Creep

by Eireann Corrigan

  “Really? Ben wasn’t out with the rest of you?”

  “No. We went to dinner. First he said he’d meet us and then he never showed. Can you imagine what my parents would say if Lucy or I did that? Just flaked without any explanation? We just sat there, for the longest time, waiting to order our food.”

  “Did he say what happened? Who he was with?”

  “That’s the thing: He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t answer any of us.” Janie twisted her hair into a bun and leveled her gaze at me. “I’m going to ask you something and I need you to be completely honest.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. She knows. I closed my eyes. Opened them. Janie still sat there staring intently at me.

  “You have to promise,” she said.

  “Of course I promise.” I pulled the blanket more tightly and tried not to look at the baseball mitt in her hand. “Janie, what’s going on?”

  “I can’t even say it.”

  “What, Janie?” Just say it.

  “Do you think Ben’s the Sentry?”

  “No,” I answered. Then more emphatically: “NO!” It took two and a half seconds to go from feeling completely guilty to feeling outraged. “Janie, you can’t possibly think that’s true.”

  “I could. I do. It’s the kind of thing only Ben would dream up. You don’t know him. When the first letter arrived, we all thought that right away—my whole family thought that. We’ve spent this whole time playing detective, making lists and interviewing neighbors. Sometimes the right answer is the simple one.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not him, Janie.”

  “It fits. You don’t how hard he fought to stay in Northampton. He asked to live with friends; he applied for boarding school. He set up a meeting with the school psychologist to try to convince my parents to rent him an apartment. After everything he put them through.”

  “That sounds like a kid who didn’t want to leave his friends.”

  “One friend.” Janie held eye contact with me, as if making sure her words landed every punch. “One friend in particular. She was really pretty and she preferred that we move away.” Janie laid her case. “He’s twisted enough to write the letters in the first place. He disappears all the time. Like last night—he stood us up for dinner, but he must have been here, in the neighborhood.” She held up the baseball mitt and waved it—exhibit A. “He dropped this on your lawn.”

  “Think about what Miss Abbot told us. Those letters started arriving before you moved here.”

  “My parents made the offer on the house four months ago. Ben could have written the first one then.” She leaned back on my bed and flung the glove across the room. The ball dislodged and rolled loudly on the wood floor. “Sorry.” I shrugged, hoping she would leave it there. “I love my brother, Olivia. But this past year really messed him up. He’s convinced himself that he loves this girl. And he wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to reason with him. I know he can be funny and charming and whatever. But he’s just pretending that ending up stuck here doesn’t matter to him.”

  Janie kept going and I kept listening, even though it felt disloyal. Somehow I had backed myself into a corner; every direction I turned meant betraying someone. “You think Ben is this sarcastic, hilarious guy, but he likes mocking people. Because he’s angry. And you know who else is really angry?” She clicked on her phone and turned the screen toward me. “Whoever’s writing these letters.” In the pic, the white envelope of the Sentry’s latest message seemed to glare at me. The writing looked larger—a voice rising to be heard.

  “I think that’s why my dad didn’t want to go to the police—he believes it’s Ben too.” I decided not to mention to Janie that I thought Mr. Donahue’s reluctance made him a front-runner in the Sentry sweepstakes. “Even last night—it was my mom who insisted on calling. But now the police are involved and they’re going to figure it out. They took all these pictures, with real cameras. They dusted for prints. They’ll arrest him all over again. For what? Some bratty prank because my parents decided we should move. So stupid.”

  I knew Janie meant Ben but wondered if I counted as stupid too.

  Once I stopped making excuses for him and really listened to her, Janie’s opinions sounded a lot like evidence.

  Janie and I had just come home from the pool when another police car turned down Olcott Place.

  “Seriously?” she said, hopping off her bike. The driveway sat empty, with neither of her parents’ cars there.

  “We should go to my house,” I said, thinking of my agreement with my mom.

  “Ben and Lucy are home.”

  “But they’re not adults.”

  Janie leveled her gaze at me. “Lucy? Come on. She’s pretty much geriatric.” The police car slowed, but it didn’t have its lights on. I braked but kept walking my bike toward my house.

  “Liv.” This time Janie’s voice sounded urgent. “What if they question him alone?”

  Just as my reluctance to disobey direct parental orders collided with my disinclination to write Ben letters in prison, the police pulled into a different driveway. Janie and I stared at each other. Officer Wycoff waved once he got to Miss Abbot’s front porch.

  “Wow,” Janie muttered as she half-heartedly waved back. “Look what we did. Now the police are going to interrogate Miss Abbot.”

