Ashlyn's Radio (4 page)

Right away she unscrewed the cap and with a smile, started on a thumb.

“So they say he’s a real dick now?”

Ashlyn nearly dropped the bowl she was drying. The pot was still half-full of chili, so there were just a few dishes tonight. “Maudette!”

“Stanley Maggs, I mean,” Maudette said. “Your teacher. Not that I blame him one bit for giving you detention for cutting class. But if he gives you a hard time about anything he shouldn’t … about us, you tell me. Right away. I’ve known Stanley since he was in diapers. There were six of those Maggs kids — five girls and then Stanley came along. They spoiled him rotten. If he gives you any trouble, Ashlyn, you let me know. I’ll deal with it.”

“Thanks, Maudette.” Ashlyn felt her cheeks growing warmer. Not that she could ever picture herself calling on the old woman to come and fight her battles. But just the fact that she was willing to. God, it almost seemed like Maudette
wanted
to. That was … kind of cool.

And for the first time since she got here, as she dried off the last wide spoon and lined the cutlery up in the drawer and Maudette wiped down the table, Ashlyn felt the stirring of real affection for the old woman.

“So was Mom here when you started breeding Airedales?” Ashlyn asked. It was as good of a conversation starter as any.

Maudette straightened, a little surprised at the question.

“Your mother never told you?”

“No,” Ashlyn said.

Maudette nodded, a little sadly.

“She talked about you though, Maudette. And her dad and the Junction and things like that. It wasn’t as if—”

“No,” Maudette cut in. “Leslie was gone to Toronto when I got my first Airedales. I’d always wanted a dog. My late husband was allergic to all animal dander. So I didn’t get Tippy-girl and Towzer — those were my first two — until after Oscar died.”

Maudette sat at the table. She folded the dishcloth and set it down in front of her.

Ashlyn closed the utensil drawer and wiped her hands on the dishcloth before hooking it onto the stove. Then, drawing just the smallest of breaths, she sat down with Maudette Caverhill.

“Do you like it here?” Ashlyn asked her. “Do you like Prescott Junction?”

Maudette shrugged. “Well enough, I guess. I’ve been here all my life. In this very house, in fact. When my older brother was killed in the war — that was the big one, WW2 — it was just my mother and me. I was only five then, but still, I knew…. My mother wasn’t … she wasn’t a well woman. I stayed with her all her life. I only married Oscar when he agreed to move in here with us. He wasn’t from the Junction originally, but from Bangor. He was a bank inspector, always good and tight with money, and I was a cashier at Prescott Junction First Trust. Funny how often that little bank got inspected after Oscar caught my eye.” She chuckled warmly, and Ashlyn liked the way that sounded. “It wasn’t young love. Heck, I was thirty when we married; thirty-five when your mother came along. And Oscar was five years older than me! But it was good love. We kept to ourselves. Kept to my poor mother too, of course, until she passed away. But we had a happy life. We had picnics out under the oak tree, the one just past the kennels. And we both loved fishing — I could outfish him any day. Oscar was a wonderful cook, and every Sunday he fixed up the nicest dinners while I went off to church. And sometimes we’d dance. Right there in the living room. We both liked the same kind of music—”

“From the war era, right?” Ashlyn offered. “I hear you playing that music some nights. Upbeat songs about boys going over there, marching home, boarding the—”

“No!”

Ashlyn’s gaze flew to her grandmother, whose face had drained of all color. The old woman’s eyes grew moist and wide and she stared terrified at Ashlyn.

“You don’t….”  Maudette wet her trembling lips. “You don’t hear anything.”

“Oh, but I do. I know I hear music. Scratchy and old, like it’s coming from one of those old-fashioned Gramophones, but I do hear it, Maudette.”

“You have to stay in bed at night, Ashlyn. No matter what you … think you hear. Everyone does in Prescott Junction. We all have to.”

“Oh, not that again!” Ashlyn flared. “
We all have to stay in bed?
Are you freakin’ kidding me? Since when did I sign up for this Podunk Junction collective?” She felt the anger like tightening bands around her chest. Just when she thought she might be getting a bit close to the old lady, just when she was really
trying
, the old bat had to go and say something crazy again. “This is just stupid!”

Maudette’s lips tightened and she turned away. “There are things you don’t understand, Ashlyn Caverhill.”

“And there are things I do understand, Maudette Caverhill. And one is that you’re hiding something. No wonder Mom couldn’t wait to get out of here the minute she turned eighteen! No wonder she never came back for so many years! And the one time she does, she ends up….”

Ashlyn couldn’t go there. She was sorry she’d taken it as far as she had. But there was no going back now. “I’ll … I’ll be out of here as soon as I can too. As soon as I turn eighteen.” Ashlyn stormed from the kitchen and raced for her bedroom.

Over the pounding of her feet on the stair treads and the thudding of her pulse in her ears, Ashlyn heard her grandmother’s sad reply. “Well, I guess that would be best.”

God, her own grandmother wanted her gone!

Well, she couldn’t wish it half as much as Ashlyn did. Not a
fraction
as much.

Her own tears made her even angrier as she slammed the bedroom door. She
did
hear music at night. And she
did
hear those trains.

Stay in bed?

“Like hell,” she grated. 

Then and there, she decided that the next time she heard that music playing, or that train whistle blowing, the very
last
thing that she would do was stay in bed.

But somehow as she made this resolution, she felt a warning chill shudder across her shoulders. The wind picked up and thin branches tap-tapped against her window, as if they too wanted to join in the ominous warning.

