The Big Crunch (9 page)

Her mom was a major league attributor.

June was not much of an attributor herself. She believed that things just happened, and all you could do was deal with it. Like hitting heads with Wes Andrews, or catching a cold, or moving to a new city.

Her eye would clear up whether she did anything or not.

Her cold would go away.

She would go back to school.

Her parents would pack up and move again.

The universe would contract.

T
HE NEXT DAY IT DIDN
’
T SEEM SO URGENT
that he talk to June. Jerry had probably already told his side of the story — or she had heard it from Phoebe or one of those other girls she hung out with. She would believe it, or she wouldn’t. If she wanted to know what had really happened, she would call him back. And if she didn’t want to know, then he didn’t care what she thought.

Wes spent most of the day reading a book of “great American short stories” for English. He started out with the shortest story in the book, then read the next shortest, and so on. Some of them were pretty good, but a lot of them he didn’t get what the big deal was, especially the ones where in the end the character figures out that life just plain sucks, which Wes could have told them going in. After a while he got sick of reading and started thinking about calling June again. Maybe she was sitting around nursing her cold, bored out of her mind, wishing the phone would ring. Twice he picked up the phone but didn’t get as far as actually punching in her number.

That night, after a long and uncomfortable dinner with his parents, Wes shut himself in his room, got on his computer, and did a search for June Edberg. There were a few June Edbergs, but never the right one. He did find her father’s website:
Elton Edberg
Consultants — Workout and Bankruptcy Specialists.
No mention of June on the website, but there were lots of pictures of her dad, always with that same big, white, sharky smile.

Every hour, like clockwork, June went from her bed to the bathroom to the kitchen — the Bermuda Triangle of staying home sick, from bored to boringer to boringest. Her face looked awful — the bruised area had taken on a greenish cast, and there was a speck of red at the corner of her eye, a ruptured blood vessel. Her entire face hurt when she coughed. She was coughing a lot.

Her mother had declared herself completely recovered and was off doing something businessy. Right about the time he would be getting out of school, Jerry called. She was finally bored enough to welcome his call.

“Hey,” she said, sitting up in bed.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Terminal. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Except I got in a fight with Wes.”

“You did?” June wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “You mean like an argument?”

“No, like he slammed my head against a locker. I had to go to the hospital and get X-rays and stitches.”

“Seriously? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you guys were friends. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s having some kind of mental problems.”

“Wow.”

“He got kicked out for the rest of the week. Are you coming to school tomorrow?”

Tomorrow was too soon. She was hoping she could milk her cold for a few more days to give her eye time to heal. “I don’t think so. You really don’t know why he did that?”

“No. We were just talking — talking about you, actually — and all of a sudden he was calling me names and then he hit me and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the ambulance.”

“You were talking about me?”

“I think so.”

“Oh.”
It wasn’t my fault.
“By the way, just so you know, I have sort of a black eye. I —” June looked around her bedroom. “I got out of bed in the middle of the night and tripped and my face hit the doorknob. So I look like somebody beat me up too.”

Thursday night, June’s mother insisted that June return to school the next day.

“I haven’t heard you cough in hours,” she said.

June knew from the tone in her mother’s voice that it was nonnegotiable, but she tried faking a cough anyway. Her mom laughed.

The next morning, June got up extra early and went to work on her face. After half an hour of experimenting, she got it to the point where no one would be able to tell she had a black eye. Instead, they would think she was going to a Halloween party. She had slathered on so much foundation that her face felt as if it might slide right off her skull. To keep it from cracking, she would
have to avoid smiling, frowning, talking, or eating. Was that even possible?

Her mother was sitting in the breakfast nook with a cup of coffee. She watched wordlessly as June poured a cup of coffee for herself and stirred in four teaspoons of sugar and a glug of cream. June faked a cough, then put a slice of bread in the toaster and stood watching it as she sipped her pale coffee.

Her mother said, “You might do better to just let them see your eye.”

June did not reply. She wanted her mom to feel bad about sending her to school, even if it meant she had to look like a clown all day.

