I could see both sides, and I sensed a philosophical dimension that I didn’t particularly want to tackle at half past midnight on a school night.
“So FitFab retracted your job offer?”
A tear slipped from one mascaraed eye and made a sooty track down her cheek. “Yes. The training program is only offered every six months, at the corporate office in Chattanooga. I was supposed to start next Monday, but I won’t have my diploma yet.”
“Can you do the program in the fall?”
She shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. “No, this was it. My only shot. And now it’s gone.”
I’d spent enough time around Alice to know that teenage girls have a very black-or-white view of the world. That one pair of size-six jeans fits a little snug? You must be super fat and completely gross. The cute boy doesn’t ask you to dance? You must be hideous and totally unlovable.
Ashley wasn’t strictly a teenager, but close enough.
I also knew that anything I might say, any logical argument I might make, would prompt a storm of tears and rage about how I just didn’t understand. So I kept my lips shut.
“My life is over,” Ashley concluded.
The tears were coming faster now, and she suddenly went white as a ghost. “Oh, God,” she muttered, then pushed away from the table and dashed for the bathroom.
I briefly considered following her, weighing her need for comfort and her need for dignity. On the one hand, I was her peer in class, not her mama. On the other hand, her mama wasn’t here, and I was.
Ultimately, my desire not to completely embarrass myself on the final exam won out. I spent the next ten minutes reading through my notes and skimming over the passages I had dog-eared in my books, until Ashley returned. Her face was still pasty white, but she’d dried her tears and seemed to be together.
“You want something to eat?” I might not want to hug the girl, but at least I could feed her. “We’ve got ice cream, of course. And crackers and fruit in the back.”
Her face creased in a pained expression. “Maybe some crackers?”
I gave her a teasing wink. “Sure I can’t convince you to try a little ice cream? Lots of calcium,” I prodded.
“No, thanks. I’m getting really fat. Completely gross.”
Before I could restrain myself, a laugh escaped me. It was, of course, the wrong thing to do. Her face clouded over, and I rushed to smooth her ruffled feathers.
“Oh, honey, you are so far from fat. Trust me.”
She looked uncertain, like she desperately wanted to believe me but just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Before we could wander down the rabbit trail of adolescent female body image, I hustled to the back of the store and grabbed the stash of crackers.
“Now,” I said, plopping the box down on the table between our books, “can you explain the effect of the First World War on the Harlem Renaissance? Because I sure can’t.”
chapter 25
Generally speaking, the May-term American-lit students weren’t Dickerson’s A-team. But apparently we all had strong motivation to pass that exam, because when I arrived at Sinclair Hall the morning of the test, the overwhelming majority of my classmates were already in their seats, ready to rock. They all bent over their notebooks, looks of pained concentration plastered on their faces, cramming frantically.
All, that is, except for Ashley Henderson.
Ashley rested her forehead on her desk as though she felt ill. Her hair was greasy, her skin blotchy, her clothes even more disheveled than ever.
It was so quiet in that room, you could hear a rat piss on cotton. Until Bubba arrived. He slid into the seat behind Ashley and gave her chair a nudge with his foot.
“Hey, Ash, you all set for the test?” he drawled.
She didn’t move except to raise one hand in the one-fingered salute.
He laughed, and elbowed his buddy in the next seat. “Ashley doesn’t have to worry. She can earn an ‘A’ with extra credit.” They all cackled like this was some sort of hilarious joke.
“Shut. Up.”
I took the seat right next to her. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She moaned.
Reggie pushed through the door at the back of the classroom, Alice trailing in his wake. “Good morning, students. Are we all set?”
A collective groan filled the room, but beneath that sound I caught a whimper from Ashley. “Oh, God,” she muttered before she fumbled her way out of her seat, clawed her way over my legs, and dashed up the stairs, shoving both Reggie and Alice out of her way as she went.
The whole class watched her push through the door and disappear. When the door squealed on its hinges as it swung shut, a few students chuckled nervously. Then, from the hall, we all heard the unmistakable sound of retching. The chuckles turned into groans of disgust.
Reggie appeared flummoxed. He looked at Alice, who shook her head tightly. Apparently she did not consider playing nursemaid to Ashley part of her job description.
They both looked at me.
I sighed.
Sure, from the university’s perspective, I was just another undergrad. But I was the oldest person in the room, and even though I didn’t have children of my own, my very presence screamed “mom.” Who better to follow poor Ashley?
Besides, I thought, maybe if I helped Reggie out here, he’d cut me some slack when he graded my exam.
The hallway was empty, but I made an educated guess and headed toward the ladies’ room at the end of the hall.
No Ashley.
I stepped back into the hallway and got my bearings. If I were a vomiting coed, where would I go?
As I scanned the hall, I noticed the unisex bathroom at the far end of the hall, down past the English department’s main office.
I jogged down the hall and knocked softly on the door. From inside, I heard the sound of more retching.
“Ashley? Honey, it’s Tally. Can I get you something?”
“Go away.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m not gonna leave you like this. Do you need a doctor? Can I call your mama for you?”
