The Big Crunch (17 page)

She didn’t. But she said yes.

Over the next half hour, June learned a great deal about Kel Smith. He was a senior, he was Hills High’s official audio geek, he drove a twenty-year-old Audi, he had a tattoo of a panther on his
lower back, or so he claimed, and he liked about twenty bands she’d never heard of. He never asked anything about her — it was all about Kel, and Kel’s plans. Typical guy. He said he planned to spend a year traveling after he graduated, then go to film school at USC to be a director. His best friend was playing bass guitar with Rumfuddle, the next band up.

“You’ll like ‘em,” he said. “They’re way better than these guys.”

“Wrathkill?”

“Wrathskell. Rumfuddle’s better. You want to dance?”

“Sure.”

Kel’s idea of dancing involved a lot of elbows flying and fists pumping, and he had one move that looked like he was trying to shake a tarantula out of his pant leg. Still, he was about a thousand times cooler than anybody she had ever expected to meet in Omaha, Nebraska.

As the dance floor got rowdier and more crowded, June and Kel became separated. June made it to the periphery without getting stepped on or elbowed. She spotted the Three Ts at a table up on the balcony level. She climbed up the spiral staircase and joined them.

“Was that Kel Smith you were with?” Trish asked.

June nodded, wondering what they would think of that.

“He’s cool,” Trish said.

“Kind of dangerous to dance with, though,” June said.

Tabitha announced their plans to stay for the over-twenty-one show.

“You’re going to hide in the restroom?” June said.

“Better,” said Tabitha. “A couple of the Rumfuddle guys said they could get us into the band room.”

“Where’s that?”

“Behind the stage, down in the basement. We can wait there until after ten. Then come out and drink Champagne Blue. You in?”

“I don’t know … I told my parents I’d be home by eleven.”

“How will you get home?” Tabitha asked. They had come in her car.

June shrugged. “Maybe Kel can give me a ride.”

After Wrathskell’s set was over, she found Kel at the downstairs bar talking to some guys she didn’t know.

“Thought I’d lost you,” he said. “What’s up?”

They talked for a few minutes, Kel telling her about people and bands she didn’t know, and about a cool secondhand clothing store down by the Old Market. Rumfuddle replaced Wrathskell on the stage and launched a thumping, hypnotic beat, all drums and bass. Kel wanted to dance, but June told him she had a blister. He seemed to believe her.

“My friends are staying after hours,” June said. “I was wondering if you could give me a ride home later? After the set?”

“Sure, no problem.” He seemed distracted, looking out across the club. “Hey, there’s Tony.” He walked off. June wasn’t sure if she was supposed to follow him or not, so she stayed put. After a few minutes of standing all by herself, she went back upstairs. The Ts were gone.

She did not love Rumfuddle’s music. The beat was cool, but the lead singer had a whiny, high-pitched voice, and all of
their songs were about misery and death. Kel had disappeared completely.

As ten o’clock approached, June began to get worried. She moved through the club, looking for a familiar face. There were a few kids she recognized from school, but she didn’t know them well enough to beg a ride.

At five minutes to ten, the lights came up, Rumfuddle ended their set, and the underage crowd migrated toward the exit. June searched the crowd frantically. The Ts were nowhere in sight, and neither was Kel. She considered heading outside, trusting to luck to find a ride. She thought of herself standing pathetically alone on the littered sidewalk in that crappy neighborhood.

With the club ninety percent empty, June headed for the restroom.

June had told Wes about the Three Ts, but he had no idea what “blue champagne” might be. A drink? A fabric color? A band? No idea. He laid back on his bed with his fingers laced behind his head, closed his eyes, and took The Plan through myriad variations: commercial airliner, hot air balloon, hitchhiking, hop a train, ride his bike, teleport….He ran through dozens of scenarios of what would happen once he got there, and soon was caught up again in trying to construct a perfect image of June’s face….

The bedroom light flashed off and on. Wes opened his eyes and realized he had fallen asleep. His mother, wearing her terry cloth robe, was looking in at him.

