The Creeping Read online

  “On the count of three. One, two”—I take a deep breath— “three.” I plunge my head underwater. Taylor follows. He paddles nearer to me, so I dive down to the sandy floor. It’s only twelve or thirteen feet in this spot, and the pressure isn’t too much for my ears. At first I try to keep track of the passing seconds, but after I hit twenty I lose count. Taylor hovers a few feet to the right. I doubt I can actually beat him. Winning doesn’t matter, though; I need a few seconds to sober up.

  The water presses into me from all sides, and a dull burning in my lungs mounts. I let my eyes flutter shut to absorb the calm. I beat my arms to stay on the ground and cross my legs. A slimy plant tickles my ankles, and I snap my eyes open to make certain it isn’t a fish. The big ones gross me out if they touch me with their scales. There’s algae the color of rust all around me. It starts to lengthen and grow, twining up from the sandy bottom and extending as a jungle in front of me. The color deepens and brightens until it’s a blazing red. I close my eyes and shake my head, preparing to surface. If I’m imagining things, I’ve been under way too long.

  When I open them again, I can see that the redness all around me isn’t algae, it’s hair. Long strands of red hair. Jeanie’s there. I’m no longer under water but standing knee deep in a thicket of thorned brush. I’m a kid again. The trees and hedges tower over me, even when I stand on my tiptoes. I can taste the sweetness of strawberry seeds on my tongue; my fingers are stained with their juice. Jeanie struggles on her back like an overturned potato bug. A massive gnarled hand is twisted in her hair, clamped on a fistful, holding her down or dragging her away—I can’t tell which. I’m frozen, though, unable to move to her. Try as I might, my short legs are useless and stiff. My arms won’t budge from my sides. I can’t help her. I open my mouth to scream, but I only gulp water. My eyes fly open, the calm of the blue lake all around me. I kick off the sandy floor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I hit the surface gasping. My head throbs as I splash frantically, trying to get ahold of myself. “Whoa, whoa.” Taylor is by my side. His hands slip over me, trying to get a grip on my flailing arms. “I was about to come down for you. You’ve been under almost a minute and a half. Steady.” I give up fighting. With his arm hooked under mine, he swims toward the shore. My chest heaves as I fill my lungs again and again with giant mouthfuls of sweet air. Jeanie on her back. Distorted fingers laced in her hair. Who was it? Why didn’t I see a face? I couldn’t look up. The person’s arm and everything beyond it was out of the picture. It was as if I were peering through a telescope, everything outside of the lens unseeable and a million miles away.

  Taylor stumbles forward, hauling me to my feet. We’re waist deep, but my legs won’t work. I cling to him, willing the sensation back into them.

  “I can’t believe you stayed under so long. You’re ballsy for a girl.” He wraps his arms around me, mistaking my nearness for flirting.

  “I’m okay.” I stagger backward, forcing my legs to support me. I make it to the shore and crawl over the slippery rocks, slithery like eels under my feet, to get back to the beach where the others are sunbathing.

  “Hey, hey,” Taylor calls, catching my arm. “Let’s not go back to the others yet. We could take a walk or . . . you know.”

  I whirl around. The pervy way he says you know makes my temper flare, sending adrenaline into my limbs. “No, I don’t know,” I say tartly.

  He tries to deliver a suggestive wink but ends up looking like he has a gnat in his eye. I hope he does. “Come on,” he half whines. “Stella, you’ve been leading me on for months. There’s not going to be a more perfect time to hook up. Plus, you’ve messed around with a ton of other guys.” He reels me in closer. “Don’t be a cock tease.”

  I slap his hand from my arm. “You’d have to have one for me to be able to tease it,” I say venomously, turning and hurrying over the rocks.

  Zoey and one of the Ds are still missing, probably making out in one of the nearby coves. Michaela is wiggling her toes and humming to the music streaming from her earbuds. Caleb’s towel is still next to Cole’s, but he’s gone, probably headed to yank a horny lacrosse player off his sister. I blink back tears. If only he’d been there to haul Taylor off me. I wrench my cell out of my jean shorts to check the time. Just before one p.m. THANK. GOD. I can’t stand another minute of Taylor. “Michaela,” I whisper, trying not to disturb Cole, who I’m certain is sleeping under the magazine covering her face.

