Crushed

by Laura McNeal

  What he’d seen and what he was feeling had gathered together to form a fact, and by the time Clyde reached the Parkview Apartments, he carried that fact like a deadweight.

  She was rich, and he was not.

  Even when he and his parents had lived in their own house, their porch chairs had been some kind of plastic. Tonight, after locking his scooter in the garage, he looked around. Dirty Saturns and Geos. Old Buicks and rusting Cutlasses.

  A little drive-by, he’d thought. What harm could it do?

  The answer was, plenty.

  This morning he’d believed that Audrey Reed sat only a few rows away from him, within striking distance, but he’d been wrong. She lived in another country.

  He walked to the elevator, and when the door opened, he didn’t bother to hold his breath. He just closed his eyes and stepped in.

  “Hi,” his mother said when Clyde slipped into the apartment. “Were you gone a long time, or did it just seem like it?”

  “It wasn’t that long,” he said, and fell silent.

  His mother was studying him. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  No, he thought. But he said, “Yeah,” and sat down beside her to watch TV. His mother was still watching her cooking shows. At the moment, the chef was twisting the knuckles of cooked lobster claws, the kind of skill, Clyde supposed, you might actually need in another part of town.

  Chapter 9

  Passersby

  The window in front of Audrey’s desk overlooked the wide front lawn, and between two white oaks she had a clear line of sight to the street. It was a quiet street—only the occasional car drove by. Tonight she’d looked up when a single headlight slowly passed—a motor scooter, she guessed, from the sound of it—and she’d noticed when, shortly thereafter, it slowly passed again, which seemed odd.

  These were the times Audrey wished Oggy were here, or her father.

  She switched off her light, opened the window slightly, and positioned herself to the side of it. The headlight didn’t come again, but a minute or two later she thought she saw a shadowy form down by the stone wall, a dark outline that looked roughly like a head and perhaps shoulders. And just when she was able to tell herself she was imagining things, it moved, or seemed to move—she wasn’t sure.

  Audrey slid down to the floor and, with a raised hand, felt for her telephone. She called her father’s office—no answer—and then dialed C.C. but got Brian, who turned down what sounded like Gypsy music that he’d been playing loud.

  “An intruder?” he said in his stretched-out voice after she’d explained. “Intruders suck hind teat, man.”

  That seemed helpful. Audrey said, “Let me talk to C.C., Brian.”

  “She’s off power-walking with the mom-creature, but not to worry, I’ll be there in five,” he said. A few minutes later, to Audrey’s utter amazement, Brian and two other boys did appear on the lawn, and began shining flashlights all over the place. Audrey walked out.

  “You the damsel in distress?” Brian said when he saw her. Besides a flashlight, he was carrying a baseball bat. So were the other two guys—friends of Brian’s, evidently.

  “What’re the bats for?” she said.

  Brian grinned. “If we found the intruder, we were going to apply a little tough love.”

  “But you didn’t find the intruder.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s true, but the other side of the coin is, he didn’t find us.”

  Audrey gave him a long look and said, “There’s something seriously wrong with your motherboard,” which Brian seemed to view as a compliment.

  Across the street, porch lights suddenly came on.

  “I think the neighbors are wondering what’s going on,” Audrey said. “You guys want to come in for a Coke or something?”

  Brian shook his head. “We’re on duty, lady,” he said mock-solemnly, and led his two goofy-looking friends away.

  Audrey went back to her window and waited another five or ten minutes, but the rider didn’t pass by again.

  “Who do you think it was?” C.C. asked when she and Audrey and Lea were having their nightly 9 p.m. conference call.

  “No idea,” Audrey said.

  “Probably a psychopath,” Lea said quietly, and both C.C. and Audrey laughed.

  When they were all quiet again, C.C. said, “So who do you hope it was?”

  Wickham Hill, Audrey thought at once, but she said, “Mark Strauss.” Mark Strauss had been C.C.’s tennis coach for a while.

  “Kind of hard to imagine Mark Strauss out scooter-cruising in Jemison,” C.C. said.

  Audrey laughed. “Kind of hard, but kind of fun,” she said.

