Baumgartner Generations: Henry (12 page)

He glanced
back and saw Libby turn the corner. “I’m fine, Mom.”

“I’ve been
trying to get a hold of you all week!”

“Sorry. I
was…busy.” He started walking back toward the frat house, realizing for the
first time how cold it was—and he was still damp.

“I got a
call from your professor.”

Henry froze
on the frat house steps, his breath gone. “You did?”

“You’re one
lucky young man.”

“What?” The
word barely made it out of his mouth.

“Not many
students get to be personally tutored by their professors.” His mother sounded
smug.

Henry sank
to the steps, sitting. “What are you talking about?”

“Toni’s
agreed to tutor you.” He could hear the satisfaction in her voice. She got that
tone whenever she felt she’d solved a big problem.

“Toni…who in
the hell is Toni?” He was drunk, but he had a feeling this conversation should
still be making more sense than it was.

“You didn’t
recognize her?”

He rubbed
his eyes. “Recognize who?”

“Toni
Franklin. Don’t you remember?” His mother laughed. “She and her husband have
lived around the block for years. They used to come over and play cards.”

“No…” He
frowned, blinking up at the stars. Toni Franklin? Why did the name sound so
familiar?

“Well, you
were pretty little…” His mother conceded. “Anyway, she thinks she can help you
bring up your grade.”

Then it
dawned on him. Toni Franklin. The name stenciled on her office door—Antoinette
Franklin.
Professor
Franklin.

Just what
were the odds on that? Henry gulped. “What did she say?”

“Just that
you were having trouble and she was willing to tutor you.”

“Mom, I
don’t need a tutor.”
I need a fairy fucking godmother.

“Well you’ve
got one, young man.” He hated when she used that tone. It meant she’d solved it
all and there was nothing more to be said about it. “I made an appointment for
you with her tomorrow at two. You don’t have a class then, do you?”

“No.” He had
hockey practice at noon, but all morning classes. What the hell was he going to
do now?

“You’re
supposed to meet in her office. Do you know where it is?”

“Yeah.” The
door opened behind him and he glanced up to see Elaine coming out. For a
minute, he thought she might be crying. “Hey, listen, I’ve gotta go.”

“Henry,
you’d better show up,” his mother warned. “I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah,
okay, I will.” He hung up on her, getting up as Elaine rushed down the stairs, headed
the way Libby had gone. He called after her, but she ignored him, practically
running down the block. Henry sat back down on the steps, his head in his
hands.

There was
only one thing he was sure of now.

Life couldn’t
get any more complicated than this.

But he was
wrong.

Chapter
Five

Henry
knocked, barely getting out the words, “Professor Franklin?”

“Come in!”

It was like
déjà-vu, a replay of the events of last week. He didn’t think he would ever be
able to face her again, let alone be standing across from the woman actually
asking for help.

“Hi Henry.”
Professor Franklin stood, coming out from behind her desk to shut the door
behind him, gesturing toward a seat. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Not
likely
, he thought, sitting stiffly in the chair. His hair was still wet
from the showers—hockey practice had gone long, and although the coach had
warned him he’d be off the team if it happened again, he’d managed to smooth
over his absence the week before.

“I think we
got off on the wrong foot.” Professor Franklin didn’t sit in the chair behind
her desk this time. Instead, she came to lean against it, half-standing,
half-sitting on the surface, right next to him. “Can we start over again?”

“Sure.”
Henry focused his attention out the window. It was cold and windy, dead leaves
chasing each other out on the lawn. “I guess so.”

“I’d like to
do an assessment with you.”

He frowned,
glancing up at her. “You want me to take a test?”

“No, not a
test,” she assured him, her eyes softening. She really was a very pretty woman,
although Henry couldn’t remember, for the life of him, anything about her
coming over to their house like his mother indicated she had. “It’s just an
assessment. It will give us an idea where you are and what you need to work
on.”

“I can’t
read.” He’d never said those words out loud to anyone, ever, and he didn’t even
know how he’d managed to say them now. They made his breath turn shallow, his
stomach flip. But there was something about the way she looked at him—understanding
in her eyes, but strangely, no pity.