  “Hmmm?” Michaela lifts her glasses off her nose, peers at me, and shrugs off her earbuds.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go. Sam Worth is picking me up.”

  Her neck lengthens as she gazes over my shoulder at a fast-approaching Taylor. She frowns and then nods her understanding at me. “I’ll tell Zoey you weren’t feeling well,” she whispers. “And just so you know, Sam’s been my lab partner a bunch of times in physics, and he’s way nicer than Taylor.” I smile gratefully before grabbing my things and jogging into the trees. My nerves are completely shot as I hurry through the woods. I check nervously over my shoulder every few seconds to make certain Taylor isn’t following. Fat chance. He’ll never look at me again. What a jerk. I haven’t messed around with that many guys, and even if I had, so what? Even if I’d made out with a billion guys, it wouldn’t make him entitled to anything. In a burst of understanding I know that it’s not only loyalty keeping him friends with jock scum; he’s just like them, except he’s smarter about hiding it.

  The snap of a stick, and a flock of sparrows take off from the forest floor. I run. The impact of my feet hitting ground makes my head pound. I drank too much. I should have known better. I do know better. Now I’m alone in the woods with a killer on the loose. The air smells dank; it’s the scent of rain, and the bugs have multiplied like they’re drinking the moisture out of the atmosphere. I was just under the glaring sun and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I’m running from Taylor and to Sam. It’s as if the whole universe is out of whack.

  The cell vibrates in my pocket. I ignore it. I’m not slowing down for anything. There’s the whoosh of cars passing along the highway up ahead. Another few yards and flashes of the teal station wagon waiting for me, parked alongside Zoey’s car. I’m out of breath, but I urge myself on. With each stride I am closer to Sam. Closer to being safe. I explode out of the woods ten yards from him. Sam paces, jabbing at the buttons of his old cell. He looks up immediately, probably because I’m moving with the grace of a hurricane, huffing and puffing.

  “Stella! I was worried when you didn’t answer.” He holds up the cell. I barrel into him, throwing my arms around his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. His arms are slack at his sides at first and then slowly they wrap around me. I fold my arms as tightly as I can around him, desperate to escape what I remembered; what Taylor’s lips felt like on my skin; what his hands felt like on my waist; the insulting things he said to me. Sam doesn’t even grope me when I’m practically naked hugging him.

  “Are you okay?” His breath tickles my ear, and I lift my head so I’m looking up at him. I don’t want to untangle the rest of my body, though. Not yet.

  “I remembered more of that day.” I hiccup and bury my face again. “I think I had too much to drink.” Sam tenses; his arms go rigid around me, and I know he’s about to pull away. “Please, just hold me,” I say, my voice muffled by his T-shirt. He stands perfectly still for another minute. It’s like embracing a tree trunk. I can’t stand it and shove him away. “Whatever, Sam, you’d think I was asking you to jab a fork in your eye or something.”

  I allow more room between us, hyperaware of my relative nakedness. At first I fold my arms over my chest to cover myself, but Sam’s eyes trained only on my face infuriate me. He’s such an effing gentleman. Always so grown-up. Just once I’d like to see him lose it. I drop my arms to my sides. “What is your problem?” I snap.

  He shoves his hands into his pockets and blinks at his sneakers. His T-shirt is in Greek, so I have no idea what it says
. Probably Greek for King of Loserdom, Zoey would say. “I don’t drink,” he mutters.

  “So?”

  “My dad has a drinking problem. That’s why I don’t drink.” He shuffles his feet, eyes glued to the rising dust cloud he’s creating.

  “But I’ve seen you at a bazillion parties. Why go if you don’t drink?”

  He lifts his head slowly. A wash of satisfaction soothes my temper as he tries to avert his eyes from me but can’t. The tips of his ears redden. “I like hanging out with the guys, and they like hanging out with the kind of people who get invited to parties.” He gives a self-deprecating laugh. “Also . . . you’re usually there.”

  My breath hitches. Of all the insane things he could have said, nothing could be crazier or sweeter. “I didn’t know about your dad. I’m sorry.” I take a step nearer. “Do you really look for me at parties?”