“I can give you a ride if you want.”

“No, thanks,” said June.

The toast popped up. June carefully buttered it, making sure that every square millimeter was covered.

“Or, if you want, you can just take my car.”

June looked at her mom. “Really?”

“I won’t need it today.”

“Thanks,” said June. She smiled and felt the foundation at the corners of her mouth crack.

June was halfway to school when it occurred to her that she could just skip. The office had called on Monday, and her mother had told them June would be out for “a few days.” They wouldn’t call again. She could do whatever she wanted — spend the day at the mall, see a movie, sit in a Starbucks and guzzle cappuccinos, hang out at the library — anything would be better than going to school with a clown face.

As for Jerry, that old saying — “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” — was completely untrue. She hadn’t seen him since last Friday, and with each passing day, she wanted to see him less. It was hard enough talking on the phone, listening to him go on and on about his political career, but now he was on this anti-Wes kick, talking about everything Wes had ever done going back to kindergarten. The more he told her things — like how Wes had once broke Jerry’s G.I. Joe, and how he’d once put chewing gum in Jerry’s hair, and how he’d talked Jerry into stealing a Batman comic and abandoned him when he got caught — the wimpier and whinier Jerry seemed.

It began to make sense to her that Wes had slammed him up against the wall.

She turned on Fourteenth Street and drove past Wes’s house. A giant oak tree was growing in the middle of the front yard. She drove around the block and passed the house again. Wes was in that house, probably still asleep. She wondered which window was his bedroom.

She would have driven by a third time, but that would have felt too much like stalking, so instead she drove over to the Starbucks on Front Street, by the college, where she was pretty sure she wouldn’t see anyone she knew.

After days of not leaving the house once, Wes was ready to start chewing his way through the walls. So when his mom left to go to a meeting at St. Mary’s, saying she wouldn’t be back until five or so, he put on his jacket and hat and went for a walk. It was cold out, but not nearly as bad as the last time he’d tried to walk someplace — the day he’d bumped heads with June.

He walked fast, staring at the sidewalk, avoiding the icy patches, avoiding the cracks, enjoying the jolt that every step sent up his spine to the base of his skull. He would not think about Jerry. He would not think about June. He would not think about Izzy and Thom Samples. Instead, he thought about what it would be like when he moved out. When he went to college. Or — forget college — when he got a job and an apartment with a balcony, where he could sit and watch the people passing on the street below. He would keep his apartment very clean and orderly. He would get a very cool job. Something high-tech, where he could make lots of money. Or maybe the opposite — go to Tahiti and work on a fishing boat and live in a shack on the beach. The exact opposite of Minnesota. As his heels hammered the frozen sidewalk, he tried to imagine the feel of warm sand and ocean breezes.

He liked walking. Maybe he would walk across the country, find someone to sponsor him. Walk to cure cancer or something. Start right after school. No, forget that. Forget school. He could start out in March and head straight south. March wouldn’t be so bad. Better yet, he could fly to Seattle and start walking southeast. Walk all the way to Key West, the very tip of Florida. He could walk it in a few months.

The sidewalk widened. Wes looked up. He had moved from his own middle-class neighborhood of modest bungalows into a neighborhood of larger, newer homes. He kept moving, trying to figure out what street he was on. Had he turned left or right off Thirteenth Street? He stopped and looked around. His eyes caught on a familiar house with a wreath on the door and a huge plastic Santa standing guard.

His stomach swirled. He turned quickly and started back the way he’d come.

Too late. He recognized the car coming up the street, slowing to turn into the driveway.

He raised his head and waited for her to recognize him.

J
UNE PULLED OVER TO THE CURB
and stared through the passenger window at Wes. Right in front of her house. He looked back at her with this odd expression, like his brain had locked up and needed to reboot. After a few seconds, he climbed over the pile of snow at the curb and opened the door and got in. June put the car back in gear and pulled away. Neither of them spoke until they were a few blocks away.

“I didn’t know where I was,” Wes said. “Until I saw the giant Santa.”

