Crushed Page 13

  “Any progress on the music front?” C.C. asked Audrey, pointing to the cassette player.

  “I tried tweezers,” Audrey said. “They didn’t work, either.”

  C.C. sighed. “Then let’s visit the one-record record shop,” she said, punching the power button and releasing sprightly soprano voices from within: “Ev’rything is a source of fun. Nobody’s safe, for we care for none!”

  From the backseat, Lea said, “I think you need to ditch Wickham.”

  Audrey gave her a quick look of surprise. “You do?”

  Lea nodded.

  “How come?”

  “So I can grab the discard.”

  They all laughed, and in the warm familiarity of the car Audrey considered telling them everything—about the quiz, the Heisenberg paper, even the car accident that hadn’t been Wickham’s fault—but C.C. said, “You guys hear what they did to Miss Taylor?” and the opportunity was gone.

  What they’d done to Miss Taylor was superimpose a blowup of her yearbook head shot on a National Geographic foldout of a three-thousand-year-old mummified woman. Then, when no one was there, they used a human pyramid to pin it to the ceiling of her classroom so that it required a janitor and a ladder to get it down. Audrey remembered Mrs. Leacock’s warning that the weakest individuals were the ones most likely to be infected by the germs The Yellow Paper carried.

  “I guess that’s funny,” Lea said doubtfully, and Audrey, thinking of Wickham, said, “Not if you’re Miss Taylor.”

  Audrey pulled up in front of C.C.’s house, where both C.C. and Lea climbed out. “Okay,” Audrey said to both of them. “So you’re going to change your clothes and then come over?” They were all going to make cookies and study together, but C.C. needed to bring her own car so she could drive to her aunt’s birthday party afterward.

  “Right,” C.C. said. “See you in ten minutes.”

  Audrey drove the rest of the way home wondering how she might get Wickham to talk about the accident without her directly mentioning it. She was sitting in the driveway, still wondering, when a big white truck pulled up.

  It parked at the curb, and three men in sweatshirts and blue jeans hopped out. Small cursive letters on the side of the truck read, ANCHOR BROS. TRANSPORTATION SERVICES. The men walked up Audrey’s driveway and, to her surprise, opened her front door and went in.

  Audrey gathered her books, scrambled out of her car, and picked her way across the icy patches of the driveway. There was another, smaller truck already parked behind the house, and it read, ANCHOR BROS., too. Maybe her dad was home. If he wasn’t, maybe she shouldn’t go into the house. She stood on the porch uncertainly, then pushed softly on the door.

  “Dad?”

  A few seconds passed, and then he called, “I’m in here.”

  His voice came from the study, where two men in dirty blue sweatshirts had picked up her father’s desk and were carrying it out the French doors. The room was freezing, as if the doors had been open a long time, and the office supplies her father had taken out of the drawers and off the top of the desk were scattered across the floor and bookshelves.

  Audrey was dumbfounded. “Are we moving?” she said.

  “Yes,” her father said, opening a cupboard and pulling out a box. He started dumping pens and CDs and paper clips into it even though it was a file box half full of papers.

  “To where?”

  “A place nearby. Don’t worry. You won’t have to change schools.”

  “I hate my school,” Audrey said. “What I mind is changing houses.”

  He didn’t look at her. In a strange, lifeless voice, he said, “We all have to give up things.”

  He scooped up the remaining clips and pens and framed photographs and set them on the leather chair. But the men had come back from the truck and were standing by the chair, waiting to take it. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered, and tried to scrape up everything again. This time he set the bits and pieces in the trash can, and the men picked up the chair.

  “Why didn’t you at least tell me so we could pack?” Audrey asked. “I mean, did you decide we were moving this morning ?”

  It scared Audrey that her father was scrambling around his office with pens and paperweights. He was usually so organized. She felt as if she were having one of those nightmares where every door you open leads to a stranger world.

  Audrey picked up a framed photograph of her mother to keep it from getting broken. “Are they taking all the furniture to the new house and then coming back for the little stuff?”

