The Creeping Read online

  “Ewww,” Michaela says. “A vulture means there’s something rotting nearby.”

  Zoey glares at the trespasser. “Nothing dead better stink up our cove.”

  “Sooo gross,” Cole whines.

  Michaela lets her sunglasses dip down the bridge of her nose and studies the feathered creature. “It’s circling over us, though,” she says matter-of-factly. I shiver again. The bird hovers twenty or thirty feet above. There’s a rustling in the brush behind us and the resounding snap of a branch. I whip around and stare into the gloom.

  “Jumpy much?” Zoey teases, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She’d never admit it, but today always spooks her, too. I sense the bird continuing to loop overhead. The shadows are thick in the woods, and it’s impossible to see more than a few feet deep. I keep my eyes trained on the spot where I heard the stick snap. It wasn’t the light crackle of chipmunks scurrying over decaying leaves and acorns, but the heavy footstep of a person.

  “Who is that?” Michaela whispers. I reluctantly turn from guarding against the woods. On the opposite shore, a hundred yards away, a figure stands between two tree trunks along the edge of the forest. His face is masked in shadows, but by his jeans and short-cropped hair, he’s obviously a guy. “Is he spying on us?”

  Zoey jumps to her feet and yells, “Hey, jerkwad. Stare much? Eff off or we’ll call the cops.” Cole grabs for her hoodie and pulls it over her head. I wiggle on my jean shorts and stand with Zoey. Teeny-tiny Zoey, weighing in at not a feather over a hundred pounds, fists balled, ready to keep us all safe in her string bikini. Dread coils in my stomach. It’s like I swallowed a viper. The stranger takes a step forward.

  “What the . . . ?” Michaela mutters. He’s maybe a couple of years older than us and he’s vaguely familiar. The kind of familiar that suffocates you with déjà vu, like recalling a nightmare in gruesome flashes. He isn’t looking at us. Instead his eyes are glued to the vulture circling above our heads. His lips move furiously, repeating something over and over, but the words are only mouthed, not meant to reach us.

  Chapter Two

  I force myself to unclench my fists. Michaela and Cole frantically pack their things at my feet. Someone shoves me a step forward, and my towel is snatched from the ground. The stranger stands frozen as a statue, a foot from the trees, eyes trained on the sky. Zoey’s shouting. I’m not sure what. She’s livid. This is our secret place. This is her safe place, where she thinks nothing bad could ever happen. I know better. I know bad things happen everywhere. The slope of his cheekbones, the squared jaw, the hooded eyes—they all add to the tension thrashing my stomach.

  Zoey claws at my elbow. I tear myself away from staring at him to see that the girls have packed up our cove day, the provisions loaded in their arms. Cole and Michaela stand at the mouth of the woods, eager to escape. I snap out of my stupor and let Zoey drag me from the shore. I slip over the moss-covered rocks. Just as we’re engulfed by trees, I turn to steal one last look over my shoulder. The stranger stares directly at me, angles his head as if he’s studying me, and winks before turning away to be swallowed by a copse of trees. A sly wink that makes me feel like an accomplice. Like we’re sharing a joke.

  “Who the hell was that?” Michaela shouts. She never swears, so I know she’s shaken up.

  Cole gushes, “I mean, it was sooo weird that he was there staring up at the sky like a zombie.” She’s too excited to be frightened.

  “And he didn’t even respond to us,” Michaela adds.

  Zoey and I keep close behind them. It’s only a few degrees cooler under the shade of the canopy, but I’m freezing. Zoey is wearing her own backpack with my tote’s leather strap slung across her chest, our beach towels bundled in one of her arms as she reaches her free hand out for mine. I seize it like I’d grab a life raft.

  “Probably just some jerk-off tourist camping at one of the sites,” Zoey says. “He was just trying to freak us out. I should have gone after him with my Mace.” Picturing Zoey taking off after the stranger with her key-chain spray can of Mace loosens the knots in my stomach.

  I open my mouth to say that he looked familiar, then shut it. Better not to eek Cole and Michaela out. I’ll tell Zoey when we’re alone. I’m sure it’s nothing. If it had been any other day, I wouldn’t have thought a thing about it. We would have laughed and flipped him off; maybe if we’d been buzzed on pink wine or beer, Zoey would have flashed him; Michaela would have called him “crack-atoa,” her signature insult. It’s only that today is . . . well, today. Superstitious, I know. I’m not usually such a mental patient. It’s like the more time that passes, the less of a grip I have.

