The Creeping Read online

  “Crap.” I smack my forehead with my palm and glare at my bunny’s smug whiskered face. Even my bunny with stuffing for brains knows that I screwed up any chance of Sam helping me. He’d probably hang up on me the instant he saw my name on his cell. Or he’d answer to tell me just how little of me there is left. In which case I could assure him that I’m next on a kill list, so there’ll be even less of me left if he refuses to help.

  I scroll through my contacts quickly before losing my nerve. I stab my finger at his name. Once I hear ringing, shame washes over me. I have no right to call Sam for help. No right to ask him to do anything for me. Ever. By the second ring I’m in a cold sweat. I hit end before the third can finish me off.

  I roll off the bed and lie crumpled on my white shag rug. When my parents remodeled the house, Mom argued with me for days about my choice of carpet. She said it wasn’t practical. She didn’t understand that it was soft on my face and I wanted something to curl up on doing homework and talking on the phone. Even though there’s a glaring green stain from a guacamole debacle, I’m glad I didn’t let her talk me out of it. I wish I could crawl into the shag now and hide.

  A buzzing above my head makes me jump. I sit upright and look eagerly at the offending cell. Let it be Zoey calling to give me a chance to explain. It’s not, though. The screen glows blue with Sam’s name in bold black letters. They look angry.

  “H-hello,” I stammer. “Sam?”

  “You prank calling me now?” His tone is quiet but not angry.

  “No . . . I mean, I guess I did, since I called and then hung up. Sorry.”

  “Sorry about calling during dinner and then hanging up, or sorry about what you said to me earlier?”

  “Both.” I’ve recovered my bunny from the pillow and wrap my arms tightly around his mottled gray body. I hope he’ll keep me afloat through this.

  “Well, apology accepted, but I have to go—”

  “Wait a sec. Please,” I squeak. “I—I have no right to ask you this, especially after earlier, but I need your help.” A noise halfway between a snort and a chuckle from the other end. “Did you hear about Jeanie’s mom?”

  “Yes.”

  Another deep breath on my end. “Okay, so the cops have been here, and they think whoever killed her is the one who took Jeanie and is also connected to the body in the cemetery.”

  “And? Hate to break it to you, Stella, but my Hardy Boys phase is over, and I’m not much of a detective.”

  “The cops think it was Jeanie’s dad, but it’s not.” Panic makes my tone too high. “I don’t know how I know, but there is no way it’s him. I just know it’s not. I—”

  “Okay, I hear you. It’s not Mr. Talcott.”

  I take a long, silent breath and let it out slowly. Sam believes me just like that. Zoey doubted me, but Sam doesn’t. “Daniel is back in town.”

  “Since when? For how long? Have you seen him? What does your dad say?” He’s louder with each question. “Do the cops know? You don’t think it was him, do you?”

  “Sam,” I shout over him. “Of course it wasn’t Daniel. Just like I know it wasn’t Jeanie’s dad. Daniel was just a kid when Jeanie went missing, and no matter how much of a freak you think he is, you can’t actually believe he’d ever kill his mother. What matters is that the cops are arresting Jeanie’s dad for something he didn’t do, and they’re worried whoever’s responsible might target me next. I have to remember, Sam. And if I can’t remember, then we at least have to prove it wasn’t Jeanie’s dad.”

  “We? What we, Stella? Just this morning you told me I was too nice to you. That we each had our own friends.” He half sniffs, half snorts. “No, sorry, you told me I had my own ‘stuff.’ Can’t Zoey help you on your crusade to save an innocent man? Can’t your dad, you know, the lawyer?”

  “Zoey won’t help. She’s angry, and I can’t ask Dad. He’ll tell me to stay out of it. You’re the only one who remembers Jeanie. You can help me figure out what happened. Look, it sucks that I’m asking you. But I’m asking anyway.” I stop, brimming so full of shame I imagine it leaking onto the floor and turning my white carpet brown. I cover my stuffed animal’s face so he doesn’t have to witness how horrible I am.