  One of the men, the only one who was middle-aged, looked at her father when she asked that. Her father said, “Something like that,” and looked dully at Audrey. The middle-aged mover turned to the guy standing next to him and said, “Let’s roll up this rug now.”

  Audrey watched them begin to roll up the rug, which she knew from overheard conversations to be a hundred years old and authentically Persian, and heard heavy footsteps upstairs.

  “Are they doing my room now?” Audrey asked suddenly. She hurried from the study, wondering if her father had actually gone crazy and what she would do if he had. She was starting to take the stairs two at a time when C.C. and Lea walked in the wide-open front door. C.C., who’d been unwinding her scarf, stopped. Lea stood absolutely still, a bag of chocolate chips in her hand. Finally, C.C. said slowly, “Why are the repo men here?”

  Audrey looked at C.C. “They’re not repo men,” she said.

  “Oh,” C.C. said, and her cheeks pinkened. “It’s just that my cousin Mark works for Anchor Brothers,” she stammered. “I thought that’s what he said they do. Maybe I’ve got it mixed up.”

  “My dad said we’re moving, is all,” Audrey said. A few minutes ago, moving had seemed like the most outrageous thing her father could do. Now she climbed into the idea as if it were a lifeboat.

  “Why?” Lea asked. “I love this house.”

  Audrey didn’t say anything.

  “Where are you going?” C.C. asked.

  “Somewhere nearby, my father said. It’s a surprise, I guess.”

  Two men carried a velvet sofa to the doorway and waited for C.C. and Lea to move away from it. On the backs of their dark, dirty sweatshirts were dirty white anchors.

  “You could ask them,” Lea suggested. “They probably know where they’re taking it all.”

  Audrey sensed the danger in this. She might learn her new address, or she might find out in front of C.C. and Lea that their furniture was, in fact, being repossessed, which meant her father had somehow gone broke. “I doubt it,” Audrey said. “They probably just carry the furniture to some warehouse.”

  C.C. and Lea nodded. “It’s freezing in here,” Lea said.

  Audrey glanced up the stairs. “Look, I have to finish packing. I don’t think I can make cookies after all.”

  “Want us to help?” C.C. asked.

  “No,” Audrey said, trying to sound normal. “I’ll just finish up and call you later, okay?” She looked back at them and realized she was about to cry.

  “Okay,” C.C. said, and she and Lea stepped uncertainly back. In a soft, regretful voice, Lea said, “Bye, Audrey.”

  After they left, Audrey moved stiffly up the stairs and then, at the door to her room, stopped short.

  Chapter 44

  Start-up

  She couldn’t believe it. She simply couldn’t believe it.

  Her mattress lay on the floor, and her clothes and bedding lay in a heap on top of the mattress. The dresser, nightstand, and mirror were already gone. The headboard and footboard were gone.

  Audrey lay down on the pile of clothes and tried to make herself believe that all of these familiar things would be rearranged in another house as soon as tomorrow, and they would be hers again.

  From down the hall, she could hear a man saying, “You’re supposed to leave that lamp on. It’s some kind of shrine or something.”

  “Why’s the room empty?”

  “No clue.” He paused. “Okay, th
en. Let’s hit the piano.”

  Audrey pulled some of the clothes and blankets over her and burrowed into the rest. She lay within the clothes for a long time, but couldn’t get warm. Beyond her, heavy scraping sounds and bumps and grunts continued for a while, and then, finally, the house was still. She peered out of the blankets. The light was pale blue in her room, the color of twilight. She lay looking at the walls and remembering Oggy. Did Oggy know they were moving? Were the men taking Oggy’s things, too?

  “Audrey?” Her father, from downstairs.

  Audrey didn’t answer at first. He called again.

  “Up here,” Audrey said.

  She sat up and straightened her hair. It seemed to take him a long time to climb the stairs. When he reached her doorway, he came in but didn’t flip on the light. Instead, he crossed the room and stood looking out the window at the darkening blue roofs and white skiffs of old snow.