  It’s totally my fault. I should have left well enough alone, but I got curious last year. The same detectives who were assigned my case eleven years ago come by every September. Detectives Shane and Berry go through the same routine with me. First we exchange hi-how-are-yous, because at this point they’ve watched me grow up. Then the same old questions: Have you remembered anything new? Seen any faces that look familiar? Dreamed about that day? Recovered any memories from the years before? The answer is always no. It doesn’t even faze them anymore.

  Sure they were hopeful the first few years, eagerly leaning forward, notepads at the ready; now they’re resigned. Haunted, even—if I’m being all touchy-feely about it—with their dead stares. They don’t bat an eyelash when I have nothing new for them. It’s almost a relief that the whole thing can just be left so far behind us it’s ancient history.

  But last September I screwed up. I let curiosity get the better of me. I wanted to read the case file from that day. Burly and gray-haired Detective Berry had launched into a rant about moving on and talking candidly with my parents, but Shane, who was only a twenty-something newbie when Jeanie was taken, gave me an infinitesimal nod when Berry bent to stow his notepad in his briefcase.

  Two days later, when I reached my car in the school parking lot, Detective Tim Shane was there waiting for me. His dress shirt was rumpled and hastily tucked into his jeans, mustard stains dappled his collar, and a badge hung loosely from his belt. In the sunlight the creases carving up his forehead and eyes had the look of thin and crinkled pastry, like his skin was the buttery top layer of a croissant.

  “Don’t make me regret this, okay?” he said, slipping me a manila envelope. “And don’t let your folks know I gave it to you.” I tried to squeeze out a thank-you, but my hand shook so badly taking the envelope that we both fell silent. “You have a right to know,” he muttered. I held on to that envelope, unopened, for five days. I don’t know why it took me so long to muster the guts. I knew the cops didn’t have a lot of evidence. There were only statements taken from me and Mrs. Talcott. No neighbors who shared the private drive were home that day, and no one reported seeing anything suspicious for days before or after. It was as though Jeanie had disintegrated. Or like she’d never existed in the first place.

  I finally gathered the nerve on a Friday night when Dad was working late in Minneapolis. Mom left us when I was twelve, so I didn’t have to worry about her. I told Zoey I was sick so I wouldn’t be expected to make the rounds to weekend parties, and barricaded myself in my room.

  At first I was crushed that there wasn’t anything I didn’t know about in the file. Every detail had been plastered on local and national newspaper front pages. I crumpled up the twenty pages, pissed that I’d been so stupid, until a yellow carbon copy slipped from the envelope. It was the transcript of my interview the day of Jeanie’s disappearance. There in my cramped bedroom, wedged between my antique dresser and the wall, I read with mounting terror what I repeated 255 times during the course of my hour-long interview with Berry and Shane. It was Shane who kept count.

  It’s the only thing I told the cops until I lapsed into a silence that lasted a week. After that week was over, I emerged from my quiet as though nothing had ever been wrong. I started first grade with all the other normal kids that fall, showed no signs of post-traumatic stress, and by all
grown-up accounts, developed like a healthy and happy kid. Translation: I’m not nuts.

  Maybe it didn’t keep me up at night then, but it does now. Now I lie awake beating back the sharp-toothed dread and horror of six-year-old me whispering furiously, “If you hunt for monsters, you’ll find them.”

  I shake my head to clear the thought. Zoey sneaks glances behind us as we trudge through the woods. We’ve worn a trail over the years that makes it easy to reach the clearing off the road where we park. Once inside Zoey’s SUV, Michaela’s nervous laugh is like a dam bursting, and we all join in. Snuggling up against the soft leather interior, scrolling through Zoey’s iPod, and breathing in the familiar smells of coffee sludge at the bottom of paper cups and cake-scented lip gloss make the freaky stranger in the woods seem far away. I’d expect this from the others; they live for drama-induced adrenaline. But I know better. At least I used to.

