Wes wasn’t trying to be sarcastic; it was the simple truth.

Mr. Edberg took a moment to process that, then nodded.

“I understand,” he said.

“Time to say good night to Wesley, dear,” Mrs. Edberg said to June.

Mr. Edberg held up a hand. “Just because we’re old and need our beauty rest doesn’t mean these youngsters can’t keep celebrating,”
he said to his wife. “It’s the New Year, after all.” Looking at June, he added, “Just don’t break into the liquor cabinet or play any loud music, okay?”

June nodded.

A minute later, they were alone again. Wes and June stared at each other.

“That was freaky weird,” June said.

I
N THE MORNING
, J
UNE OPENED HER EYES
feeling as if she had awakened into a new world. She looked at her clock. It was almost ten. She sat up and stretched, then went to her window and looked outside.

Fairyland. The snow had formed improbably tall caps on fence posts, birdhouses, mailboxes, and trash cans. Every twig on every tree supported a ridge of sparkling snow. The world had turned pure and white and clean.

June thought it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Then her mother came into her room and sat down on her bed with this awful frozen expression on her face.

Paula had gotten a new board game for Christmas. Wes had refused to play it with her, and she’d gotten really mad at him. She started doing things like not telling him about his phone messages, informing on him for every infraction of household rules, and refusing to help him fold his laundry, a task she had once undertaken with great pride. Wes, in a self-involved fog, had hardly noticed he was being dissed by his little sister, which made her even madder.