Inukshuk by Gregory Spatz

if it happens. Promise. When it happens. I’ll tell you.”
    â€œThat’s good. Because I might have some technical advice for you. Pointers, you know, from a procedural standpoint, like how to make sure she gets off, and be sure to put your dick in the right hole to pop her cherry.”
    â€œYou’re such a jerk.”
    Laughter. “Come on. It’s my role in your life, giving you shit, just like it’s your role in my life, to keep the malicious juvenile side of my brain active.”
    â€œGlad I can be of service. So when’s the visit?”
    â€œActually, I was talking to Dad about that. I’ve got labs and exams right through the last day of the quarter, so I was thinking, on my spring break, I might actually just go up and visit Mom for a few days.”
    Ice in his belly and sudden numbness, the clotted dark spreading up at the edges of his vision again. He kicked his legs out straight and clenched his thigh muscles, then knotted a fist around his pant leg and pulled hard, making the material constrict cuttingly around his leg. What? Visit Mom? “You what?”

    â€œYeah. I don’t know. I figure why the hell not? Right? Catch a ride with one of the mining planes and get someone with a snow machine to haul my ass the rest of the way. Haven’t seen her in an age.”
    â€œSure. But did you . . . have you, like, talked to her about it?”
    â€œOh yeah, sure. Of course.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œCouple times. I don’t know. Last week, I guess it was. Week before that.”
    â€œYou’re talking to her now?”
    â€œNot all the time. Every week or so since the start of the quarter, something like that.”
    He unballed his hand and turned it over on his leg, palm up, stretching open the fingers until they bent backward and the white of bones and tendons stood in speckled relief against the surrounding tissue and blood. Squeezed the hand shut and open and shut again and drove it into his leg as hard as he could.
    â€œSorry, man. I guess I just assumed. I figured, you know, if she was calling me . . .”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat wasn’t too swift of me, was it?”
    â€œLetters.”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œShe sends letters.”
    â€œI see.”
    Again he drove his fist into his leg. Not hard enough. You could never hit yourself hard enough to do damage or make it hurt anything like enough to drive out the other pain. His fingers stung now and his joints felt etched with nerve endings; in his leg, a dumb nothing of an ache.
    â€œShe probably just doesn’t know when to call you. You know, like when to be sure Dad isn’t around or whatever . . .”
    â€œThey could talk. Wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
    â€œSure. But I don’t think that’s exactly what she has in mind right now. It isn’t really in the cards, as they say.”
    â€œToo bad!”

    Devon sighed audibly. “Anyway . . .” He’d said it like their East Coast grandfather, ann-a-way —another family joke of long standing.
    â€œGotta go already?”
    â€œYeah, actually, I should. Tons of studying here. And I’ve already been on like an hour with Pop.”
    â€œTwenty minutes!”
    â€œHow about you?”
    â€œHow about me what?”
    â€œStudying?”
    â€œPlease. These classes here are so undergeared, you would not believe, dude. If I have to open a book before the end of the term, I’ll be really surprised. Honors math we’re still talking about parallelograms and polyhedrons. Last week in history class, some dufus actually asked how Julius Caesar got his name from a salad. I kid you not.”
    â€œSmoking a little too much of the salad himself.”
    â€œNo doubt.”
    â€œSo get Dad to pass you up to grade eleven.”
    â€œUh . . . think I’ll just stick with the stupids, thanks.”
    â€œWell, I gotta study here. You go on back to your