Crushed by Laura McNeal

otherwise remember about the class was how it seemed to last a day, not an hour, and the relief she felt when she finally joined the stream of students exiting the classroom.
    â€œWhew!” C.C. said as she and Lea joined Audrey in the flow. Lea said quietly, “Whew cubed.”
    As the three girls paused on the steps before setting off in different directions, Audrey gave the others a playful grin and said she was going to go home and brush up on her physics.
    â€œAudrey, honey, don’t forget to tell Wicked that if he needs help with French, we’re there for him,” C.C. said.
    â€œAnd find out his story,” Lea said. “We want all the little details.”
    As she walked away, Audrey felt ready for anything—if she hadn’t been within eyeshot of Jemison High, she would’ve broken into a run.
Yeah,
she thought as she walked springily along.
What’s your story, Wickham Hill? Inquiring minds want to
know.

Chapter 13
    Dr. Yates
    That afternoon, Wickham Hill sat in his bedroom on the second floor of his father’s old house and listened to his mother run the vacuum downstairs.
    There was a desk by the window, and as he sat there with his unopened textbooks, he fingered the place on the black desktop where the initials J.E.Y. 5/30/56 had been scratched. James Edward Yates, of course. His actual but unofficial father, whom he always referred to as “Dr. Yates,” not “Dad” or “Father.” The next set of scratches read,
First date: Elaine
Harcourt. 8/2/62.
That first date had started a process that led to marriage, and Dr. Yates was still married to the former Elaine Harcourt, which was why Wickham’s occasional lunches with Dr. Yates had taken place in Myrtle Beach, two hours away. Nowhere on the desk was Wickham’s mother’s name or her initials. As Wickham traced the scratches with his finger, he felt little prickles of resentment, and he imagined himself with a piece of steel wool and some acetone, expunging Dr. and Mrs. Yates.
    Downstairs, the vacuum noise stopped. Wickham guessed that his mother was listening for the phone, making sure she didn’t miss its ring. After a moment, the vacuum whirred to life again.
    His mother didn’t call what had happened between her and Dr. Yates an affair. She said they “saw” one another. They had been “seeing” one another episodically for eighteen years. She loved him and he loved her, but he had responsibilities. It was, as she put it, “complicated.”
    It was especially complicated now. Since the big showdown in the courts, Dr. Yates wouldn’t even speak to Wickham’s mother. He wouldn’t return calls made to his office, and he’d changed his cell phone number. Two months ago, Wickham’s mother had told Wickham they were moving to a house in New York State that she had, at various times, visited with Dr. Yates. She had a key, she said. She would find a nursing job. He would enroll in school. And then his mother had said, “He’ll come to us there when he comes to his senses.”
    Which, in spite of—or perhaps because of—all the times Dr. Yates had treated them badly or let them down, Wickham wanted to believe as much as his mother did.
    Dr. Yates was sentimental about the house—he’d actually been born in one of the upstairs bedrooms—and he’d always told Wickham’s mother that this was where they would come and live permanently when finally they could. He’d kept his membership at the country club, and he had open accounts with the florist, the taxi company, In & Out Dry Cleaners, the Little Dragon Restaurant, and Peter’s Old Town Market, with the bills going to his office in South Carolina, where they could be discreetly paid by his accountant. For the past few weeks, Wickham and his mother had been charging their purchases to those accounts, and by now the bills should have been sent and