  He scratches his head and grins slowly. “Yeah, about ten percent of my brain is permanently programmed to keep a lookout for Hella Stella.” He laughs like he isn’t embarrassed at all. “Bonfires, parties, school dances, football games, lacrosse matches. I’d get a lobotomy, but you know, side effects, complications.”

  “The unglamorous reality of being a drooling vegetable,” I say, mock gravely.

  He grins wider. “That too, obviously. It would really cramp my style with the ladies.”

  My hand brushes his, completely independent from my brain. “Really, though. I didn’t know.”

  “How would you? I never told you.” The laughter is gone from his voice, and the tips of his ears deepen to cherry. He breaks eye contact. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He steps away and opens the passenger-side door.

  The car’s leather sticks to my butt as I slide in. I awkwardly tug on my shorts and will away the lingering sensation of touching Sam’s hand.

  “Where’s Daniel?” I ask as he steers us on to the two-lane highway.

  “He had to meet up with his dad. He was all cloak-and-dagger about saying any more than that.” Sam flips the sun visor down and settles back into his seat. “We went to the library this morning to use their online newspaper archives. My laptop broke during finals, and I haven’t had a chance to get it fixed.” By the way he emphasizes “chance” I know he means he doesn’t have the money to fix it.

  “Did anyone recognize Daniel?” I say.

  “No. He wore a hat, and it’s been a few years since anyone saw him.” I nod. If I didn’t identify him immediately, I doubt a random librarian would.

  “There wasn’t a lot online from before 1972 because of a fire at the Savage Bee’s headquarters that year. Everything they have before then came in as donations from Savage’s residents. It’s mostly yellowed newspapers people saved in attics. So even though there isn’t a complete record, there are random records dating back to 1910 that the librarians have scanned into their online system.”

  I bob my head. Although I usually write articles with a slightly more global perspective—and I have access to everything I’d ever need on my laptop and cell—I ventured into the town library once. Honestly, up until now, Savage was this Jeanie-shaped town on the map I didn’t need to know more about. I’m not saying I planned to leave and never come back after graduation. Everyone I love is here. I just mean I wasn’t eager to learn about Savage’s history, because in my mind, Jeanie is its history. The one and only time I visited the library was to ask about records they keep on Blackdog Lake for a climate-change article I wanted to write. No dice. They gave me the same line about a fire, and I never went back.

  “Since Mrs. Griever said she was sixteen when the Balco girl was taken,” Sam continues, “we looked up her birth records online to approximate the year of the girl’s disappearance.”

  I grin at him. “That was really smart.”

  “You have no idea what a huge nerd I am,” he says, laughing. Then more seriously, “So it was 1938 that she would have gone missing. There were only a few newspaper clippings that had been scanned into the library’s electronic system from that year, although the archivist is checking their boxed archives for me. I guess there are still records dated 1972 or before that haven’t been entered yet. There are also way more entered from the 1950s, sixties, and early seventies than the decades earlier, since the longer a newspaper hangs around in an attic, the likelier it is to get trashed. The archivist said to come back tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I offer. “Shane said they can’t identify Jane Doe.” My fingers twist the hem of my shorts. “How is that possible? How can someone lose a little girl and no one know about it?” I feel the tension in my solar plexus. It’s not too different a thing from losing a little girl and not knowing how or why. “The finger bone doesn’t belong to Jeanie either. Not her DNA,” I say haltingly. It’s the first I’ve let myself think about it since last night. It isn’t that I wanted Jeanie to have suffered being cut up, only that it would have meant that there wasn’t another victim. It made sense. Two eyes and ears, one nose, one mouth, and teeth sense. Shane dashed that orderly explanation into a million pieces, rearranging the face into an unrecognizable ghoul.

  Sam looks at me sideways and then back at the road. “Jane Doe could be from another state or she could be a foster kid or an orphan. The finger bone could be the Balco girl’s. If Jane Doe had it, their deaths must be connected.”

  My thoughts hum. First Griever connected Jeanie’s disappearance with another that happened decades ago, and now the bone connects Jane Doe’s. Suddenly, there’s a ribbon of clues, trailing through generations, leading us deeper into the forest rather than out of it.

