Read Online Crushed by Laura McNeal - Free Book Online Page A

took a deep breath before stepping into the elevator.
Today The Mummy talks to Audrey Reed.

Chapter 16
    Another Candidate
    â€œMorbidly shy.”
    That was the term his doctor had used when talking to Clyde’s mother about Clyde’s ingrown nature. Clyde was nine or ten at the time. “He’s morbidly shy,” the doctor had said, “but I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Many children go through it, and most outgrow it.”
    But Clyde hadn’t outgrown it. His father had tried to give Clyde’s nature a positive spin (“Clyde understands that it’s what people do that counts, not what they say”), but his mother worried about the social consequences of Clyde’s silence (“It makes you seem so
solemn,
” she said), and she’d suggested speech class or Junior Toastmasters or even at-home charades, all without success, and then she’d become sick and more important worries had supplanted this one.
    Clyde had read books on the subject
(Start by looking the
stranger in the eye and saying, “Hello, I’m Patrick [or, as the case
may be, Patricia]”),
but couldn’t take them seriously. (In the bathroom mirror, Clyde had looked himself in the eye and said, “Hello, I’m Patrick, or, as the case may be, Patricia.”) He’d locked himself in the bathroom and pretended to conduct lighthearted conversations with a stranger, but the slight resulting confidence vanished the moment he stepped out of the bathroom.
    Audrey, hi. I don’t know if you know me, but I’m Clyde
Mumsford, and I was wondering . . .
    Clyde practiced these words in his mind again and again this morning as he rode to school, as he locked his Vespa, as he took the steps up into the west wing.
Audrey, hi. I don’t
know if you know me, but I’m Clyde Mumsford, and I was
wondering . . .
    He had a plan. He’d wait until Audrey broke away from her girlfriends after Patrice’s class, and then he’d take three deep breaths and walk up to her and start talking.
Audrey, hi. I
don’t know if you know me, but I’m Clyde Mumsford . . .
    That was his plan.
    But then he saw her. As he made his way through the crowded hallway, he saw her up ahead, coming straight toward him.
    Alone. She was alone.
    Clyde tried to take deep breaths.
    He tried to think.
    Hi. I don’t know if you know . . .
    She was closer, and seemed to look at him and then smile the exact same radiant smile he’d seen in his dream and, to his complete and pleasant surprise, something within Clyde relaxed, and he felt his friendly normal self beginning to take over.
    He smiled a calm smile and had begun to open his mouth to speak when, just ahead of him, a tall boy he didn’t know said, “Well, well, Audrey Reed.” Her face brightened further, and the boy in his smooth, slow drawl added, “My long-stemmed study partner,” which made her smile even more.
    She stopped to talk to the boy, and as Clyde slipped silently past, face burning, she seemed not even to see him.
    A kind of blindness came over Clyde. Students and lockers passed in a blur, and when he saw a doorway, he escaped the building and kept walking.
    The new kid, that’s who it was. The new kid. Who was a face man. And who also looked like money.
    Of course that’s who Audrey Reed would hang out with. Somebody handsome and smooth-talking and rich.
    Clyde turned down a row between temporary classrooms, and was so lost in his thoughts that when he passed the corner of one of the classrooms, he didn’t notice the group of boys huddled there. But they saw him.
    â€œHey, there goes The Mummy.”
    Clyde turned. It was Theo Driggs’s drones, six or seven of them, with Theo himself slouched in their midst. One of the boys said, “How do de mummy do?”
    Clyde glanced quickly away and kept walking.
    â€œHe can’t talk. Mummies can’t talk.”
    Keep walking,
Clyde