“Are you going to sleep in your clothes?” she asked.

He sat up and shook his head.

“Good night, then,” his mom said. She closed his door.

Wes changed into the gym shorts and T-shirt that served him for pajamas, brushed his teeth, and returned to bed. He sent a quick text to June, set his cell to vibrate, and balanced it on his chest so it would wake him if he fell asleep. He turned out the bedside lamp, closed his eyes, and waited.

At two minutes after ten, the restroom door opened. A man’s voice called out, “Anybody in here?”

June, in the last stall, pulled her feet up so they couldn’t be seen under the stall door. She held her breath, felt her pounding heart. The man went down the row of stalls, banging the doors open. He reached the last stall and banged his hand against the door.

“C’mon out, honey. Party’s over.”

June put her feet down and opened the stall door. A beefy, balding man wearing a polo shirt with D
ROOD
written on the right side of the chest and M
ANNY
on the left was standing there scowling at her.

“Every month, the same thing,” he said. “You kids must think we’re a bunch of idiots.”

“Sorry,” said June. Her face felt hot with embarrassment.

The man grabbed her arm, marched her out of the restroom, across the club, and out the door.

“Don’t come back next month,” he said. “I’ve had it.” He went back inside.

June was not alone on the sidewalk. A dozen or so other underage kids were standing there looking at her with varied expressions: scorn, pity, amusement, disdain — just like all the Junes in her
head. One guy had something sticking out the side of one nostril. It looked like the wishbone from a turkey.

June said, “Uh, anybody going up by Hills?”

Nobody was. June walked a few yards down the sidewalk and leaned against the cinder block wall, considering her options. She could take a cab, but she’d have to ask her parents for money when she got home, and that would mean a lecture, and they would never let her go out with the Ts again. She could walk, but that would take hours, and her shoes were already killing her. She could just wait for the Ts to come out, but they’d probably be drunk on blue champagne. Some of the people hanging outside the club looked iffy, especially the guy with the bone through his nose.

She took out her cell and was calling for a cab when she heard Tabitha’s voice.

“Like we’d ever
want
to come back to your lame club!” Tabitha, Tara, and Trish were facing the bouncer, Manny.

“My ID says I’m twenty-one.” Trish waved her fake license in his face.

“I don’t care what it says, shorty,” said Manny. “You’re out of here.”

The Three Ts set off haughtily down the sidewalk. June yelled, “Hey!”

Tabitha turned back and said, “Oh my God, June! We were so
worried
about you.”

“Yeah, right,” said June.

“That guy was a total jerk,” Tara said.

“I guess it’s his job,” June said.

“He didn’t have to be so mean about it,” said Tabitha. “Creep. He touched my boob when he grabbed me. I should report him.”

“What about Kel?” June asked.

“Him?” Tabitha sneered. “He left at ten.”

S
OMEONE WAS FIRING A VIBRATOR RAY
into his sternum. Wes clutched at his chest and opened his eyes. It was dark. He was in bed, holding a vibrating, glowing cell phone.

“Hello?” His voice came out muddy with sleep.

“I’m mad at you.”

“June?” He sat up, fumbling for the light.

“Who else?”

“Wait … what?” He could hear her breathing. “Are you okay?”

“No thanks to you!”

“I don’t … start over. What?” He needed time to wake up. “Where are you?”

“In freaking
Omaha
! Where do you
think
?”

Wes cleared his throat. “Uh, what’s going on?” He looked at his clock: 12:04.

“What do you care? You’re in stupid Minnesota.”

Stupid Minnesota?
Wes tried to come up with something to say, but not quickly enough.

“I don’t know why I bothered to call,” June said. “You’re obviously, like, half asleep.”

“I’m not asleep.”

“Good for you.”

Wes’s grogginess was turning to irritation.

“Look,” he said, some edge to his voice, “why don’t you just tell me what’s going on.”

“I was at this club,” she said. “The Drood?”

Like he was supposed to know what she was talking about.

“Yeah?”

“I was with this guy.”

