The Big Crunch (18 page)

She wanted Wes. And she couldn’t have him.

It was that simple.

12:42

12:43

12:44

Wes opened the garage door as slowly and quietly as he could, so as not to waken his parents. He put his mom’s Toyota in neutral and positioned himself between the front of the car and the workbench at the back of the garage. He put his back against the bench and his feet on the car bumper and pushed. The car slowly moved toward the open door. He pushed harder. The back tires rolled over the lip of the garage onto the sloped driveway. Wes fell to the floor. He jumped up and ran after the car as it picked up speed, yanked open the driver’s side door, jumped in, and hit the brake, stopping the car just before it rolled onto the street. He put the car in park and walked back into the garage.

Two hours later, Wes heard a sound and looked up to see his father standing in the open garage door wearing powder blue pajamas and his Sorels, holding a baseball bat in both hands.

“Wes, what the hell?” his dad said.

Wes said, “I couldn’t sleep.” He dunked the mop in the bucket of soapy water and wrung it out.

“You’re cleaning the garage at three o’clock in the morning?”

“I’m almost done.” Wes looked around the garage, at the clean
floor, the orderly tool bench, the neatly arranged shelves. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“You scared me half to death! I thought we were being robbed!”

“Sorry.”

His mother’s voice came from the house. “Frank? Is everything all right?”

“We’re fine,” Wes’s dad said, raising his voice slightly. “It’s your obsessive-compulsive neat-freak son!”

A few seconds later, Wes’s mom came shuffling out to the garage in her bathrobe and slippers. “What on earth? Wes? What happened here?”

Wes sighed. “I just couldn’t stand it,” he said.

The three
A.M.
garage incident was not mentioned the next day, although his mom kept giving him worried looks. That afternoon, Wes went downstairs to the laundry room and folded all the clean clothes and linens that had been piling up in the hamper next to the dryer. His mom came down to see what he was doing.

“I’m trying to help out more,” he told her.

“That’s nice,” she said, giving him another worried look.

Wes finished folding, then went to his room and called Alan Hurd.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Can I come over?”

“Bring food,” Alan said.

Alan Hurd shoved a handful of chips into his mouth and chewed, slowly and deliberately. Wes waited, knowing that to rush Alan at that point would only make him say no.

Alan swallowed, never taking his eyes off Wes.

“No,” he said, reaching back into the bag for another handful of chips.

“Why not?”

“Because my parents won’t let me drive it till school’s out.” Spitting potato chip fragments.

“Look, it’s just sitting out behind your garage. It’s not good to let a car sit for that long.”

“My dad would kill me.”

“He won’t even notice it’s gone. You can’t see it from the house.”

“It’s not insured.”

“I’ll be careful.” Wes could see he wasn’t getting anywhere. “And I’ll owe you forever. This is really important to me. Seriously.”

“I didn’t even know you were still talking to her,” Alan said.

“I didn’t want to tell anybody.”

“Not even me?” Alan said, looking peeved.

“Not even anybody. I just — I didn’t want you guys to think I was pathetic.”

“You
are
pathetic. Secret long-distance girlfriend? That’s as bad as Schwartz and his used
Penthouse
.”

“It would just be for a couple days.”

Alan sat back in his seat, refilled his mouth with chips, washed them down with a glug of orange soda, belched loudly.

“No,” he said. He was enjoying this. The begging.

“I’ll bring it back with a full tank. I’ll pay you. I’ll, like, rent it.”

Alan considered.

“How much?” he said.

Wes called June that night and they talked, but neither of them brought up June’s midnight phone call from the night before. They talked about music, people, TV shows, whether it would be better to live on a tropical island or on top of a mountain, Nebraska hamburgers versus Minnesota burgers — they never had trouble finding things to talk about. But they didn’t talk about the Drood, or Kel, or how Wes had hung up on her. It was there, a dark scary cloud, but neither of them wanted to bring it up.