  “I lost the house,” he said.

  Audrey didn’t know what to say to this.

  “I tried to save it, but that’s how I lost it.”

  Audrey twisted the fringe of a scarf Oggy had knitted for her and wished very, very hard that Oggy were here to stop all of this.

  “I was having trouble making the payments and doing the upkeep, so when this start-up company came to me with a proposal for spam-screening software, I thought, This could really go somewhere. And it could have. It was a brilliant idea.”

  Audrey twisted the fringe. She didn’t want to hear this story. She wanted Oggy. She wanted her house, and her room, and the life that had always been hers.

  “I helped the start-up guys pitch the software and business plan to my employers, but they passed. I felt they were wrong, so I invested myself.” He sighed and stared off into the distance. “Some problems developed, and the start-up needed more money.”

  He’d taken a second mortgage on the house, whatever that meant. He’d sold jewelry. He’d sold the Jaguar. He’d tried to cut back on expenses. And then Mr. Maryonovich had found out he’d invested in the company.

  Her father’s shirt was white, almost glowing, against the blue of the window. Audrey was hungry now, besides being cold. She pulled on one blue mitten and tried to find the other one. “What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

  “It was in my employment contract. No private investing in projects presented to but declined by Maryonovich, Siegel and Greenbrier.”

  Her father was quiet.

  From the next-door driveway, Audrey heard a car door slam, and then the engine started. “Be right back!” someone called—probably Mr. Key—but right now, to Audrey, it was just somebody completely different from her, somebody whose life was the same tonight as it had been this morning.

  Her father said, “I was fired.”

  Fired? Her father fired? “When was this?”

  Her father breathed deeply in, then out. “Almost a year ago.”

  A year ago? Audrey found the other mitten and pulled it on. “Then why’d you have to work late all the time?”

  Another deep sigh. “Working at the start-up, trying to make it go.”

  Audrey clenched her mittened hands and waited.

  “They filed for chapter eleven two weeks ago.”

  A silence, then Audrey said, “What about Oggy? When she comes back from Germany, she’ll just follow us, right?”

  Her father stared out the window and said nothing. Then he said, “I don’t think we can afford to bring her back.”

  Audrey stood up with the mittens on and put Oggy’s scarf around her neck. “That’s not possible,” she said. “Of course she’ll come back.”

  Her father turned to look at her, then stared out at the darkening neighborhood.

  “I can’t promise that,” her father said. Then: “It’s just that keeping the house was my way of . . . keeping your mother. A poor way, probably, but . . .”

  Audrey was glad the room was dark. She didn’t want to see her father’s face too clearly, or for him to see hers. She wondered what sort of place they were going to now, and if anyone—her mother, Oggy—could follow them there. No one would keep the light on in the window now, that was for sure.

  To Audrey, it was as if all the important lights had just been switched off.

  Chapter 45

  The Visiting Hour

  Clyde’s Monday afternoon was no better. He had his book bag over his shoulder and was feeling better than he had in weeks when he reached the parking lot. The vase was done. It would have to dry now and then be fired, and then he could glaze it for the second firing. If everything went just right, both firings could be done by Christmas vacation.

  When he got to his scooter, he noticed at once that its footpeg was wet. Which was strange, because although snow was banked at the sides of the lot, the asphalt was dry.

  Clyde bent closer to look, then touched a finger to the wetness and brought his finger close to his nose.

  “Would you call it ‘uriniferous’?”

  Clyde, turning, found himself face to face with Theo Driggs. Theo wasn’t alone. Stepping out from behind a van and moving closer were four or five of his drones.

  Theo moved close to him and pretended interest in the wetness. “Looks like some stray dog took a shine to your scooter.” Then: “Looks like a lot of product there, though.” Then: “Maybe it was a horse of some kind.” He turned his smile now to Clyde. “Maybe even a horse’s ass.”

  Clyde didn’t say a thing, although he remembered it was the Biggest Horse’s Ass award that Theo had won in The Yellow Paper. The cold was chafing, and Clyde’s bare hands smarted.