  “Nonsense,” I deadpanned in my best Miss Abbot voice. “Miss Abbot is going to be interrogating them.”

  “What do you think she’s telling them?”

  “She’s probably providing a detailed history of Glennon Heights. It’ll keep the cops busy at least. I know she maintains a list of cars that drive by the park too much. Maybe she’ll have them tracking down license plate numbers.”

  “How do you drive by the park too much?”

  “She calls it cruising. She thinks the park functions as the epicenter of the Glennon Heights crime world.”

  I convinced Janie to come to the coffee shop with me, to meet up with Kaia, Mirabelle, and Brooke. First though, Janie ducked inside her house to let Ben and Lucy know the cops were across the street. She came stomping out. “I try to do the right thing, the sisterly thing. No one ever appreciates it.”

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “Lucy just answered in Latin and I don’t take Latin. And Ben thanked me for the heads up and said he would put all the dead bodies back beneath the floorboards.”

  I burst out laughing. “Oh, come on, that’s funny.”

  “It’s like he has no idea he might be a suspect.”

  “Exactly. So he probably isn’t. Right?”

  I tried to sound confident. It didn’t really work.

  Wall-to-wall people packed the coffee shop. It looked like Glennon Heights High had just given up and decided to run our first day in the place we’d all feel most comfortable. Leather chairs, good lighting, and lots of caffeine: Those perks would have made the high school transition more tolerable. We had this whole awkward moment when Brooke waved us over to her table with Mirabelle and Kaia, but they had only saved one seat—for me, I guess. So Janie and I each sort of perched on half the stool. And then Brooke and Mirabelle exchanged this look, like it was such a big deal for us to share a seat.

  I wished I could kick the stool from out from underneath Brooke and scream, “Then you should have saved two seats!” But you can’t actually say those things out loud. Apparently high school, even more so than eighth grade, was about pretending not to notice the absolutely petty stunts other people pulled in an effort to make themselves feel important and other people feel smaller. Technically, we weren’t even there yet but we already played by those rules.

  A group of seniors occupied the table behind us and I recognized the redheaded guy from the pool, who always nodded at Janie and me as if he was personally approving our presence on the planet. Now he nodded toward us, toward Janie, and shoved an empty stool in our direction.

  Brooke’s eyes went wide. I dragged the stool closer to our table and nudged Janie but she’d already
spun to face him. “Hey, thanks.”

  “No worries. It’s good to see you here. I thought you lived in the water.” Janie just shook her head. “You’re Ben’s little sister—the new guy.” This time Janie nodded. The whole mute mermaid routine seemed to work for her. I always worried so much about talking to guys, but watching Janie, I realized that half of her allure was her restraint. She just kept smiling and the redheaded guy rushed to fill in the silence. “Your brother’s cool. He was just here, with Thatcher. Do you know Thatcher?”

  “We know Thatcher Langsom,” Mirabelle called out.

  I could have told Mirabelle that the redheaded guy was not about to look away from Janie, no matter what she contributed to the conversation.

  “I’m Justin, by the way. You guys live in Thatcher’s house, right? His old house?”

  “I live in the water,” Janie said lightly. It would have sounded creepy if I’d tried it.

  Justin laughed. “Yeah. I hear that. But you all had some excitement over there, huh? I’m an EMT. Anytime there’s police activity, we get a call.” Janie looked suitably impressed. “But it turned out you didn’t need us.”

  “Thanks, though,” Janie replied. And then, without another word, she turned back to the rest of us.

  Justin would not be deterred. He just talked to Janie’s ponytail. “Yeah, anytime. It’s cool that your brother and Thatcher are so tight.”

  Behind us, Justin’s friends gave him a hard time. We heard a low whistle, then someone imitating the sound of a crash and burn.

  “I’ll see you around.” Justin didn’t sound dejected. His confidence impressed me as much as Janie’s. It remained a mystery to me how people managed to speak to each other without ending up curled in a ball, doubting every word spoken and questioning every inflection.

  Across the table, Brooke seethed. Mirabelle asked, “What did he mean? About the police?”

  “It was nothing. We got some weird letters.” Janie stayed nonchalant while I watched our friends carefully, searching for signs of recognition. We made a good team.

  Brooke barely seemed interested. “What kind of letters?”

  “Like crank calls, but letters.” Janie’s voice rose ever so slightly.

  “Wait—seriously?” Brooke leaned forward in her seat. “How long has this been going on? Why didn’t you guys say anything?”

  “It just seemed like a dumb prank at first.”

  “And now?” Mirabelle asked.

  “Now they’re a little scary, honestly.” Janie glanced around as she spoke, checking to see if anyone seemed to be eavesdropping.