Monday after school, Wes washed his mom’s car. After dinner, he called the other Alan, Alan Schwartz, and asked him to host a forty-eight-hour poker game the coming weekend.

“I don’t think so,” said Alan. “My mom barely tolerates the Saturday afternoon game.”

“She won’t have to know,” Wes said.

“Oh, she’d know. My mom’s practically telepathic, especially with six or seven of us in her basement.”

“It’ll be an
imaginary
game,” Wes said.

Alan said, “Explain.”

Later, just before dinner, Wes mentioned the big game to his mom.

She said, “Forty-eight
hours
? Good Lord, Wes! Mrs. Schwartz is okay with that?”

“Sure. We never leave the basement. It’s self-contained. She’ll hardly know we’re there.”

“Seven teenage boys in her basement? She’ll know you’re there, all right.”

“She likes it. She says she’d just as soon know where her son is all weekend.”

“What about sleeping? How will you sleep?”

“No sleep,” Wes said. “That’s the idea. It’s like an endurance contest.”

“How much money do you boys play for, anyway?”

“Just nickels and dimes,” Wes said. He was surprised by how easily the lies came out of his mouth. “I’ll be a couple miles away. And you can call me on my cell anytime.”

She frowned, not liking it. “When will you be home?”

“Forty-eight hours, like I said. Four o’clock Friday to four o’clock Sunday.”

Her frown eased somewhat. “Let me talk to your father when he gets home from work.”

The next morning, before leaving for school, Wes washed the breakfast dishes. His mother, sipping her coffee, watched him suspiciously.

“Wes, you are scaring me,” she said.

“Why?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

It was simple. He was building up points. Because there was a good chance that something would go wrong, that his parents would find out what he was doing, that everything would go wrong. So for the next few days, he would be the best, most responsible son anyone could possibly want.

Just in case.

T
HEY WERE TALKING ON THE PHONE
— never mind that it was costing her twenty-five cents a minute — and June was telling Wes about Trish getting in trouble, when she heard beeping.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Um … I’m playing this game?”

“You’re playing a computer game while I’m talking to you?”

“I’m listening!” Wes said. “You were telling me about Trish, uh, writing something on the school wall —”

“She wrote it on Tabitha’s
locker
!”

“That’s what I meant.”

“And she got caught.”

“Oh yeah?”
Beep.

She hung up.

He called back five seconds later.

“Sorry,” he said when she picked up. “I turned it off.”

“I should feel honored?”

“June …”

“At least you got my name right.”

“I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Okay, sure. Hang on a sec while I boot up
World of Warcraft.
” She didn’t actually have
World of Warcraft,
but it was the only game she could think of.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

She disconnected.

What was happening? Why was she so mad at him all the time? And why was he playing a computer game instead of listening to her?

Her phone went
bee-boop,
the incoming text message sound. She glared at the phone, then picked it up.

June puzzled over the message. What was she
up to
Friday night? Why would he care? It was none of his business. Or maybe he was thinking about her and just asking, in a good way, not in a suspicious, nosy way. Was he jealous? If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was jealousy. She’d had a jealous boyfriend once. It was creepy.

What was
happening?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

The next morning, June woke up, brushed her teeth, and was halfway dressed before she even thought about Wes. When she did, it was as if a six-hundred-pound
thing
had settled onto her shoulders. She let out a little squeak, not quite a scream, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Junie? Are you all right?”

“I’m
fine
,” she yelled down the stairs to her mom. “It’s
nothing.
”

She finished dressing, then checked her cell for new messages. There weren’t any. She turned off the phone and put it in her top
dresser drawer and went down to the kitchen, where her mom was making oatmeal, part of her new healthy eating routine. June poured herself half a cup of coffee, filled it to the top with milk, added a spoonful of honey, and gave it thirty seconds in the microwave.

“Usually when people scream,” her mother said, “it’s
something.”

“I thought I saw a mouse,” June said.

“In your bedroom?”