A
SHLYN DIDN
’
T SPEAK TO
her grandmother the rest of the evening. And apparently Maudette Caverhill had a stubborn streak just as wide as Ashlyn’s, for the old woman wasn’t exactly thumping up the stairs to make amends herself. By the time Ashlyn came down for breakfast the next morning, exhausted from a crappy night’s sleep, her grandmother was already outside with her Airedales.

Huh. Showed where she fit in the scheme of things.

Except when she turned to the cupboard to dig out some cold cereal for breakfast, she saw there was crisp bacon fried up and left in the pan with some home fries — her favorite — and her lunch sat in a bag on the counter.

Dammit, why’d Maudette have to go and do that? It was hard to resent someone when they did thoughtful stuff for you.

Hard, but not impossible.

As she ate her breakfast alone, Ashlyn managed to work up a good head of righteous indignation again. All she had to do was think about how unfair this whole stupid situation was, getting stuck here in the outback of the outback of Maine. God, she missed her friends. Zoey and Cordell and Hoopz. She missed noise and smog and the smell of the city and yes, even the bone-chilling wind that blew in off Lake Ontario.

Unable to swallow past the lump in her throat, she pushed her plate away.

The rest of the day didn’t go any better. Mr. Maggs really
was
a dick. A dick who apparently delighted in singling out the least capable students for the hardest questions, thereby publicly embarrassing them. He tried it with Ashlyn, testing her, his avid eyes betraying his sadistic hope that she’d flub it. A hope that had a pretty good chance of being realized. Math was not her strongest subject. Fortunately, it was a geometry problem. When Maggs called her to the board, she’d killed it. Much to his chagrin. With any luck, it would take him a while to figure out he’d just been unlucky with his choice of pitch, lobbing a soft one right into her wheelhouse. Her admittedly limited wheelhouse. Until then, maybe he’d leave her alone.

The English teacher turned out to be a sub, so that class, which she was kinda sorta looking forward to, sucked. They didn’t even discuss the first act of Othello. The substitute teacher, who looked barely old enough to be out of high school herself, instructed everyone to
just read quietly to yourselves
. Then she spent the period sweating and watching the clock while the kids yakked with each other, painted their nails or listened to their iPods.

 At noon hour, Ashlyn opted to take her bag lunch outside, rather than go through that whole cafeteria dance of where-shall-the-new-girl-sit. She chose the empty bleachers out by the football field, but that proved to be a mistake. A jock wandered over.

Brian Caldwell. He wasn’t so bad looking, but definitely not Ashlyn’s type. A little too much testosterone, as evidence by the high face and aggressive square chin. Besides which, he always reeked of booze. He sat two seats behind her in math class, and she could smell it from there.

“Hey, Ashlyn,” Brian said thickly. His smile looked painfully wide and his breath carried an odd combination of beer and breath mints.

“Hi.” Zero encouragement. Short and sweet answers. That was the plan.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Well, it was overcast and damp, but to answer correctly would have required more than the monosyllabic response she was determined to give. “Yep.”

“Ashlyn, how’d you like to go to the fall formal with me?” Still smiling, drunkenly, Brian nodded as if it were now a done deal. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

She wanted to scream, “What’s
wrong
with you? I don’t know you from Jason-freaking-Voorhees, for God’s sake! Why would I want to go to a dance with you? Why would I want to go to a stupid dance, period?” Instead, she took a deep breath and declined, politely but firmly. The absolute last thing on her mind was dating. She was here to put in her last year of school, just killing time until she could make her own choices. Whereupon she would
choose
to get the hell out outta here.

“Bitch!” he spat, then stormed away, red-faced.

Even detention after school was non-eventful. Oddly, that was the part of the day Ashlyn had been most anticipating. But Rachel was like a whole different person, sullen, too quiet. And she looked like hell, like she hadn’t slept since yesterday. Her face was pale and the dark circles under her eyes were deep. She’d missed morning classes and Ashlyn had thought she’d maybe just overslept, but clearly that wasn’t the reason. Even when Mr. Berg left the detention room to meet Ms. Degagne, the librarian, in the hallway, Rachel didn’t turn around to talk, didn’t even smile across the room. Not even when Ashlyn offered a smile.

By the time Ashlyn walked home alone along the tracks, she saw no one, not even the Caldwell boys, thanks to the after school detention. Which was just as well. Despite that small mercy, Ashlyn was tired and cranky and damn well fed up with Podunk Junction.

And now she had to face her grandmother again.

Maudette was in the kitchen when she walked in. Ashlyn let the screen door slam shut behind her.

Maudette looked up from the paperwork she was doing at the kitchen table.

“Hello, Ashlyn.”

“’Lo.”

“Dinner’s in the oven. Should be ready at five.”

A pause while Ashlyn’s conscience wrestled with her carefully nursed indignation. Her conscience won. “Need help?”

“No, got it under control.”

“’Kay. I’ll be in my room.”

With that scintillating exchange, Ashlyn climbed the stairs to her bedroom, threw her bookbag on the desk, and flopped herself down on the bed. She closed her eyes, and the first thing that impinged on her awareness was how fresh her room smelled. Experience having taught her how hot and stuffy the upstairs of the old house got in the afternoon, she’d left her window open a few inches this morning when she’d left for school. There was a gentle breeze coming in now. And with one hand over her flat stomach and the other over her tired eyes, Ashlyn lay back to try to enjoy the first real bit of peace she’d felt all day.