The Big Crunch Read Free Page B

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CHAPTER
THREE
    S HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO CALL S CHAUMBURG, or any of the other places they’d lived before. Her parents were fanatical about that.
    “Move on, Junie,” her mom had said. “The past is the past.”
    “ ‘There Is No Reverse Gear in Time Machine,’ ” her father said, quoting the title of a book he’d once read.
    “But isn’t the whole point of a time machine so you can go back?” June said.
    “Not
this
time machine. This time machine only goes forward, into the future.
Next!
” Like a counterman in a deli, he loved to yell,
Next!
    Her mother said, “Junie, you’ll probably never see any of those kids again. Best to make a clean break.”
    “Why?” June asked.
    “Junie, I know it’s hard moving from one school to another. But hanging on to the past is not the way to deal with it.”
    “Why?” she asked again.
    “Please don’t be difficult,” her mother said.
    June scrolled through the numbers on her cell, remembering faces to go with the names. Brent. Gerry. Felicity. Heather. Katie. Kevin. Krista D. Krista K. So many
K
names. LeBron. Octavia. Prathi …
    June knew her mother was right. The past was gone forever. Nobody in Schaumburg probably even thought about her anymore. Or if they did, it was like,
Remember that girl? The one with blond hair?
    You mean Teresa?
    No. The one that moved a few weeks ago, you know. The one who was going out with Brent?
    Oh yeah, um, I’m pretty sure her name started with a “J.”
    Jennie? Jenna?
    Something like that.
    “June.”
    June looked up. Her mother, carrying two bags of groceries, was standing in the doorway.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Sitting at the kitchen table.”
    “Well, put down your phone and help me with these groceries.”
    Later that night, June picked up her phone and once again looked at her contact list. It was blank. All the numbers had disappeared, erased, gone forever.
    Wes’s mom and his little sister were in the kitchen having one of their arguments when Wes got home. Neither of them noticed him. Paula was being a brat, as usual, and Mom was falling all over herself trying to please her.
    “Honey pie, I am not going to buy you a new pair of shoes just because Lynette Stiles told you your shoes were stupid. She’s only being mean.”
    “Nobody wears Skechers anymore.”
    “Honey, that’s not true. Lots of kids your age
love
Skechers.”
    “Yeah, the dweebs and morons.”
    “You liked them fine when we bought them. Does that make you a dweeb?”
    “If you make me
wear
them, yeah.”
    “Don’t you think that Lynette was just trying to make you feel bad?”
    “The
shoes
are bad.”
    “And suppose you wear new shoes to school tomorrow, will that make Lynette think you’re cool?”
    “I don’t care what she thinks.”
    “I’ll tell you what she’ll think — she’ll think she has power over you. She might say your jeans are dorky. What then?”
    “My jeans aren’t dorky. These shoes are.”
    “Honey, don’t you think …”
    Wes grabbed a bottle of juice from the fridge and took it out to the garage, where he wouldn’t have to listen. He knew how it would end. Paula would be in tears and locked in her bedroom, and his mom would come looking for him and saddle him with some heinous task — mowing the yard, or sorting his dirty laundry — just to remind herself that she could still control her children. She wouldn’t cave to Paula’s demand for new shoes, but she would probably take her to the mall and buy her a new belt or something.
    The garage was a refuge of sorts. It contained several half-finished repair projects: his dad’s prehistoric ten-speed with the bent wheel, an outboard engine with a broken prop and no boat, a rocking chair that needed a new armrest, and so forth. One cornerwas filled with Wes’s skateboard collection and other sports gear. There was a table saw, a drill press, and assorted other tools, and several lawn care items: weed whacker, leaf blower, push