  “Tonight should be interesting, since we’re all total crackheads already,” Zoey says with a laugh, steering the car on to the highway and accelerating quickly. The conversation turns to senior trip ideas and boys; within five minutes it’s as though our lake day ended just as unexceptionally as it always does.

  Six hours later I stand bent at the waist, blow-drying my hair. It’s longer than it’s been since I was a kid, and I grimace when I think about how easy Zoey’s pixie cut is to style. My hair has a natural wave to it that takes hours of styling to coax it into anything not resembling a rat’s nest. I flip my head over and am still working on it when the doorbell rings. Dad is home, but he’ll figure that it’s for me. I hurry through the hallway and catch a glimpse of him hunched over his desk in the office. Only his small stained-glass lamp is switched on.

  “Dad, you’re going to go blind if you don’t use the overhead,” I say, popping into the room and flipping the switch. He looks up from the document he’s skimming. His wire-rimmed spectacles rest low on his nose, and he looks surprised to see me home.

  “You look nice. You and Zoey going somewhere?” he mumbles. This is my absentminded father for you. We had his famous pasta primavera with shrimp for dinner just two hours ago, and he’s already forgotten I’m home. A lawyer first and everything else second. I understand that this, plus a bunch of other crap I don’t know about, is why Mom left us five years ago. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still a wicked witch for the way she did it. Having an affair with Dad’s partner at his firm and then copping to the affair on their anniversary in front of all our friends and family was deranged. Not to mention—surprise—humiliating for me. But that is my whack-job mom for you. A woman who I only see at Christmastime now that she’s busy starting her new family in Chicago. She and my stepdad, who I despise as much as I do lice or any other grubby parasite, are trying to get knocked up. Can you imagine?

  I nod, but Dad isn’t even looking at me anymore. “Day of Bones, you know. I’ll be late, and the girls might sleep here. Is that okay?”

  “Hmmm? Whatever you think, Pumpkin. Love you.”

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  I take the stairs two at a time and run through the foyer. I fling the door open and yell, “I’ll grab my bag!” before leaving Zoey alone on the porch.

  “You said you’d be ready for us at eight. Michaela and Cole just drove up too,” she whines. Zoey doesn’t like to be kept waiting, even for a moment.

  “I know, I know,” I call. The shrill sound of Zoey wailing my name dogs me as I search wildly for my navy Converse tennis shoes. I make it back to the front door, where Zoey is kneeling on the carpet, scratching our cat’s tummy. Moscow is a Russian Blue that we’ve had since I was a baby. Dad jokes that he must have a robotic ticker for a heart.

  “Good-bye my chunky prince,” I coo, stooping to pet his chubby belly. I snatch my keys off the table in the entryway and lock the door behind us.

  Zoey gives me a sideways glance as we walk to the driveway. “You are aware that tennis shoes are only for PE and peasants, right?” I roll my eyes at her, but my cheeks burn a few degrees warmer when I sneak a peek at her red platform pumps. It’s like no matter how hard I try, I always come out dressed like a big kid, while Zoey’s clothes scream hotness.

  In the driveway Michaela’s leaning against my car door, and Cole’s sitting cross-legged on the hood. Cole tips a pink flask to her lips, and Michaela says, “Did you drink driving over? James Hammer got a DUI last summer and his college found out and they didn’t let him come back for sophomore year. Now he lives in a studio with two roommates and buses tables at a Denny’s.” Cole winks at her and tips the flask to her lips again. I think (not for the first time) that Cole is a lot more like Zoey than Michaela.

  Once in the car, Cole’s excitement for the bonfire is infectious. She practically vibrates. Zoey sits shotgun and turns the music up full blast; the thumping bass makes my old Volvo’s speakers rattle. Despite the bizarre afternoon, this is normal. This is my comfortable. I smile at Michaela’s reflection in the rearview mirror as she studiously applies her lip gloss. Her parents get weirded out by their “baby girl” wearing makeup, so she usually forgoes the argument and does it once she’s left the house. She could probably apply flawless eyeliner during a rocket launch after doing it in the car enough times.

  We follow Savage’s main street through downtown and keep going when it narrows into a snaking two-lane highway, running toward Blackdog Lake.

  “So why this one place? Is Day of Bones always at Blackdog?” Cole hollers above the music. Zoey swats my hand when I reach to turn the volume down. She cranes her neck and twists to face the backseat.