  Theo said, “So what do you know about The Yellow Paper ?”

  “What?” Clyde said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  Theo actually chuckled. “I think you do. I think you are a scooterist–slash–spineless yellow journalist.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clyde said. He had an uneasy feeling that his words made him sound more guilty than innocent.

  “I’m talking about a reliable source—a little rich girl who turned stoolie and sang your song.”

  “What?” Clyde said. Then: “Who?”

  “A girl with long legs,” Theo said. He looked away, and Clyde followed his gaze. On the horizon was a hilly park, gray-brown and subdued in the wintry air, its trees and bushes stripped. At its edge, two-story houses stuck out of the trees and absorbed what remained of the weak sunlight. Some of the windows were yellow with light, and smoke rose from two or three of the chimneys. Clyde wished he were in one of those houses.

  Still looking out, Theo said, “Visiting hour is over.”

  Clyde was wondering what this meant when the first blows fell from behind.

  He turned, and in the flurry and blur of flesh and fists and faces, Clyde tried to find Theo’s nose and shot out a series of rights.

  “Fight!” someone yelled from across the parking lot, and other voices began chiming in, too. “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”

  Chapter 46

  Bearbaiting

  Bare trees forked upward into the white sky.

  This was what Clyde, lying on the ground, first became aware of when he opened his eyes—that, and the seepage of blood through his nose and into his mouth.

  “Back off, juveniles,” a deep male voice said. “The fun is over.”

  The tight circle of gawkers around Clyde and Theo loosened slightly, and the man with the deep voice stepped inside. He was one of the security guys, a black man. He looked down at Clyde’s face and said, “Oh, Christ.”

  Behind him, kids still stood around—guys mostly, but girls, too, watching with bright eyes, their faces pink from the cold, their breath like fog.

  The guard looked at Theo, who still stood with clenched fists, breathing heavily. Then the guard turned to the onlookers. “What happened here?”

  “Just a fight,” someone said, and then one of Theo’s friends added, “That kid on the ground started it.”

 
“Yeah, I believe that,” said the guard, who clearly didn’t. “Okay, why don’t all you losers except Driggs find yourself a change of venue?” When nobody moved, he growled, “I’m talking immediately.”

  The students began to move away, grudgingly peeling their eyes away from Clyde on the ground. They all looked so interested, as if he were in one of those medieval street acts where someone came to town with a bear on a chain and people stood around watching a pack of dogs set loose to attack it.

  He’d been the bear. He’d been the it.

  He stared again at the long, spindly tree-fingers pointing up to the sky.

  “Get up, Mumsford,” the security guard said.

  Clyde turned onto his side, breathing hard. He knelt, then stood. His legs felt boneless, ready to buckle.

  “Well, I can only hope you screwups had fun,” the guard said, “because now we go see Murchison to tote up the bill.”

  As Clyde took a first step forward, he touched a finger to his upper lip and brought it away smeared with blood.

  Chapter 47

  How Come

  Murchison’s office was as bright and clean as an operating room. Clyde and Theo had to sit in a kind of foyer listening to the buzz of the fluorescent tubes while they waited for their “guardians” to arrive. Theo’s uncle arrived first, a heavyset man whose half-closed eyelids didn’t disguise his pride in the obvious difference between Clyde’s damage to Theo and Theo’s damage to Clyde. Theo and his uncle went into Murchison’s office and closed the door. After they left, Clyde was still waiting.

  “Why don’t you go wash up before your dad sees you?” Murchison said.

  Clyde walked to the bathroom, where he got the blood off his face, but his shirt was hopeless. He tried not to look at himself again, or to touch his swollen eye, or to think about Theo Driggs. He returned to the brown vinyl chairs and closed his eyes until he heard the door open. His father was here. Now he would see.

  His father didn’t say anything, though. He followed Clyde into the office and listened to Mr. Murchison describe the school policy on fighting, and the number of days—three— Clyde would be suspended. “I understand,” his father said, and signed the papers put in front of him.