“That’s the
first step.” Her smile made her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Admitting you
have a problem.”

He shook his
head and gazed back out the window. “You can say that again.”

“How did you
make it this far, Henry?” She sounded both incredulous and sad.

“The truth?”
He watched a black squirrel scurry across the quad and up the nearest maple.

“The truth,”
she insisted. “It’s safe with me.”

He met her
eyes, leaning back in his chair. Why not spill it? What did he have to lose? “Sometimes
I cheated. Sometimes I lied. Sometimes I paid people to write papers or essays
for me. But mostly, I just played hockey.”

“Hockey?”

He
continued, “I went to a private school and they guaranteed me a varsity spot
before I even tried out for the team. It was all about hockey. They even cut
the budget for the football team my senior year so the hockey team could go to
the International tournament. We were state champions three out of my four
years. College and NHL scouts were around year long. They kept a count at the
local Best Western. And I had my pick of colleges.” He said it all matter-of-factly,
without any hint of arrogance.

“Hence the
scholarship.”

“Yeah.” He
shrugged, as if it meant nothing, but it meant everything to him. Everything.

Her lips
were pressed together in a line, an expression Henry had come to recognize as
annoyance or anger. “So your coach and your teachers had an arrangement?”

“Something
like that.” He looked back out the window. The squirrel was down on the ground
again, digging. “I never really asked. They just…passed me.”

“And your
parents have no idea?”

He glanced
up, panicked. “You can’t tell them.”

“I should.” She
pulled herself up onto the desk fully and crossed her legs. She was wearing a
skirt of course, a white one with brown spots, and Henry couldn’t help but
admire her legs, even in his sudden state of panic. “I called your mother with
every intention…”

“Please!”
Henry reached out, grabbing her wrist, the touch startling them both. He took
his hand away, trying to breathe. “You can’t. You just can’t.”

“My father
was illiterate,” she explained, one of her feet swinging. She always wore heels
and today was no exception—soft brown pumps—and one of them hung precariously
from the end of her toes. “He spent his whole life unable to read. It’s no way
to live.”

Henry
stiffened. “Don’t feel sorry for me.” Now he understood how she had known, why
her thoughts had immediately jumped to the conclusion she had when he sat
there, frozen, staring dumbly at the paper she had given him, unable to read it
out loud.

“I don’t,”
she assured him. “My father was born in an era that didn’t even have names for
learning disabilities, let alone ways to test for them. You don’t have that
luxury.”

“I…I guess
not.” He blinked at her, trying to remember a time, way back in elementary
school, when he’d first started having trouble. He’d been so embarrassed by his
affliction that he’d convinced his older sister to read to him from his school
books over and over, thus memorizing the text, and when he was “tested,” he
passed with flying colors. That was just the beginning of his ruse.

“I’m angry
that someone didn’t notice before this.” Her eyes narrowed at the thought. “That
you were able to slip through the cracks simply because you were good at some stupid
sport.”

Henry
narrowed his eyes right back at her. “Hockey means everything to me.”

“Well, if
you want to keep playing, and you want to stay in school, you’re going to have
to learn how to read,” she said simply.

She had him
there.

“I got a
book,” he admitted.

“What book?”

He flushed,
remembering the snafu of checking it out, meeting Libby.
“Phonics for Dummies
.
”

The
professor smiled. She had a dimple in one cheek when she did that he’d never
noticed before. Maybe because, in class, he didn’t really see her smile very
much. “Decided to start at the beginning?”

“Where else
are you supposed to start?” He shrugged helplessly.

“Here.” She
leaned forward and he caught a whiff of her scent, something flowery, when she
got near. “With me. Are you ready?”

“I guess.”

“No
guessing.” She was the professor again, all-business. “You either want to work
or you don’t. I’m more than willing to give up my time to help you learn, but
you have to be committed. Can you commit?”

Henry watched
the squirrel holding onto his found nut for dear life, peering from side to
side, as if something could take it away at any moment. He knew exactly how the
little guy felt. “I really don’t have much of a choice.”

