Free The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

had imagined it.
    Whatever the case, her nose was running like a faucet and her throat was sore. She spent most of the day in bed drinking herbal tea and flipping through back issues of
Cosmo
and
People.
She didn’t even turn her cell on. Around three o’clock, Jerry called the house phone. Her mom answered it and brought the phone to her room.
    “Tell him I’m sleeping,” June said.
    She must have looked really pathetic because her mom just nodded, took her hand off the mouthpiece, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m sorry, Jerry. June is taking a nap.”
    Thank you,
June mouthed.
    A little later the phone rang again.
    “If it’s for me, I’m sleeping!” It hurt her throat to yell.
    Sometime later — it was getting dark out — June shuffled to the bathroom, still in her pajamas and slippers, for another dose ofcold medicine. Her mom heard her and called out, “I made chicken noodle soup, Junie.”
    Chicken noodle soup. The thought of those fat noodles sliding down her throat almost made her gag. She swallowed the cold medicine and walked to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. Her mother, wearing her auburn wig, full makeup, and a dark green jacket and dress ensemble — what she called her “money outfit” — was sorting through her purse.
    “You’re going somewhere?” June asked, surprised.
    “I’m helping your father with a management seminar tonight, then we’re having dinner with some of the Sani-Made executives. Have you seen my car keys?”
    June thought for a moment, then looked at the hooks door, where the keys were supposed to be hung. “Isn’t that them?”
    Her mother looked at the keys and made an exasperated sound with her lips.
    “I swear I’m losing it,” she said. “Who’d have thought that I would actually hang my keys up?”
    “You didn’t. I told Wes to put them there.”
    “Wes? Oh yes. The boy who blackened your eye. He called, by the way. I told him you were doing a Camille.” “Doing a Camille” was what her mom called it when June pretended to be extra miserable. Something about an old movie, older even than her mother.
    “You didn’t really.”
    “No, I told him you were sleeping.”
    “Oh.”
    “I wrote his number down.” She pointed at the notepad by the kitchen phone. “He said to tell you, ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ ”
    “What wasn’t his fault?”
    “I have no idea.”
    After her mother left, June ladled some soup into a bowl, picked out the noodles, and ate what was left. It was okay. Not that she could taste anything.
    It wasn’t my fault.
    What had Wes meant by that? That he’d bumped heads with her and given her a black eye? That he’d kissed her? What did he mean?
    She considered calling him. Ask him what he meant. Would that be like chasing him? What about Jerry?
    She wished she knew how long she would be living here. Her dad only had a six-month contract with Sani-Made, and sometimes these jobs ended early. They might be gone in a month or two, and then it wouldn’t matter what she did because she would be gone and all the names and numbers on her cell phone would be erased and she would have to start over. But if they stayed longer — her dad
always
promised that they would settle down — then she would have to decide what to do and live with it.
    Jerry was easy.
    Jerry was comfortable.
    Jerry was a nice guy.
    Jerry was Wes’s friend.
    Wes had kissed her.
    A good kiss. The kind of kiss that said,
I want you. I need you.
As if it took every last ounce of his willpower to keep from tearing her clothes off and doing it right there on the kitchen floor.
    Jerry had never kissed her like that. And if he had, she wouldn’t have liked it.
    But she had liked that kiss from Wes.
    It wasn’t my fault
, he had said.
    June tore the top sheet off the notepad, went to her room, and entered Wes’s number into her cell phone. So she would have it. Just in case she ever needed it. She noticed that there were several missed calls. Three from