Crushed (15 page)

Chapter 49

Take-out

That same Tuesday, four hours after school ended, Audrey Reed and her father parked behind a yellow-brick apartment building on Genesee and started carrying boxes of clothes up a concrete ramp. Her father propped open the heavy metal fire door and led her to an ancient elevator, which they packed so full of boxes that they barely had room to stand. The apartment was on the third floor, at the far end of a well-lighted hallway, freshly carpeted. When her father unlocked the door marked 3-E, Audrey walked slowly in.

The floor was wood. The doorknobs were glass. The walls had recently been painted white. Audrey set down a box of sweaters and went to the radiator, which she touched with a flattened palm. It was warm and ticking.

Her father carried his box into the kitchen, and she heard him set it down. He stepped into the living room, looked around, and gave Audrey an apologetic look. “Pretty grim, huh?”

“No,” Audrey said, “it's not that bad. And it'll look a lot better when the Anchor Brothers bring the furniture.”

Her father didn't comment on this. Audrey leaned on the radiator and felt the warmth spread through her legs. “So, how many bedrooms does it have?” She was hoping there were three, which would leave one for Oggy.

Her father hesitated. Then: “Just two.”

“Oh,” she said. “Two.”

“But it's just for the time being,” he said. “Things will get better.”

Oggy was seventy-four. Audrey wondered how fast things would get better, and she almost said so, but her father looked so depressed that she decided she had to say something cheerful. “It's like one of those apartments you see in ads. You know, where a hunky guy and a girl are lying on the floor, eating take-out Chinese among a few tasteful boxes and a ladder.”

“Well,” her father said, “the take-out Chinese we could manage. But I haven't been hunky since 1973.”

“Sure, you have,” Audrey said, though he didn't look so hunky now. His black hair had turned gray, and he looked haggard. His shirts were loose on him, and the cloth on the collar was pilled where it rubbed against his neck. Audrey moved toward him and threw an arm over his shoulder. “Now let's go bring in the tasteful boxes.”

Setting up the apartment that night was a little better. Audrey pretended she was playing house. Nothing was permanent, she reminded herself. She was just making do. A box could be a nightstand, and her mother's china could go into the built-in, glass-knobbed hutch, and they could camp out for a while.

Audrey even began to picture what it would be like to live with Wickham in an apartment just like this one, to walk to her college classes and then lie on the floor with him and eat take-out Chinese. That's what she was thinking about that night when she finally fell asleep.

Chapter 50

Breaking the News

Audrey forced herself to tell C.C. and Lea about the new apartment on Wednesday when they met at the lockers before the first bell. Audrey expected pity, but Lea said “an apartment” sounded chic.

“Do you have a buzzer?” C.C. asked.

Audrey nodded, and C.C. said, “So, Audrey, honey, we can come to the door downstairs, buzz you, and be buzzed up?”

“Uh-huh,” Audrey said. “Unless I decide you're unbuzzable.”

This led to a free-ranging discussion of who in the world was unbuzzable (Theo Driggs and Sands Mandeville) and buzzable (Mark Strauss). “And Wickham,” Lea said to Audrey in her soft voice. “Wickham is definitely buzzable.”

“What about a trash incinerator?” C.C. asked. “Can we throw things down a chute?”

“No incinerator. But you should see the elevator. It's one of those metal-cage kinds from the nineteenth century. I feel like Lily Bart when I get in it.” (When they'd read
House of
Mirth
at the Tate School, they'd all gone through a Lily Bart phase.)

“Über-urban,” C.C. concluded, and Lea added, “Très Über.”

Telling Wickham about her moving was somehow harder. She blurted it out between first and second period, trying to make the arrival of the repo men seem like a funny story.

But Wickham didn't laugh. “I'm not sure I'm with you here,” he said. “They're going to auction off your house?”

Audrey nodded.

Wickham seemed hardly to believe it. He looked away. “That was a great house,” he said, more to himself than to her. Then, in a voice so thin it seemed brittle, he said, “I'm really, really sorry.”

Audrey shrugged. “It was always too much, anyway. Too much space, too much carved wood, too much history.” She made a smile. “The only thing I'm worried about is Oggy.”