  “You are completely out of your mind for calling me like this after everything.” I wince, bracing myself for Sam’s next words. “I’ll be at your house tomorrow morning at eleven. Be ready, because I’m not coming in. I’ll honk.” With that, he hangs up. Leaving me with my mouth gaping open, searching my bunny’s face for the same shock I feel.

  Chapter Seven

  True to his word, Sam’s horn blares at 10:59 the next morning. I race downstairs, purse slung over my shoulder, scouring the floor below for my violet ballet flats. I’m hopping on one foot, then the other, slipping each on, as I burst through the front door. The news crews left late last night, the hum of their engines jolting me from sleep. A single police car sits idling. I hold up an index finger for Sam, who peers at me through the windshield of his beat-up teal station wagon—one of the many reasons Zoey’s dubbed him the King of Loserdom—and hurry over to the cops.

  The officer with pimply skin—who somehow manages to look even younger in the sunless morning light—rolls the passenger-side window down. He smacks his lips loudly, chewing a massive wad of gum.

  “Good morning, Ms. Cambren.” His voice is artificially low, trying for older but failing miserably.

  “Good morning.” I wave to his partner slouching behind the wheel, devouring a bagel and lox. “Umm . . . I’m headed out.” I angle my head toward Sam’s car. “We’re just going to the mall and then coming right back.” I spin on my toes as soon as I’ve finished and run for the wagon. He calls after me, but I don’t stop. They can follow us if they’re that worried.

  “Hey,” I say to Sam, throwing myself into the passenger seat of the wagon.

  “Morning.” Sam avoids my eyes and devotes all his energy to backing the car out of the driveway. One of those cheesy car fresheners in the shape of a tree swings from the mirror. Cedar, I think.

  After a block of Sam keeping the speedometer at ten miles under the speed limit, I laugh. “So not only does your car smell like an old lady’s closet, you drive like one too?”

  He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Be sure to add that to your list of complaints about me. I don’t really want to get a ticket from your illustrious police escort.” Some people can pull off sarcasm; Sam can’t. It’s forced and clunky, like my accent in Spanish class. He tilts the cracked rearview mirror toward me. Sure enough, the cops follow at a car-length’s distance. “We won’t be in any high-speed chases today, but maybe you should put on your seat belt?”

  I struggle with the belt, sneaking a peek to see if Sam is upset. His face is unreadable, neutral. After five more blocks, I can’t bear the silence. “I really appreciate you helping me, and I just want you to know that I’m really sorry and—”

  “Stella. Stop.” One hand temporarily strays from the wheel as he holds it between us. “I’m helping you because that’s who I am. I’m someone who helps friends. Even if it’s an old friend and even if they don’t deserve it.”

  “ ’Kay, thanks,” I mumble, staring at my hands. I swallow the ten other apologies I feel the need to vomit at him. Dependable Sam. Kind Sam. A friend who I’ve thrown away, over and over again. I don’t deserve his help. He knows it; I know it.

  The wagon makes a sharp right turn into a massive parking lot. BigBox’s glowing red cube emblem could probably be seen from space, it’s so bright and huge. Sam parks the car and jumps out. He ducks his head, regarding me frozen in place. “Come on, let’s go lose our tail,” he says with a wink. I follow, nervously glancing over my shoulder. The police car idles in a handicapped space, but the officers don’t move to pursue us. A rush of cold air bathes my face once we’re through the automated doors. The store is packed with carts and families, the quiet drone of elevator music its white noise.

  “What are we doing
here?” I call to Sam, who strides briskly a few feet ahead of me.

  “You’ll see.” We snake through the crowded aisles, dodging crying toddlers and yelling mothers. A few red-vested employees nod greetings to Sam as we dash by.

  “We can’t lose the police in here because they didn’t follow us in. They’ll be at the car when we leave,” I say.

  “That’s what I’m counting on.” He takes a sudden left, and I have to backtrack a couple of steps to shadow him through a doorway in the store’s rear wall labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  “This really isn’t a great time for you to take me on a tour of your work,” I grumble, just before Sam grabs my wrist and tows me down an even darker corridor. “Okay, this is kind of freaking me out.” Sam drags me for a few more yards before slamming his shoulder into a door and bursting through. White light blinds me. I squint, trying to get my bearings.

