Crushed by Laura McNeal Page A

received—which, Wickham thought, was about as close as it gets to sending up a flare identifying their exact whereabouts.
    Wickham had never been sure whether he ought to like Dr. Yates for the help he provided or despise him for the distance he kept. What Wickham did resentfully understand was that they needed him. If Dr. Yates never spoke to his mother again, they were both in serious trouble. His grades were bad and, without Dr. Yates to help, college was out. What were they going to live on?
    The nerves in Wickham’s temples felt compressed by the room and the wintry light, and the nausea was getting worse. He took an Excedrin in hopes that he wouldn’t need the Imitrex, which cost fifteen dollars apiece, and then he lay down on the blue cotton spread.
    All Wickham really knew how to do was get people to like him. He knew how to dress, and how to lean close to girls when he talked to them in a low voice. When he’d been deferential with girls in Cypress—when he’d said “ma’am” to their mothers and “sir” to their fathers—these girls would smile at him; even as they stood planted on their shiny hardwood floors, he could feel them slipping out of their bodies and moving toward him. They opened their doors to him; invited him to the country club and to Sunday dinners overlooking green, glassy ponds; and afterward they kissed him with a longing he sometimes fully returned, and sometimes did not.
    Wickham pressed his fingers on his temples, then shifted his body to pull out his wallet and slide from within it a photograph of a dark-haired girl who was laughing so hard she was slightly out of focus. Wickham studied the picture of Jade and thought of Audrey Reed’s finger sliding slowly, habitually, through her long hair and then, finally—already it was something Wickham had learned to watch keenly—bunching it with her hand and pulling it to one side of her head, revealing the bare white skin of her neck. He liked the look of Audrey Reed, and he liked the look of her friends. They dressed in that slyly tasteful way of preppy girls, at once prim and revealing. They wore their hair long and fixed it only with bands or ribbons. And they were girls, he could tell, who were accustomed to nice things—especially Audrey, and this drew him to her.
    Wickham wondered if eating would make his headache go away. Sometimes meat helped, or sugar, and he was due at Audrey’s in less than an hour. He stood up, took the Little Dragon take-out menu from the top drawer, and dialed the number on the cover. When a man answered, Wickham said, “Mr. Wong, hey, I’m placing an order, but first I’ve got a question. I know you’re sending the bills to my dad in South Carolina, but I just wanted to be sure he was getting them and, you know, there were no snafus in getting paid or anything.”
    Mr. Wong told him only one bill had gone out, but it had been paid, no problem.
    Wickham took this in. “Okay,” he said, and placed his order. “But don’t send it here,” he added. “It goes to 1501 Van Buren. Around 6:45, okay?”
    â€œNo problem,” Mr. Wong said.
    Wickham slid Jade’s picture back into his wallet and sat back down at the desk. He picked up the telephone and, while arranging for a taxi, heard the click of the downstairs telephone. “I’m on the line, Mom,” he said, and she quietly hung up. He knew what she was doing, because he’d seen her do it countless times.
    She was making sure the phone worked.

Chapter 14
    Messages Written and Not
    Audrey knew she shouldn’t be secretly relieved that her father was working late that night, but she was. And she knew she should run a space heater in the breakfast room, where they could both eat and study, rather than turn on the forced-air heater, which her father was trying not to use (“Why deplete our natural resources?” he’d joked). But