“No!” The lock clicked, the door opened, and Ashley stuck her face out. Her skin was the color of an unripe honeydew, and her ponytail had fallen out, tangles of dirty blond hair trailing over her shoulders. “I’ll be fine in a few minutes. Just leave me alone, okay?”
I shuffled my feet. I was pretty sure Ashley needed help, and I’d been sent on a mission to rescue her But she didn’t want rescuing. I didn’t know what to do.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m—” Her hand flew to her hair as she spun around and took a few faltering steps toward the toilet. “Oh, God,” she moaned as she sank to her knees.
I slipped through the still-open door, closed and locked it behind me, and then held her hair back as she hugged the bowl and heaved.
When the worst of the spasms subsided, I pulled a wad of paper towels from the dispenser, soaked them in cool water from the tap, and pressed them to the back of her neck.
“How far along are you?” I asked.
She stiffened, as though she might deny it, but then collapsed in sobs.
“Five months,” she wailed.
I felt every day of my thirty-eight years as I crouched down on that tile floor, pulled Ashley Henderson into my arms, and let her cry it out.
“Does your mama know?” I asked softly.
“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago. Lots of the girls miss their periods when they’re working out a lot, and I was training hard so I’d look good for the training program with FitFab. I haven’t even seen my mom since I found out. And I—I just can’t tell her.”
“I understand.”
I did. I had never been in Ashley’s shoes, but I had been Bree’s confidante during her high school pregnancy scare. I could still remember how that tiny, little plastic stick brought my bold-as-brass cousin to her knees.
“My life is over,” she whimpered.
“Oh, no, honey. It’s not.”
Of course, the life she had planned for with her carefully chosen majors and her patient networking, the life where she jump-started her career in the fitness industry by heading off to Chattanooga without a backward glance . . . that life was over. But another life, maybe with a baby and definitely with a lot more perspective, had just started.
I didn’t bother to point that out, though. At that moment, she needed to mourn the future she’d been planning for.
“It is,” she insisted. “I missed the FitFab training program, and when the next one happens, I’ll have a little baby. I won’t be able to go.” Her voice rose steadily as she spoke and her body grew stiff in my grasp. “I’ll be stuck here forever.”
“Shhh,” I soothed. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
The tension seeped from her. “What am I going to do?” she asked softly.
It wasn’t my place to advise this child. She wasn’t mine. I barely knew her.
“First thing we’re going to do is get you some help. I know you’re scared to tell your mother, but trust me, she’ll want to know. And she’ll love you all the way through this.”
She nodded against my shoulder, and I smiled.
“And what about the daddy? He enjoyed the meal; he ought to pay the check.”
Ashley’s sobs returned in full force. “He’s gone,” she cried.
“Gone?” A half-dozen possibilities blew through my mind: my granddad disappearing into the prison system, my own daddy leaving us for his other family in Tulsa, Bree’s favorite stepdaddy leaving on military deployment and never coming back, Alice’s daddy running off with an exotic dancer named Spumanti. . . . Experience had given the women of the Decker family powerful imaginations when it came to men taking a powder.
Still, Ashley took me by surprise when she choked the word “dead” through her tears.
“Dead?” I repeated. She nodded.
Was it . . . ? No. Couldn’t be.
But then I remembered the blond ponytail on the mourner at Bryan’s funeral, the one who broke into hysterics at the mention of the grandchildren Bryan’s mother would never have.
“Ashley, honey, was Bryan Campbell the father?”
The intensity of her weeping gave me my answer, but she confirmed it by nodding again. Then she pulled out of my embrace and wrapped her fingers around my forearms, tight. Her eyes were wild with panic, the whites showing all the way around the irises.
“Oh, God,” she gasped. “You can’t tell anyone. Promise me!”
Just the year before I’d witnessed the heartache and havoc caused by keeping secrets about babies. I couldn’t promise to keep Ashley’s secret. Poor Marla and Steve would be crushed to learn that their son had slept with a student and gotten her pregnant, but the promise of a grandchild would go a long way to softening the blow.
“You have to promise me you won’t tell his parents,” she insisted. “Even Bryan wasn’t going to tell them, because they’d insist on keeping the baby. And I—I don’t know what I want, but I—I don’t want them to know.”
She was tripping over her words, but I knew what she meant. And she was right. Steve and Marla—check that—Marla would insist on being a part of this child’s life. If Ashley wanted to give the child up for adoption, Marla would try to get custody and the child would grow up surrounded by a whole community of people who knew the circumstances of his birth. Or if Ashley wanted to keep the baby, she’d be tied to Marla and Steve, people she didn’t even know, for the rest of her life.
Wait . . .
“Ashley, did you tell Bryan you were pregnant?”
She gave me a “get real” look. “Of course I told him,” she said. “The minute I found out. I thought maybe he’d feel bad and change my grade for me. But he wouldn’t.”
Wow. I couldn’t tell whether that was a sign that Bryan had principles or a sign that he was a cold-hearted jerk. Or both.
“He said it was too late,” she continued. “If he turned in a change-of-grade form, he’d have to provide a reason and get it past a bunch of administrators.”