“It was a crazed dust bunny.”

“Time to sweep under your bed.”

June shrugged.

“How’s Wes?”

June did not reply.

“Since you seem determined to stay in contact with the boy, I should at least get the occasional progress report.”

“He plays computer games while we’re talking.”

Her mom laughed and put a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. June doctored it with a thick slab of butter and a heaping tablespoon of sugar.

Her mother said, “Sort of defeats the healthy lifestyle initiative.”

“Your
initiative,” June said. “I have no lifestyle.”

“Thursdays suck,” said Tara.

“Wednesdays suck worse,” said Trish. She pushed her half-eaten taco aside. “I was here until almost five yesterday cleaning lockers.”

“You’re right,” Tabitha said. “Yesterday was Wednesday.”

“And besides, it’s not like I defaced fifty lockers. I just wrote on yours.”

“It’s nice and clean now,” Tabitha said. “Thank you.”

“I think it should be illegal to force students to be janitors.”

“What did you write, anyway?” Tara asked.

“Nothing. It was stupid.”

“Something horrible and filthy,” Tabitha said.

Trish flicked a shred of lettuce at Tabitha.

“Hey!”

“It was a poem about the rude Drood,” Trish said.

“Why didn’t you write it on
your
locker?”

“I was sharing.”

June, who had said nothing all through lunch, followed the conversation the way she might watch a movie in Chinese with no subtitles. It was just about batting sounds back and forth, passing
the time, getting somebody to look at you, to acknowledge your existence. The meanings of the words didn’t matter. If she said something, would any of them actually hear her?

She said, quietly, “I think I might be breaking up with my boyfriend.”

The three Ts looked at her uncomprehendingly for a second, then Tara said, “I hate Mondays most.”

“Every day sucks except Saturday,” said Trish. She forced open the remains of her taco with a fork and picked at the shreds of white cheese.

June said, “He plays on his computer while we’re talking.”

“We should do a poll,” Tabitha said. “Vote on which day of the week is the suckiest.”

When June didn’t reply to either of his last two texts, Wes felt his resolve harden. He wouldn’t call her, or let her know in any way that he was coming. Because what if he did, and she told him not to come? The best thing would be to simply show up.

Friday after school, he stuffed a change of clothes into his backpack and set off for Alan Hurd’s. When he arrived, Mrs. Hurd told him Alan wasn’t home.

“He said for you to meet him at Alan Schwartz’s,” she said.

Wes walked the eight blocks to Alan Schwartz’s. He was surprised to find Robbie and Calvin there, as well as Alan Hurd. They were in the basement setting up the card table.

“I decided your idea wasn’t so unfeasible after all,” Alan Schwartz said.

“Which idea?” Wes asked.

“The forty-eight-hour poker marathon. Why not do it? Worst-case scenario, my mother has a paroxysm and kicks everybody out. It wouldn’t be the first time. You sure you don’t want to play?”

“I just want my parents to
think
I’m playing.”

Alan Hurd handed him a set of car keys. “I started it up last night,” he said. “It runs fine, but keep an eye on the oil. And don’t crash it.”

Alone, heading south on I-35, speedometer steady at seventy miles per hour, a road map and a four-pack of Red Bull for company, Wes felt free. He cranked up the volume on a mix CD he’d burned for June and tried not to think about what he would do when he got there.

What he would say.

What she would say.

W
ES HAD BEEN THINKING OF
O
MAHA
as a small town plunked down in the middle of a wheat field that covered the entire state of Nebraska. It wasn’t like that at all. Omaha was huge, hilly, and horrendously complicated. He arrived at the city limits at ten fifteen; it was after eleven by the time he found June’s house. He sat in his car looking at it — a large, two-story, brick-front house with a horseshoe driveway — hardly believing that he was really there, that only seven hours ago he had been in Minnesota, that June was behind those walls.

Only one light on. One of the upstairs rooms. He got out of the car and called her on his cell.