“Oggy?” he asked.

“Oggy,” Audrey said. “You know. The woman who took care of me after my mother died.”

But when she looked at Wickham, it was hard to tell what she was looking at. He was here physically, but he seemed to be somewhere else. She thought suddenly of Jade Marie Creamer and wondered if Wickham was thinking of her, too.

“Can you come over and see the apartment after school?” she said.

Wickham's eyes came back into focus. “Sure,” he said. “Maybe not today, but sure.” And his face went vague again.

“Is there something wrong?” Audrey said.

He shook his head. “It's just that I'm, you know, worried about you.”

Audrey had the strange feeling that this wasn't quite true, and there followed a miserable silence, which Wickham finally ended by changing the subject. “So did you hear what happened to your friend the busboy?”

“Clyde Mumsford? He's not my friend.”

Wickham shrugged as if he didn't quite believe this. “He got suspended.”

Audrey felt a prickling in her stomach. So that's why Clyde hadn't been in class yesterday. “Why?”

“Fighting Theo Driggs in the parking lot.” He chuckled lazily—a laugh-version of a drawl. “I guess Theo pretty much tenderized him.”

“Why?” Audrey asked again, her stomach heavy now.

Wickham shrugged and looked around, as if he were anxious to get going. Without looking at Audrey, he said, “Since when does Theo need a reason?”

The tardy bell rang, and Wickham seemed happy to have an excuse to go. Around them, students everywhere moved into hurry mode, and Wickham, backing away from Audrey, said, “Later.”

He turned and fell in with the stream of students moving away from her.

“See you in physics,” she called, but Wickham didn't seem to hear.

Chapter 51

See Me

Most teachers would have waited until after Thanksgiving to hand back essays, but not Mrs. Leacock. She had them graded two days after receiving them. Wednesday, November 26, was a half day and everyone was jittery, ready to be off. Some kids were already absent—the lucky ones who were flying to relatives' houses or ski resorts or Florida condominiums.

Mrs. Leacock was not in a holiday mood. She wore a familiar light blue sweater and a blue stone pendant that swung from a black silk cord. Audrey watched the pendant swing as Mrs. Leacock called out names and walked from aisle to aisle.

Usually you could tell by the student's face if the grade was good or bad: flushed cheeks and a small, victorious smile, or flushed cheeks and a look of disappointment or even resentment, followed by the flipping of pages to read marginal comments. Audrey waited with more than usual nervousness for the sound of her own name as Mrs. Leacock's blue stone pendant swayed. “Greg Telman,” she said. “Leslie Poll.”

Audrey licked her lips and studied the backs of her hands, which always cracked this time of year. Tiny white lines crisscrossed her knuckles.

“Audrey Reed.”

Audrey felt herself flush, and when she took the essay from Mrs. Leacock, she saw first the frozen expression on Mrs. Leacock's face, and then the sentence written in red marker:
Please see me after class.

Audrey sat down as Wickham's name was called. She flipped through the pages of her essay and saw no grade, no marginal comments.
Bad,
she thought.
This is bad.

As Wickham walked back down the aisle with his paper in hand, he looked as he always looked—comfortable with himself, and pleased with his place in the world—but that, she knew by now, was just Wickham: he might have had an A plus on his paper, or he might have had an F.

Everywhere kids were paging through their essays and stuffing books into bags, which might have provided cover for Audrey to turn and ask Wickham what he'd gotten, but when she glanced up at Mrs. Leacock's desk, Mrs. Leacock's frozen eyes were fixed on her.

The bell rang and there was the usual crush of students in the aisles, hauling sweaters and overloaded bags. Mrs. Leacock was still staring her way, so Audrey couldn't even turn around to look at Wickham. She stood up slowly, and as she walked to the front of the room, she became aware that Wickham was doing the same. He followed her all the way to the desk. Audrey's stomach clenched tighter. He'd received the same message, then.

Mrs. Leacock watched them approach. She didn't smile or say hello, or even take a deep breath. She just said, “So who wrote these essays?”

