Crying Wolf by Peter Abrahams

Author:Peter Abrahams [Abrahams, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780345442611
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-05-04T14:00:00+00:00

Nat took his sleeping bag into Wags’s room, lay down on Wags’s bed. Wags hadn’t showered enough, especially toward the end, Nat realized now, but he’d compensated with spray-on deodorant, some brand that smelled like evergreens and coconut. Nat closed his eyes; the evergreen-and-coconut smell, rising off the mattress every time he moved, grew stronger and stronger,

You want me to flunk out, don’t you?

Right. And then all this will be mine.

Nat rose, went to the couch in the outer room, tried to sleep where Patti had been sleeping.

At dawn he stopped trying, got up, shaved, showered, put on fresh clothes, tried to look fresh. Patti was still asleep, her face still peaceful, her breathing almost unnoticeable. He left a note on the bedside crate, laying a granola bar on top of it: Gone to class. Back by noon. N.

Nat went to the bio lab, made up the work he’d missed. Problem three, from the old set of problems, taken care of; the precious pre-med option preserved. Problems one and two were now buried under the new ones.

English 104. Izzie wasn’t there. The professor, handing back the Young Goodman Brown essays, said, “I’m a little disappointed with these. Only two of you—” She glanced around the table. “—one of whom is absent, identified the pathos at its core.”

“Which is?” someone asked.

“Page ninety-five,” said the professor, opening her book: “Referring to Goodman Brown: ‘But he himself was the chief horror of the scene.’ ”. Nat stuffed the paper in his backpack without checking the grade and hurried back to Plessey, taking shortcuts through the snow.

Izzie was at his desk in the outer room, playing solitaire on the computer. She turned as Nat came in. He went into the bedroom. The note and granola bar were where he’d left them, but Patti was gone, the bed neatly made.

Izzie was watching him through the doorway. “They went out,” she said.

“They?”

“Grace and . . . Patti.”

“Where did they go?”

“For food. She hasn’t eaten in two days.”

Nat glanced back at the bedside crate; perhaps it was just the empty wrapper of the granola bar that he’d seen. But no. And also on the crate, the little box from Assad and Son. Was that where he’d left it? He didn’t think so, and he’d certainly not left it open, as it was now, the gold number 8 and chain nestled in the tissue paper: never worn, as would be clear to anyone who looked inside. He thought of putting the chain on now; his fingers almost touched it.

“Do you want me to leave?” Izzie said.

He would have if Izzie had said anything like She seems so nice. But Izzie didn’t. “No,” Nat said.

They waited in the outer room, Izzie at the desk, Nat on the couch. “You went to English?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Did she give the papers back?”

Nat nodded.

“What did you get?”

“I don’t know.” He handed her the paper. She flipped to the back. “A,” she said. “I guess you were right about that chief horror line.”

“You used it too?”

“Of course.

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