  “Yes, it’s always at Blackdog!” she shouts. She’d rather holler than stop swaying in her seat. “Most Wildwood High bonfires are, even though there are a shit-ton of lakes around Savage. But there’s only one spooky cemetery, and it’s right along the shore.” A chill runs up my arms, and I alternate holding the steering wheel with each hand to rub the eerie sensation away. I hope no one notices me spazzing out before I can get a grip.

  “Omigosh, a cemetery? That is so spectacularly morbid,” Cole says, straining against the seat belt and pumping her hands in the air.

  Michaela pipes up, “You don’t know the half of it. It’s our equivalent of a lookout point. Everyone drives there to make out, and the place is packed with cars on the weekend. Windows all steamy. Everyone hooking up among the dead.”

  “Have you ever?” Cole asks Michaela. Michaela gives a fluted laugh and falls into being engrossed in the contents of her clutch. She’s the least experienced of us—by choice, obviously—but she’s still spent a handful of nights getting groped at Old Savage Cemetery. Who hasn’t? She’s just not the type to kiss and tell.

  “We all have,” I say. Most girls are shy talking about hooking up. I refuse to be. Guys shouldn’t be the only ones talking about that stuff.

  Zoey shrugs and winks at Cole. “Sure, it’s actually kind of romantic when there’s a big bonfire. Some of the tombs are absolutely to-die-for gorgeous. It’s not like we’re making it lying on top of a mausoleum, although I’m sure that’s happened. We at least do it in our cars.”

  We wind deeper into the woods, following the serpentine highway to the lake’s secluded eastern shore. The pine trees grow denser and taller, their boughs weaving a tight canopy, until they shut out even the pale light of the moon. For miles there are no houses, no signs of life, no buildings, no other cars. After a while I turn off the highway to take a dirt access road. A gleaming white skeleton is fastened to a wooden post marking the drive. It’s secured with a thick rope, limbs dangling limply in the breeze. I’d know the turnoff even if not for Scott Townsend’s dad’s skeleton. Dr. Townsend is a pediatrician, and every Day of Bones, Scott kidnaps the skeleton from his study. It’s even kid-size, for God’s sake.

  “Gross, is that real?” Cole asks.

  “That’s Scott Townsend’s. Our girl Stella here went out with that loser for a whole year,” Zoey shares gleefully. “Alas, though, in eighth grade she broke his
heart.” I roll my eyes at Zoey’s melodramatic tone. It was way more sitting at the same lunch table and exchanging locker combos than it was dating.

  “Zoey thinks every guy who isn’t varsity in at least two sports is totally worthless,” I explain.

  “Um, and they are,” Zoey replies, scandalized. “Why would any of us waste a single minute on someone who isn’t killing it in high school? It only gets harder from here on, folks, and if you can’t cut it in high school, the world is going to chew you up and spit you out.”

  I look at Zoey out of the corner of my eye. “You do realize that I could rattle off a list of, like, a hundred names that proves your theory is crap, right? Like, aren’t most bajillionaires losers in high school?” But Zoey has turned her attention to reapplying her mascara and stares mesmerized by her own reflection in the rearview mirror. This is my Zoey: absolutely obsessed with bagging the most popular guys and always pursuing her idea of high school glory. And she does a bloody good job of it. Three-time homecoming queen, lead in five Wildwood drama department productions, and most Internet-stalked girl in Savage. Zoey is in it to win it, even if it’s not a competition. And she’s my life raft, my comfort blanket, the sister I never had. She’s kept me sane through my parents’ divorce, through years of Jeanie aftermath, through high school, which everyone knows is a living hell without a popular girl as your spirit guide.

  Michaela and Zoey don’t agree on a lot, but they do see eye to eye about killing it in high school. Michaela just doesn’t value prom crowns and social chairs. While Zoey has a monopoly on pursuing social glory, Michaela’s pursuing tomorrow’s glory. She believes her ticket to college, a career as the founder of a monolithic social media site, and marrying some czar’s son or a progolfer is to take every honors class in math and science, every year. Michaela is likely the only person on the planet who could have made our twosome a threesome in the eighth grade and not gotten herself kneecapped by Zoey over the last four years. They have nothing in common except me and wanting to be the best at what they do. And thankfully, they want different things.