June did not say anything. Her brain was going too fast for words.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

June said, “Coffee.” Because it was all she could think of.

“Not at the B and B.”

“No, someplace else.” She drove straight, stopping at the stop signs, then driving straight some more until she didn’t know where they were. She pulled over and stopped.

“I’m lost,” she said, looking out through the windshield.

“We’re a few blocks from the freeway.”

“I don’t really want coffee,” she said.

“Me neither.”

June lowered her eyes to the dashboard. The lights and
dials meant nothing. She turned off the car. She thought he was staring at her, at her cracking makeup, but she did not look at him.

He said, “Your eye looks better.”

“It’s the makeup.”

“Did you go to school today?”

“I skipped.”

“Me too. Well, actually I’m suspended.”

June said nothing.

“I go back Monday,” Wes said.

“Me too.”

“I called you.”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.”

“I got in a fight with Jerry.”

“Jerry told me.”

“It was an accident.”

June said nothing.

He said, “We were just messing around. I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay,” said June.

“Look at me.”

She turned her face toward him.

“You got both your contacts in,” he said.

June nodded. She was having trouble breathing. His hand reached out and touched her cheek, a touch as soft as a breeze. She became acutely aware of her body, of every square centimeter of her skin, of the sound of air molecules striking her eardrums.

“Does it still hurt?”

“No.”

Wes lowered his hand to his lap, but he did not take his eyes off her.

After a few heartbeats, she said, “What are we going to do?”

What was it about this girl, this fish girl with her fake aqua eyes too far apart and that thick layer of makeup? Wes could feel the pressure building in his throat, in his chest, in his groin, as if he was about to explode. Spontaneous Human Combustion. He had never felt this way around Izzy. His fingers still tingled where he had touched her cheek.

“I don’t know,” he said. His voice sounded thick. He reached for her again, but stopped just before he touched her. His hand was shaking.

Her eyes moved from his face to his hand. She grasped his fingers and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek.

“Your hand is cold,” she said.

Wes drew a shaky breath and closed his eyes. He took back his hand and let his head fall back against the headrest and kept his eyes closed. It helped that he couldn’t see her. He let out his breath and breathed in again. Maple syrup and fresh-turned soil. He felt things crumbling inside.

June’s eyes explored his face — his floppy hair sticking out from underneath the stocking cap, the sparse whiskers on his chin and along his jaw, his long eyelashes, the way his lips curved up at the corners even when he wasn’t smiling. Why was he sitting with his eyes closed?

The windows were fogged up. When had that happened? No
one could see in or out, and Wes had his eyes shut. She was the only one who could see.

“What are you thinking?” she asked quietly.

He didn’t reply at first. She wondered if he had heard her. Then his tongue peeked out and moistened his lips and he said, “I can’t breathe when I look at you.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“I’m serious. You’re just too … too, I don’t know.”

June was having trouble breathing too. Maybe it was carbon monoxide. She rolled her window down and inhaled a lungful of ice-cold outside air. When she turned back to Wes, he had opened his eyes. He was staring at her again. He looked frightened.

“I gotta” — his voice cracked — “go.” Then he was out the door and running away.

W
ES WAS PROFOUNDLY EMBARRASSED.
By the time he reached Astin Boulevard, he was gasping for breath and the red in his face was from exertion. He slowed down to a fast walk. His heels hitting the sidewalk shifted something inside him; his embarrassment became more akin to anger. Why had she come driving up the street, surprising him like that? Why had he gotten into the car with her? Just when he was getting things straight in his head, when he was ready to go back to school and just do the work and avoid getting all snarled up, Aqua Girl, Fish Girl … no,
Spider
Girl shows up to get him all tangled in her web. And then she made him act like a crazy person, running off like a scared little kid. And now he was going to get home late and his mom would probably be there, and there’d be a whole scene about him supposedly being grounded and irresponsible and God knows what all else. And Jerry, it was his fault too. And the whole school thing, having to go back on Monday and face everybody. He wished he could strap a bomb to his chest. An atomic bomb, to vaporize his every last molecule. That would take care of it.