  “We’re outside,” I exclaim. We stand on a paved loading dock; the cement extends twenty or thirty feet before dying into the woods.

  A ribbon of light from the sun seeping through the clouds illuminates Sam’s face as he smiles slowly. “I figured we would need to lose them, and since the wood runs into Jeanie’s house, we can walk. It’s about three miles,” he says, appraising my shoes. “You okay in those?” I nod, mutely in awe of Sam. I only asked him to help me remember, and that’s all it took for him to devise a plan. I didn’t even think about where we’d go today. Of course, the dirt drive by Jeanie’s old house is exactly where we need to start. It’s where she vanished.

  “Sam, this is . . . amazing.” He shrugs the compliment off and turns to start into the woods. I follow after a moment’s hesitation, watching him go. From behind I wouldn’t recognize him. His shoulders are broad and his arms less lanky and more muscular than they used to be. He isn’t wearing a shoelace as a belt today, although a UFO is centered on the back of his T-shirt, and there are patches ironed on its front with words in Latin. Hanging off his jean’s waistband is a pair of suspenders.

  He doesn’t look like the little boy I kissed at the cove the summer before fifth grade. All knocking knees and front teeth big as white Chiclets. We’d had sex ed earlier that spring, and ever since then I’d felt some weird buzzing down deep in me. Gag me, but it’s true. I was curious. And Sam was my guinea pig, since he was basically the only boy I talked to—other than Caleb, who’s too brotherly to think of like that. The kiss was all teeth-clattering awkwardness, Sam leaning in most of the way, me pulling him the rest. It was sweet.

  “Hey, you okay?” Sam calls. I look around, having totally spaced out. He waits for me to catch up so we’re walking side by side.

  “Yeah, sorry.” I’m horrified by what I’m going to say but totally unable to stop myself. “I was just thinking about our first kiss.”

  Sam’s steps falter. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, then opens it again. He raises an eyebrow and prods softly, “I thought your first real kiss was with Scott Townsend.” Somehow the fact that he doesn’t sound bitter or angry or pissed makes it sting worse.

  “I don’t think you could call any of my kisses with Scott Townsend real,” I admit. After that, I try not to hear the familiar rhythm of Sam’s steps as I watch a blue-winged sparrow with iridescent feathers swoop low overhead. I try not to see the droplets of sweat pooling at the base of his neck as the heat of the sun burns through the canopy of branches. I inhale deeply the scent of decaying leaves as enchanted bits of light play on Sam’s shoulders.

  In the back of my mind I never stop searching for anything to bridge the divide between us. Or at least to distract him from it. “I remembered something the other night at Blackdog.” I take a deep breath, preparing myself to admit it out loud. “I saw Jeanie. I mean, I didn’t actually see her there, but I remembered what she looked like that day, and then I imagined her standing by the bonfire.”

  Sam adjusts his pace so we’re walking abreast. “That might not be a memory. Even I can think of what Jeanie looked like the day she disappeared from hearing about it on the news.”

  “But I remembered things that no one knows. Like that Jeanie was afraid, really afraid, and that she wet her pants.” I lower my voice. “Something, I’m not sure what, had hit her in the head, and there was blood dripping from her scalp.”

  He catches my eye. “You didn’t tell anyone?” he asks.

  “No. You’re it,” I say, a little jitter in my voice as I look away. “Something happened to Jane Doe’s head, too. It looked like her whole scalp was torn off,” I finish in a whisper.

  “I’m sorry you saw that,” he says.

  I bob my head and try to concentrate on pleasanter things. Sam swings his arms as he walks. Each step is animated and alive with energy. His hand nearest to me looks really empty, and I wish I had the courage to reach for it. What a joke. After all, he doesn’t think there’s any of me left. He’d pull away, reject me. And what the hell is wrong with me anyway? There are about a trillion reasons why Sam Worth is not the kind of guy I flirt with.