  “How is it possible?” I whisper.

  “It might not be,” Sam says softly. “We haven’t found proof that there were any past disappearances yet.” I try to smile at the reassurance but fail. I’m about to share the gnarled hand—at least gnarled in my memory—twisted in Jeanie’s hair when Sam adds, “There’s something else.”

  “What?” I ask, guilty with the relief of not having to regurgitate the memory that found me under the water. If I don’t say it out loud, it doesn’t have to be real. Those twisted fingers don’t have to be real. They don’t have to be wound in Jeanie’s hair, pulling clumps by the root from her bloody scalp as she struggled.

  “It’s more something that I have to show you.” He cracks a smile that is more hopeful than suggestive. “Can we go to your house?”

  “Sure, as long as you don’t mind that I’m a little tipsy.” I lean my temple against the cool window and close my eyes, letting the car’s easy rhythm on the highway rock me. “When do you have to work?”

  “Tomorrow. I have shifts Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from three to nine. I’ve been trying to pick up more, but everyone else needs extra hours too,” he says. I place my hand on his knee and shift my weight to lean against him rather than the window. I don’t know why . . . I just want to show him that I understand it’s hard.

  He chuckles softly. “What?” I ask, glancing up at his profile.

  “You’re sweet when you’re drunk.”

  I straighten up, my hand to my chest, mouth open wide in mock outrage. “Why, Sam Worth, are you saying you like me better under the influence of alcohol?”

  He leans over the steering wheel and stares at the graying tufts of clouds. They’ve accumulated in the sky since I stampeded through the woods. They explain the smell of rain in the air. “No, just that you’re the only person I know who doesn’t transform into a much uglier person when they’re drunk.”

  My face falls and I chew my lip. “Does your dad change when he drinks?”

  Sam tips his head. “He fights with my mom. Says things he shouldn’t. He never drank at home when he worked. He tried to hide it from my mom before. As a kid I knew what it smelled like when he came home and hugged me. I guess now he needs a way to cope all the time, but . . .”

  “But it’s not what you and your mom deserve.” I lean into him again. It occurs to me that I’m not usually this
affectionate when I drink, and dimly I contemplate that it is Sam bringing it out in me and not the cloying vodka. I try to bat that train of thought away. So what if the concept of personal space loses its meaning around Sam? We basically grew up together; of course being near him is a little like digging up our fifth-grade time capsule. I may crave the simplicity of being ten—I may even feel the familiar ping for unicorn stickers—but I’d lose interest after five minutes. I’d get bored with all the artifacts of my childhood.

  I stare at the darkening clouds, smothering the sun completely, washing everything in plum and gray. Hopefully, Michaela’s noticed them and hustled everyone back to the cars.

  I fiddle with the radio, trying to find something upbeat that comes in clear this far out in the sticks. There’s nothing but some religious talk-radio show, rattling off forty ways to survive the rapture. I flip it off. I can’t shake the sense that Sam isn’t like the sticker books I grew out of. It doesn’t feel as if I left him with two feet firmly in the past. I wonder why that is, and it becomes sharp and clear. “Sam? Do you remember what you said a few days ago about you having friends who don’t care who you’re friends with?”

  His lips part, and his eyes cut from the road to me. “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have said that. I was upset.”

  I consider this for a second. “It was true, though. How did you know that Zoey didn’t want me hanging out with you anymore?” See, I didn’t outgrow Sam or give him up willingly. I lost him to keep someone I loved more.

  His jaw clenches and then unclenches. With that little tick of his muscle, the sky cracks open and dumps rain. “She told me,” he says.

  I was lounging back, feeling kind of soupy. Now I sit straight up. “What?”

  He takes a drawn-out breath. “Right before she told you to choose, she told me you only had room for one best friend and that she was going to make you decide who you wanted to keep. Zoey never liked me, and when you weren’t around she was a real . . . well, she was mean-spirited, even as a kid. When you didn’t show up to swim that Sunday afternoon, I knew.” His big, sensitive eyes flit to me like he’s checking that he isn’t hurting my feelings.