  Later, while Audrey was lying in bed, it occurred to her that Clyde Mumsford’s carrying a helmet around didn’t necessarily mean he drove a motorcycle. He could just as easily drive a scooter. And she’d caught him staring at her more than once. She closed her eyes and his image appeared before her. He was halfway handsome, but he was also strange and intense, and always hanging back on the fringes of things, like a . . .

  Like a what?

  Lea’s word came to mind.

  Like a psychopath, she thought, and wished for the gazillionth time that her father were in the house, or Oggy.

  Chapter 10

  Schrödinger’s Cat

  The next day, Audrey’s heart began to race as she approached Mrs. Leacock’s classroom. She hoped to see Wickham Hill, but feared what she might feel if she didn’t. And she hoped he might talk to her, but worried how much she would blush or stammer if he did.

  Inside the classroom, Mrs. Leacock was squeakily writing formulas on the board. Audrey tried not to look too quickly toward her seat, and the seat behind hers, but when she did, she realized it didn’t matter.

  Wickham Hill wasn’t there.

  She sat down, and as she looked up at the wall clock, the minute hand moved from 10:41 to 10:42. Three more minutes to tardy.

  And then, through the open door, she saw him standing in the hallway, talking to Sands Mandeville, and suddenly Audrey felt small and disheartened and peevish, all at the same time.

  Handsome Wickham Hill stood there, loose and comfortable in his own skin, in khaki pants and a black T-shirt, smiling and listening and saying things that made Sands laugh and touch his bare arm. Sands wrote something down on a piece of notebook paper, then tore it off and handed it to him.

  Thirty seconds before the tardy bell, Wickham ducked into the room and strolled toward his desk. Audrey averted her eyes.

  “Hey,” he drawled in a low voice as he slipped into his chair, and when Audrey said nothing, he whispered, “You okay up there?”

  “I’m fine,” Audrey said in a frosty voice.

  Mrs. Leacock walked over to close the classroom door. As she returned, she said, “It would behoove you to take notes. Today we talk about Schrödinger’s Cat.”

  If this had been Patrice’s class, someone would have suggested they talk instead about, say, Zondra’s dog, or Sands’s three asses, but this wasn’t Patrice’s class, it was Mrs. Leacock’s, and everybody was quiet.

  Schrödinger’s Cat, Mrs. Leacock explained, was Erwin Schrödinger’s famous example of the conceptual problems presented by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. A cat is penned in a steel chamber along with a Geiger counter containing a minuscule amount of radioactive material. If a single atom decays in the course of an hour, the Geiger counter tube releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid, “leaving you,” Mrs. Leacock said, “with a—”

  “Dead cat,” said several students in unison.

  “Perhaps. But it is just as likely that no atom has decayed, the acid remains in the flask, and the cat remains alive. Until we open the box, both possibilities co-exist. According to the uncertainty principle, the cat is alive and the cat is dead. Two opposing realities are equally true, which Herr Schrödinger found nonsensical.”

  “Him and me both,” Wickham Hill said in a soft drawl, and Mrs. Leacock abruptly stopped t
alking and looked his way.

  “A question, Mr. Hill? Or perhaps some illuminating comment?”

  A bare moment passed, and then Wickham said, “A question. If the point of Heisenberg’s theory is to make everything doubtful that was previously clear, isn’t it going to be pretty hard to test us on it?”

  A few muffled snickers, and Mrs. Leacock’s stiff expression stiffened further. She twisted the ring on her left hand. “Oh, trust me, Mr. Hill. I’ll find a way.”

  The classroom fell completely still, and Mrs. Leacock continued.

  A strange thing then occurred. As Audrey sat listening to Mrs. Leacock, she became gradually more aware of Wickham’s presence behind her, the way you might be aware of a sunlamp on your back.

  She also realized that her icy feelings toward him had completely melted. She wanted in the worst way to turn and whisper something to him, or even pass him a note, but he was now so clearly the focus of Mrs. Leacock’s vigilance that she didn’t dare. Finally, the clock ticked to 11:35 and the bell rang.