“What guy?” he said quickly.

“It doesn’t matter. Just a guy. His name is Kel.”

Wes’s heart started doing this thrum-thrum-thrum thing. His stomach felt as if it was melting and flowing into his bowels. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

June said, “We were dancing, and he was supposed to give me a ride home, but he just took off and left me there, and you weren’t anywhere, and stupid Tabitha and them were trying to drink blue champagne and this guy grabbed me in the bathroom and dragged me outside and just left me and it just really, really sucked. I could’ve got robbed or raped or something and you’re all the way in stupid Minnesota and … and I
hate
you.”

Her words were claws; Wes felt as if he’d been shredded. Part of him was listening, hearing her words, interpreting them, filing them in his memory, while another part wanted to throw himself through the phone line, to pop out of her cell like a genie from a bottle and hold her tight until everything was okay again. Still another piece of him wanted to slap her, to make her stop. And, from deep in the most ancient part of his brain came a powerful desire to beat this guy Kel to death with the thigh bone of an antelope.

And then there was the part of him that was in charge of his mouth.

“Why were you dancing with that guy?” he asked.

It took her a few seconds to reply.

“Because he was there,” she said. “And you weren’t.”

June knew she was being completely unreasonable and illogical and ridiculous. She knew she would regret everything she said, and that she was hurting Wes with her words as surely as if she were stabbing him with a knife. She
wanted
to hurt him, to make him feel what she was feeling. Why else would she have mentioned Kel? Why else yell at Wes for something he had nothing to do with?

Wes wasn’t saying anything.

“Are you there?” She heard the scrape of the phone against his cheek, then the softest of clicks, a hollow sound that was not a sound, and she was alone.

From one surviving corner of his mind — a tiny citadel that had managed to withstand the onslaught — Wes observed himself lying rigid on his bed in the dark and wondered if he would ever move again. He knew what was happening, but he could not make it stop. Anger, pain, and helplessness combined to paralytic effect.

The body will survive
, he told himself.
I will be okay
.

Or maybe not. He focused on one body part: the index finger of his right hand, and tried to move it. The finger twitched. He made an effort to expand his rib cage, to draw air into his lungs, with only partial success.

What had just
happened
? He couldn’t think about it, but he couldn’t think about anything else, either. The thought of June
with some guy, dancing, was unbearable, but he kept going back to that image, touching it to feel the pain.

Sleep? He would never sleep again.

After a time, he was able to turn his head to the side. The clock read 12:23. Less than twenty minutes had passed since June’s call, yet it felt like hours. Daylight was still six hours away. How was he supposed to get through this night? Did he even
want
to make it to dawn? Spontaneous Human Combustion — that was the answer. He willed himself to burst into flames. He felt a spot of warmth in the vicinity of his liver, but it didn’t last. That was the problem with SHC. It never happened when you needed it most. He forced the coherent part of his brain to think about other things. School. Eating apples. The garage floor, all stained and gritty from winter. Now that it was spring, his mom could park her car outside again. His breathing slowed and became deeper. He had to do something,
now.

Something completely insane.

June had cried a normal amount when she was a kid. Cried because she skinned her knee, cried because of a sandbox fight with another child, cried because her tummy hurt, cried because she didn’t get her way — the list of reasons to cry was long.

She no longer cried about those things. One day when she was twelve she had burned her hand while making French toast. That had hurt as much as anything had ever hurt her, but instead of crying she simply bit her lip and ran cold water over it until the pain became bearable, thinking, at the time,
I didn’t cry!
It made her feel grown up and brave, and after that she cried less often, and when she did cry it was about different things — often things that made
no sense. Like watching a really stupid movie. Or reading something in a book. Or sometimes it was about nothing at all, just a vast empty feeling that could only be soothed by a solitary bout of tears and snuff ling.

That was different too. A little kid crying demanded an audience. Grown-up crying was best done alone.

Why was she crying now? Was it the empty feeling? No, it was more a feeling of helplessness, powerlessness, knowing what she wanted and needed but having no way to get it.