“Of course
you do,” she countered, still in business mode. “You always have a choice. My
father had a choice. He died still not knowing how to read, but at any point in
his life, he could have chosen differently.”

“It’s so hard…”
Henry blinked, willing tears not to fall. Christ, he couldn’t believe he was
letting himself get emotional about this in front of her. “You have no idea.”

“Yes, I do.”
She leaned toward him again, her eyes on his, steady. “You walking in here
today and telling me you can’t read may be hardest thing you ever have to do, but
it was also the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He couldn’t
answer her and if he’d had a voice left at all, it would have disappeared
completely anyway when she lifted her hand and ran it tentatively through his
still-wet hair.

She laughed
when she saw the bemused look on his face. “I’m sorry. You really don’t
remember, do you?”

“Remember?”

“Well you
were young…my ex and I used to come over and play cards with your parents…” Her
voice trailed off, as if she was reminiscing, but Henry couldn’t recall a thing
about it. “You were such a sweet little blonde boy. I wanted to steal you and
take you home with me.”

He shrugged,
offering her a lopsided smirk. “What happened, huh?”

“Well the
little towhead disappeared, that’s for sure.” She laughed, a sound he wasn’t
sure he’d ever heard, her hand still moving in his now-dark hair. “But I think
you turned out all right.”

“Except for
the whole reading thing,” he reminded her, frowning.

“We’ll work
on that. Yes?” She stood, going back behind her desk to sit and pull out some
papers.

“Yes,” he
agreed. He still had a rock sitting in his stomach, but at least it didn’t feel
quite so heavy now.

She was like
a different person when she smiled. “Let’s get started.”

*
* * *

“Come on!”
Dean slammed his fist on the table beside him, jarring the cups and bottles of
beer sitting on it. “That was the worst fucking pass I’ve ever seen!”

Henry sank
back further into the low couch in the fraternity common room, grabbing his
beer off the table just in case Dean decided to pound on it again.

“Dude, what
the hell did you bet on the Lions for anyway?” Cody nudged Dean’s shoulder.

“Long shots
pay off big.” Dean scowled. “Fucking pussy!” he yelled at the wide screen.
“Can’t hold onto a goddamned football?”

“Butterfingers,”
Henry observed, hiding his smile against his beer bottle as he took a swig.

“Dick,” Dean
growled, glaring at him. He was practically foaming at the mouth.

“So Henry,
guess who I saw in the kitchen?” Cody dropped his voice, leaning in to make
himself heard over the music and the television.

“I have no
idea.” Henry tried not to snicker when the Lions fumbled yet another pass and
Dean jumped out of his seat with a string of profanity, starting to pace in
front of the couch like a caged lion.

“Val.” Cody laughed
when Henry nearly let his beer bottle slip from his hand.

“You’re kidding
me?” Henry hadn’t seen her—hadn’t ever expected to see her again—since that
night. Although, he had to admit, he’d had a few Fleshlight sessions replaying
the whole thing in his head. “Is Marcus here?”

Cody shrugged.
“Didn’t see him.”

Henry still
couldn’t figure that whole thing out. If she was Marcus’s girlfriend, as Dean
claimed, then why in the hell had she volunteered to do what she did? Dean said
she was just kinky like that, and it had actually all been her idea. He didn’t
know if he could believe it, though. Dean liked to tell tall tales, and it was
often hard to know when he was telling the truth or pulling your leg. He still
didn’t know how they’d managed to get the girl out of there without it all
degenerating into a gang rape, considering the energy in the room that night,
but Marcus had ushered her out pretty quickly afterward.

Now she was
here? How in the hell could she possibly walk back into the place, knowing that
most of these guys had seen her in such a compromising position?

“Speak of
the devil.” Cody gestured toward the door and Henry caught a glimpse of her out
of the corner of his eye. It was her all right, no mistaking those big, darkly
made-up eyes. She was wearing more clothes tonight, though—a short black and
red checked leather skirt and a red sweater that all matched her red and black streaked
hair.