  She was gathering her things together when Wickham leaned close to her and said, “There’s some missing data there.”

  The sugary smell of Christmas hung pleasantly in the air, and she was looking into his brown eyes. “What data?” she said.

  He nodded at the cover of her green notebook. “Name. Address.” He raised his eyes and let them fall on her. “No phone number.”

  Audrey couldn’t help herself. She said, “Haven’t you collected enough telephone numbers for one day?”

  A look of confusion passed over Wickham Hill’s face. Then, glancing toward the open front door, he seemed to realize what she’d seen. He grinned and shrugged. “Tell you what,” he said in his slow, lazy-seeming voice, “you give me your number and I’ll throw hers away.”

  “You would?”

  His smile shrank into an expression of pleasant solemnity. “I would.”

  Audrey felt her whole body going soft. “What would you do with my number if you had it?”

  His eyes danced, and he leaned a little closer. “Oh, something really pleasant,” he drawled, “is what I’d do with your number if I had it.”

  Audrey felt herself being transported somewhere she’d never before been. It scared her, but it also pulled at her. “Like what?” she said.

  With complete ease he said, “Oh, like calling you to set up a little study session on Heidenger and Schoenberg.”

  “Heisenberg and Schrödinger,” Audrey said.

  He grinned. “You can see I’m in need.”

  Audrey was staring into his eyes and telling herself to look away, but she couldn’t.

  “How about tonight?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Your place or mine?”

  Oggy was in Germany and Audrey’s father probably wouldn’t be home, so she should suggest someplace neutral— the library, say, or even Bing’s—but she heard herself say, “My house is fine.”

  “Sixish?” he said, and there was something about his assurance that made Audrey realize he’d made dozens of dates like this, possibly hundreds, and that dozens of girls had felt the thrilling buoyancy she was feeling now. But it didn’t matter, because this was the first time in her life she’d felt this way.

  “Sure,” she said. “Sixish is fine.”

  “You supply the brains and I’ll supply the supper.”

  “You will?”

  He smiled and nodded and rose from his chair.

  “Do you want me to tell you where I live?”

  He stopped and tossed a quick look toward her green notebook. “Already know,” he said, and she had the feeling, watching him walk away, that he knew she was watching.

  She thought suddenly of an experiment you could perform at the science museum downtown. If you pushed a button, the machine would make a low sound like a foghorn, and if you adjusted the pitch just right, the surface of the bowl of water in the center of the machine would begin to vibrate.

  Wickham Hill was the sound, and she was the bowl of water.

  Chapter 11

  The Yellow Paper

  “Did you see this?” C.C. said as Audrey approached the knoll during the lunch break. She was holding up a bright yellow sheet of paper.

  “What is it?”

  “Take a look for yourself. Lea’s already circled the good stuff.”

  The top of the page read THE YELLOW PAPER, and below that, in smaller letters, All the News Unfit to Print, and The underground newspaper no self-respecting citizens would admit to publishing, so we’re not admitting it either. The masthead featured an old-fashioned engraving of whalers harpooning a barely submerged beast.

  There were various columns alleging thinly veiled romantic intrigues (Word on the street is it’s MizK2 and Studly Jr until the 12th of Never and that’s a long long time unless say on the 11th MizK should hear about Jr’s recent acquaintance with paternity testing) and odd news stories (You won’t find anything in the official organ—no not that organ and that’s not what we mean by keeping your hands to yourself and you know who you are don’t you?—about raccoon poo in Room 332 but we’re here to tell you there was stated poo found in stated room though absent raccoon tracks there are concerns within The Administration about a Poo Broker so to speak who might’ve transferred stated poo from stated animal’s woody habitat to teacher’s desktop in stated room).

  Audrey looked up, grinning. “Not much on punctuation, are they?”

  “Big on weird capitalization, though,” Lea said.

  C.C. said, “Turn it over. Good stuff’s on the other side.”

  In The Tattler, the official school newspaper, there was a column called “Shouted” that had at its head a cartoon of a little man shouting into a bullhorn. In The Yellow Paper, the same cartoon was used, but the column title had been changed to “Outed.”