Audrey, panicked and confused, felt like blurting something out, but Wickham said, in a pleasant voice, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that we have two papers signed with two names written in one voice, a voice that I know pretty well at this point in the term. What I'd like to know is what Audrey's voice is doing in your paper.”

“Oh, that,” Wickham said. “I can see where the misunderstanding—”

Mrs. Leacock held up one hand. “If you don't mind, Mr. Hill, I'd like to hear what Audrey has to say first. Could you step outside the room?”

Wickham looked at Audrey. His eyes were transmitting strength. Strength to lie, or strength to make a good case for the truth? She didn't know. She knew he was good at making muddy water clear, but she wasn't. She'd always told people too much, had always bubbled over with explanations and tangential details, a habit that made her father sigh and say, “You're just too honest.”

Wickham strolled out into the hall.

“And close the door behind you,” Mrs. Leacock said.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, and after giving Audrey one last encouraging look, he shut the door.

Mrs. Leacock slid the blue stone back and forth along the silken cord. “Why don't you pull up a chair, Audrey?”

There weren't any chairs, only heavy desk-and-chair units. As Audrey pulled one over, it vibrated loudly across the linoleum. Sitting in it made her feel small.

“Okay,” Mrs. Leacock said. “Tell me the process by which these two papers were written.”

Audrey watched the blue stone go back and forth. She opened her mouth. “How they were written,” she said, trying not to panic.

Mrs. Leacock nodded, looking impatient.

“Wickham came over to my house,” Audrey said. “He doesn't have a computer, so I let him use mine to do research and write his paper.” She touched a finger to her cheek. Was her cheek that warm, or was her hand cold? Probably both.

“All right,” Mrs. Leacock said. “And?”

“And he printed it there.”

“And you had what kind of input into the way it was written?” Mrs. Leacock asked. She'd let go of the blue stone, but now she absently turned the ring on her hand. Her expression was detached, impassive, cold.

“I read it,” Audrey said, fumbling now. “And I . . . I had some ideas about making it smoother.” Then: “I shouldn't have helped him, I guess.”

If Mrs. Leacock recognized the conciliatory note in Audrey's voice, she didn't show it. She merely said, “And how did you present these ‘ideas'?”

Audrey couldn't bring herself to say that she rewrote his paper. It was too terrible. She didn't want to say it, and she didn't want it to be true. “I gave him suggestions for editing it,” she said, surprised at the lie but also grateful that she had thought of it. “I helped him fix the grammar and add descriptive details.”

“Meaning you wrote, like a teacher, in the margins, and he used your comments to revise the paper on your computer?”

Audrey so intensely wanted this to be true that she almost believed it. “Uh-huh,” she said, without looking Mrs. Leacock in the face. She nodded slightly, and blushed. Surely Mrs. Leacock would see she was lying.

Mrs. Leacock was silent for a few seconds. “You realize I'm now going to talk to Wickham alone.”

Audrey nodded, and stared at the corduroy knees of her pants.

Mrs. Leacock stood up and went to the door. “Your turn, Wickham,” she said, and signaled Audrey to take his place in the hall.

In passing, Wickham smiled at her, looking unworried, and Audrey gave him a solemn look in return.

The hall was cold. She couldn't hear their conversation through the door, and she didn't dare look through the window at them. She leaned against the wall and rubbed her fingernails obsessively across the brown corduroy surface of her thighs. The bell had rung, and students were at lunch. Bits of trash—candy wrappers, an empty plastic cup, a ticket stub—lay at her feet. She checked her watch once, twice, three times. She jumped when suddenly the doorknob turned, and Mrs. Leacock stepped out.

“You may go,” she said. Her expression was, if anything, even colder than before. “I need to look at these papers again, and I'll give them back to you on Monday.”

Audrey nodded, feeling sick and close to tears. Mrs. Leacock hadn't been fooled, and she, Audrey Reed, was going to fail, or be expelled, or who knew what. Audrey looked shakily at Wickham, who lifted a hand and smiled. Then he strolled away from them both.

Audrey picked up her backpack; murmured, “Thank you” to Mrs. Leacock; and then, walking off in the opposite direction so that she didn't seem to be Wickham's co-conspirator, wondered what there had been to thank Mrs. Leacock for.