  We walk without speaking for thirty more minutes. Every few paces I cave to paranoia and glance over my shoulder. But nothing’s following us. Shane is going to be furious when his officers tell him we ditched them. If Dad actually comes home from the office tonight, he’ll be angry too. Although Dad’s anger won’t last. By the time he’s done baking a batch of his snickerdoodles, he’ll forget he’s not speaking to me.

  As we near Jeanie’s, the wood grows denser with birch, the trunks covered in thin, peeling white bark like the shedding skin of a snake. There are rogue flashes of rust-colored brick walls and white picket fences through the slim trunks. We’re close to neighborhoods now. Belts of forest crisscross the town of Savage, a patchwork of trees cutting up the roads and houses. It’s possible to travel from one end of town to the other completely sheltered by woods. If we turned northeast rather than northwest, we’d end up in Zoey’s backyard.

  “Hey, I didn’t realize that Zoey’s and Jeanie’s were so close,” I say. Sam ignores me. I try again. “Do you like working at BigBox?”

  He answers without sparing me a glance. “It’s not exactly my dream job, but it does pay enough for me to save.”

  “Save for what?”

  “College tuition.”

  “But won’t your parents . . .” I let the question trail off, because it sounds ruder than I expected.

  “They would if they could. Not everyone has money to go to whatever school they want.” There it is again. I know I’m lucky. But it’s not like Sam to be sour about anything.

  “Sorry,” he says, half turning to me as he smiles hesitantly, “That was unfair. It’s been worse over the past year since Dad was laid off. He picks up odd jobs, but it’s not really enough.” I haven’t thought about Sam’s parents in forever. Now I remember his mom telling jokes and his dad working long hours at Halper’s Cannery, where he managed the warehouse. Sam’s dad is a large, burly man; although Sam has his size, they were never anything alike. His dad was gruff and quiet, kind of frightening to a kid.

  I catch up to Sam, pushing myself to twice my comfortable speed, bumping over the mush of pine needles and moss, dabbing sweat from my forehead. “I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t. Why would you?”

  I fall quiet. Again, Sam’s right. Why would I know? He’s asked me stuff almost every chance he gets, and I’ve repaid him by never asking back. I’ve shrugged off all the little thoughtful things Sam’s done for me over the years. I frown at the perky yellow dandelions sprouting from the forest floor. They look smug; they make me feel like an abominable snowgirl. For a few paces I go out of my way to stomp on the little blossoms. I chose Zoey five years ago, but here I am, hiking through the woods with Sam, the only friend who has my back.

  He takes off in an easy jog. “It’s just up ahead.”

  I can’t run without losing my shoes and pant, “Wait up!” I’m so busy watching where I step that I emerge from the trees without really notic
ing. There’s compact dirt under my feet and the warmth of the sun on my head. I turn slowly in a circle. It didn’t occur to me that bursting upon Jeanie’s house after so many years would unsettle me, but seeing it makes my throat close. I have the sense that the house and the drive snuck up on me, rather than the other way around.

  If it’s possible for a place to look sinister, it does. The house’s facade is warped and decaying as though turned rotten by Jeanie’s disappearance. Maybe it saw what happened to her? It has its own dark memories. The paint is discolored and chipped, flaking onto the dirt lot. Shutters hang by single nails. The front windows are shattered, with the look of gaping eye sockets. A small aged vigil of candles and rank stuffed toys lines the porch steps. I can practically smell the mold poisoning the air inside its walls.

  Sam appears at my side. “Hard to imagine why her parents stayed here after she was gone. I’d want to get as far away as possible. They only moved away three years ago.”

  “I haven’t been here since it happened,” I say, standing in the shadow the roof casts. “It looks like it’s been abandoned forever.”

  Sam leaps over a puddle of sludge and onto a crumbling footpath leading to the house’s ramshackle side gate. “I heard it got bad the last year they were here. Mr. Talcott’s drinking was worse; he’d go into town drunk, get kicked out of bars. The state park fired him. They couldn’t pay for the house. It’s why they ended up in a trailer across town.”