I didn’t buy that. Oh, I believed Bryan fed her that line, but I didn’t believe it was actually true. I had a sneaking suspicion Bryan could have changed her grade if he wanted to. He could have chalked it up to a math error, for crying out loud. But he wouldn’t want to give up that tiny bit of power he had over Ashley, wouldn’t want her to “win.”
“You could have reported him to the department chair,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Duh. But Bryan said, ‘How do I even know that baby is mine? I don’t even know you’re pregnant.’ And I said, I can do a DNA test. And he said, ‘Not until the baby’s born.’ ”
Bryan raised a good point, God rest his soul.
“Are you sure the baby is Bryan’s?”
“Yes,” she huffed. “I hooked up with him at the Bar None just before Christmas. I called him Dr. Campbell and everything, because I knew he got a kick out of being the big professor.”
Aha. So Ashley was the girl Bryan had hooked up with the night he went out with the debating crowd. Crystal had seen them, and she knew who Ashley was. No wonder Crystal had been so certain that the girl Bryan left with wasn’t a girlfriend.
“I figured it wouldn’t hurt,” Ashley continued. “I’d stroke his ego a bit, have a little fun with him. He was kind of cute, and it was fun breaking the rules like that. And I thought maybe he’d even give me a pass on the extra papers.” She snorted. “Of course he didn’t. When I saw him at the start of spring semester in January, he acted like it never even happened.”
She pulled a dozen sheets of toilet tissue off the roll, mopped her eyes, and blew her nose. “During the first part of the semester, I was busy with my FitFab application and all the interviews, so I wasn’t going out to the bar. And then I started feeling sick so much that I didn’t go out. It never occurred to me that I was . . .” She trailed off and bit her lip, like she didn’t want to let the word escape her mouth.
“Pregnant?” I offered.
“Yeah. It had been months since Bryan and I hooked up, and I hadn’t been with anyone else. I thought you got sick during the first three months.”
I pulled a face. “Everyone’s different,” I said.
“Apparently. Anyway, Bryan is the only guy I’ve slept with since, like, last August. And I haven’t been this way since August.” She pulled her sweatshirt down tight against her body so I could see her tiny baby bump.
Poor Ashley. Bryan got her pregnant and then refused to do the one thing that could make her situation right, give her the grade that would salvage her job with FitFab.
If I had been in Ashley’s sneakers, I would have been angry.
Beyond angry.
Livid.
I thought of Ashley stabbing her notebook with her pen as she ranted about the injustice of having to pass American lit in order to keep her job. With all those pregnancy hormones coursing through her veins and a body made strong by hours at the gym, she could have easily killed Bryan in a fit of rage.
“Did you tell the police about your situation?” I asked carefully.
“What? Why would I . . . ?” Her eyes went wide again as she got my drift. “Oh, God! You don’t think I killed him, do you? I mean, I absolutely did not kill him.” She underscored every word with a vehement shake of her head.
I held up a placating hand, not wanting her to get all riled up again. “You had every right to be angry.”
“Duh,” she said. I was starting to wonder whether the Dickerson faculty taught that particular rhetorical argument in the classroom.
“Bryan should have done the right thing,” I said.
“The right thing? What’s that?” she scoffed. “Look, I may not be a genius, but I’m not stupid. Believe me, I thought about getting revenge on Bryan.” She held up a hand. “Not by killing him, but by ruining him.”
She’d seemed so surprised by the very notion that I might suspect her of
murder that I tended to believe Ashley was innocent. Of course, my gut had steered me wrong before, and I was already figuring out when and how to tell Cal about Ashley’s relationship with Bryan. But, again, Ashley didn’t need to know that right at the moment.
“If you were worried about people believing he was the father, how could you ruin him?”
She shook her head pityingly. “First off, on the Internet , you don’t need any proof. I could have told the whole world Bryan Campbell liked to diddle wild coyotes, posted it on Dickerson D-L anonymously, and I wouldn’t need a lick of evidence.”
“Dickerson D-L?”
“The Dickerson Down-Low. It’s a gossip site for the students here. You can post anonymously and say whatever you want.”
Charming.
“Besides,” she continued, “even if I didn’t have proof the baby was his, I could have reported him to the administration. I’m sure someone saw us at the Bar None. It would have been enough to ruin his credibility and scuttle his own sexual harassment charge against Dr. Clowper.”
I hadn’t even considered the irony of Bryan taking advantage of his own student while he brought a false claim against Emily Clowper for the very same thing. That took balls. Big brass ones.
“If I’d told on Bryan,” Ashley said, “I still probably wouldn’t have graduated. At least, not in time for me to get to Chattanooga. If I kept quiet and kept him on my good side, he could actually help me.”
“Financially?”
“Yeah. He said he wasn’t ready to be a dad, but if the baby was his, he’d take care of us.”
Us. She rested her hand on her tummy, the first sign of maternal instinct I’d seen from her. She might not be ready to name her situation, to say the “p” word out loud, but on some level she’d come to grips with the fact that another little person depended on her now.
Scoop to Kill Page 17
