Crushed by Laura McNeal

Author:Laura McNeal
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433251
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 41

People vs. Wickham Hill

Just before lunch that day, Audrey went to her locker and found that two sheets of paper had been slipped through the narrow vents of the locker door. Normally, Lea and C.C. were the ones who took advantage of the built-in mail drops— pushing notes, photographs, and the occasional cartoon inside—so Audrey unfolded the papers expecting diversion, but instead found herself looking at some sort of abbreviated legal printout, which read:

Cypress County Superior Court, State of South Carolina People vs. Wickham Edward Hill

Vehicular manslaughter. Guilty. Sentenced: 5 years parole. Driver’s license revoked.

So this was from Clyde Mumsford. This was what he’d wanted to hand her between classes, and when she’d refused the papers, he’d stuffed them into her locker. It made her furious, and she knew she ought to crumple them up without reading them, but she couldn’t. She turned to the second page.

It contained a downloaded article from a newspaper called The Cypress Telegram, which read:

A Cypress County teenager was charged yesterday with vehicular manslaughter in connection with the death of a juvenile female on March 3 of this year.

The 16-year-old male allegedly lost control of the Toyota sedan he was driving, resulting in the immediate death of Jade Marie Creamer, age 15. Two other passengers in the car were injured. The name of the juvenile driver was withheld by the court.

According to court documents, the accused is enrolled at Leighton Hall, a private school located two miles southeast of Cypress. The Telegram has also learned that three of the passengers in the car are enrolled at the school. A spokesman for Leighton Hall would neither confirm nor deny involvement of any of its students.

The deceased girl, Jade Marie Creamer, was a cousin of one of the other passengers in the car. She was a sophomore at Cypress West High, a member of the Thespians Club, the Model UN, and the debate team.

The accompanying photograph of Jade Marie Creamer looked like a school picture. She wasn’t a beautiful girl, but she had perfect teeth and an expression that seemed both perky and assertive.

Audrey flipped quickly back to the legal page. Wickham’s conviction followed the news account by just less than three months. About the right time. And it would explain why Wickham never drove.

An image returned to Audrey’s mind, the scene she’d dreamed up while Mrs. Leacock was talking about Schrödinger’s Cat. Men and women in lab coats stood around a steel box. They said the cat was dead. They said the cat was alive. They said he was both. They checked their watches to see how much longer they had to wait for their observations to change reality. The cat, meanwhile, didn’t even know what they were waiting for.

Audrey stuffed the papers back into the envelope. Sweat dampened her shirt and she felt almost dizzy. She headed for the bathroom, the only one she and Lea and C.C. would use, the one tucked between the C and D buildings, where almost nobody ever went.

It

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