  Lea had circled two items. The first one read:

  Hold on to your poles, Bargemen (no, not those poles) but it turns out you aren’t alone in your youthful indiscretions . . . Joining you is the teacher hip enough to go by one name and it’s not Prince, Cher or Jewel but why not call her Winona because once upon a time (or for you Fact Freaks and you know who you are make that Aug 11, 1972) in Filene’s Basement our good teacher acquired several garments Winona-style probably the medication she was taking or maybe a role she was studying for can explain it because we can’t but then who are we to hurl the first harpoon? . . .

  Audrey looked up. “Yikes.”

  “Which one?” C.C. said.

  “Patrice shoplifting.”

  C.C. nodded. “Keep reading.”

  The second circled item in the “Outed” column read:

  Zounds! . . . Iz they iz or iz they izn’t? . . . Z-Gal’s zilent when it comes to the zubject but our zource zites a cosmetic zurgeon in Zaratoga as the zite of the Great Augmentation (our reporters in their unyielding impartial search for Truth & Injustice remain open to personal inspection of the great glands) . . . And this just in from our upstate bureau: A Big Congratz, O Sandy One! . . . Thatz right, the Z-Gal’s zandy zidekick’s been accepted early deci sion at Mount Holyoke thereby laying to rest all talk about Holyoke’s discriminating against the leotarded (“SATs never tell the whole story,” the Vice Dean of Admissions told our reporters. “We take other things, including really good jazz dancing, into account in order to get the diversity we seek.”) . . .

  “Pretty harsh,” Audrey said.

  “But I notice you’re grinning,” C.C. said.

  “Well, Patrice, Zondra, and Sands. If you asked me to pick worthy targets—”

  Lea said, “Somebody told me The Yellow Paper came out a couple of times last year, and the administration had a cow.”

  C.C. laughed. “Then I guess they’re calving again.”

  “And they never caught them?” Audrey asked.

  Lea shook her head no.

  C.C. had brought cucumber sandwiches, Audrey’s personal favorite, and as she passed them to the others, sh
e said, “Maybe it’s not a them, then. Maybe it’s a him.”

  “The Yellow Man,” Audrey said, chewing.

  Lea said quietly, “Or the Yellow Girl.”

  Right, Audrey thought. Why should one gender have a corner on revenge? An icy breeze came up, and Audrey shivered.

  “That’s him,” C.C. said suddenly, and Audrey turned to follow C.C.’s gaze to a boy walking alone across the quad. It was Wickham Hill. Spring in the middle of wintry thoughts.

  “That’s he,” Lea corrected, looking, too. “But who is he?”

  Before Audrey could speak, C.C. said, “The new boy. The dreamy one.”

  A soft-handed pride held Audrey for a moment.

  Lea said “dreamy” seemed excessive.

  “You should see him up close,” C.C. said.

  They all watched as Wickham Hill moved easily into a group of boys in the quad.

  “His name’s Wickham Hill,” Audrey said, almost blurting it out.

  “Wicked Hill?” C.C. asked, laughing.

  “Wicked Hill,” Lea repeated. “It sounds like a skateboard park. Or a rapper.”

  “It’s Wickham Hill,” Audrey said. “He’s nice, and he’s coming to my house tonight to study physics.”

  She didn’t look at C.C. or Lea, but she could feel their eyes turning to her, as heliotropes to the sun.

  A few seconds passed; then C.C. said, “God, Audrey.”

  It was the first time in her friendship with C.C. that Audrey had ever felt truly envied.

  C.C. said, “Well, if he needs help with French, you let him know Lea and I are aces on the subjunctive.”

  Audrey smiled. “I will,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  Strangeness

  What occurred in Patrice’s class that afternoon exceeded even the expected strangeness. When the tardy bell rang, Patrice wasn’t there, and Sands and Zondra weren’t there, but there was the anticipation of an entrance, so the class was unusually subdued. And a minute or so later, Patrice and Sands did walk in, followed by the principal, Mrs. Pardoo. The class fell deadly quiet.