THE NEW HOUSE HAD A HUGE ENTERTAINMENT ROOM and the empty pool in the backyard. It was still too cold to swim, but if they stayed through the summer it would be great. Her new school — Hills High School — was new and clean and everybody seemed really nice. June found that most of the time she was able to stay focused on moving forward, into the future. During the day she didn’t think about Wes, unless she saw somebody who looked like him, or heard a laugh that sounded like his.
At night, every night, just before she went to sleep, she would carefully dial his number on the new cell phone her mom had bought her. She let her finger rest lightly on the SEND button. She would close her eyes and see his face, almost as if she had a miniature model of Wes in her head. Some nights she thought she could feel his presence in a ghostly, distant sort of way. Was that the connection? The unbreakable connection?
Maybe it was all a game. That’s what her dad would say.
But it wasn’t a game. If she pressed that button, it would be real. If she pressed the button, Wes would answer. He would say, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for you to call.”
She would say, “I know.”
And they would laugh, even though it wasn’t funny.
She thought a lot about what her mother had said that day in the car, about being scared shitless half the time. Scared shitless? Was that what kept her from pressing SEND? Was that what she wanted her life to be like?
One day in February, Wes woke up to see water dripping from the eaves. A warm front had moved in overnight. He got dressed and went downstairs. Paula, always an early riser, was sitting at the counter in her pajamas, eating a bowl of cereal. She watched wordlessly as he took the orange juice from the refrigerator and drank straight from the carton. He grabbed a muffin from the bread drawer and sat down across from Paula, feeling her eyes on him. He noticed several cards and envelopes next to her.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I’m giving valentines to my seven best friends,” Paula said. “It’s Valentine’s Day, you know.”
Wes had not known that.
“You should send one to your girlfriend,” Paula said.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I bet she’ll call you,” Paula said. She went back to eating her Froot Loops.
For the rest of the day, Wes kept hearing Paula’s words. There were times when he thought his little sister was psychic, the way she could pull words right out of his head. Because he’d caught himself thinking that, thinking the phone would ring and he would answer it, and June’s voice would come over the line into his ear. It was stupid, he knew. Stupid to think that way. But he thought it a lot, and every time the phone rang he imagined it was her. His heart would speed up, and he would listen when his mom or Paula answered it. Just in case. But it was never for him.
That night, after dinner, Wes retired to his room as usual, muttering something about homework, but instead of doing his homework he spent the night reading old X-Men comics. The mutant telepath Emma Frost reminded him of June, especially her eyes. And the telepathy.
At ten o’clock, still without having looked at his homework, Wes was lying on his bed staring up at the faint brown splotch on his ceiling. It had been there for five years. He and Jerry had been in his room playing video games. They’d been sharing a bottle of Pepsi, and then — he couldn’t remember why — he’d shaken up the bottle, holding his thumb over the top, and had tried to spray Jerry. Jerry had knocked his arm up and the cola had squirted all over the ceiling.
He remembered his mother shaking her head and saying, “Well, you’re the one who’s going to have to look at it for the next seven years.” He looked at it all the time.
The telephone rang. Wes listened as his mother answered it from the kitchen.
A few seconds later, he heard her calling his name.
Wes allowed himself to imagine it was June, then he imagined it wasn’t. Probably one of his idiot friends. He rolled off the bed and walked down the stairs. The phone was sitting on the counter, face up. He put the phone to his ear.
“Hello?”
There was the sound of distance, a breath, and then he heard her voice.
“It’s me.”