  “Do they look like ransom notes? Like with letters cut out from magazines?” Brooke giggled. “That’s nuts.” Suddenly more people around us were listening.

  “Brooke, it’s not funny.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Only in Glennon Heights would some loser send crank mail.” She gazed across the table with a kinder look. “God, Janie. I’m so sorry. You haven’t even started school yet and someone already hates you.” Even Mirabelle cringed. She and I rushed to talk about other things—classes and cross-country—to fill the tense silence. Why does Brooke always have to be such an issue? I wondered.

  Janie lasted about fifteen minutes before pulling out her phone and texting furiously. Soon after we heard a series of chimes. “Oh look,” she said flatly without even a pretense of surprise. “My brother texted. He needs to pick me up immediately.” I stared at her. “I mean, us. He needs to pick us up immediately. We can leave the bikes here, right?”

  “Like overnight?” I stammered. But Janie fixed her steely eyes on me, so I said, “Of course.”

  “I thought your brother didn’t drive.” Brooke smiled sweetly. Only her voice sneered.

  “Thatcher’s driving.” Janie shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.

  For a moment, I thought that had settled it. Brooke slumped a bit, anticipating, as we all were, the moment that Thatcher Langsom would pull up in his bright blue Jeep. We, two freshmen, would climb in and ride away, leaving most of Glennon Heights High to wonder how we’d managed to wrangle the captain of the lacrosse team as our driver.

  But Brooke rallied. “At least he knows the address.”

  Janie swiveled to face me. “I’m going to wait outside. It’s so hot in here—suffocating …”

  When she distanced herself far enough from our table, I opened my mouth to speak, determined to finally shut down the petty factory that Brooke had operated for the past few weeks. But Brooke held up one hand and said, “No. Liv, before you start telling me how I need to be friendlier to your new next-door neighbor who barely tolerates us, why don’t you ask me how my summer’s going? Go on—don’t you want to know if camp sucked? Maybe it didn’t and I miss the people who stopped it from sucking but you don’t know about those kids because I don’t talk incessantly about the people I just met as if I’m the first and only person to ever discover true friendship. Or maybe you want to ask Mirabelle when her sister left for Syracuse and what that’s like? Kaia landed an agent and is auditioning for commercials this fall—but you don’t know about that, do you? And did you even notice that Allie isn’t here? If you’d asked, I could have told you that she’s grounded. Her homophobic parents wouldn’t let her go to the Gay/Straight Alliance welcome picnic, so she had Ms. Evans call them and they were the opposite of supportive. I am so very sorry that none of us have gotten mean letters in the mail but we’ve been dealing with our own concerns. Maybe just once if you could pretend we matter to you, we might feel a little more ready to help plan a Welcome to Glennon Heights party for your new best friend.”

  I turned toward Mirabelle, but she only swallowed and looked away.

  Maybe I’m the issue, I thought, remembering the times my mom had pressed me to reach out to more friends this summer. I was still looking for the right words to say when I heard Thatcher Langsom honk his horn.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to mumble as I stood up. “I have to go.” Brooke’s glare traveled from my face to the door. “I’m really sorry.” Mirabelle sort of smiled at me the way I saw my mom once smile at a lady in the grocery store who wheeled a cart over her foot. Kaia was hard to read.

  I picked my way through the crowd, half expecting an outstretched leg to trip me. Outside, Thatcher’s car idled. He and Ben sat up front, with sunglasses on, looking as if they had just left an audition to play the villains in a John Hughes movie. Janie opened her door and scooted across the leather seat. “Jeez, Livvie. You couldn’t tear yourself away?”

  “Just trying to keep the peace.”

  “But that would ruin all Brooke’s fun.”

  “She’s just—” I searched for the right explanation.

  “She’s a terrorist.”

  “Who’s a terrorist?” Thatcher leaned back and grinned at us, a thousand kilowatts of handsome surging through the car.

  The last time we’d all sat in the coffee shop, Brooke had sat there snickering, mocking Thatcher’s new job. Maybe we all are, I thought to myself.

  “No one’s a terrorist,” I said.

  “You girls, man—bunch of barracudas. Hey, I’m Thatcher.”

  “I-I know,” I stammered. “We were neighbors.”

  “Oh yeah? On Olcott? Crazy. How’s the old neighborhood?” He punched Ben’s shoulder. “Now that this bad element has taken over?” If Thatcher was devastated by the change in address, he didn’t show it. “Where we headed?”

  Ben said, “Northampton?” and I gazed out the window and wished my name was Andi.

  When Janie suggested, “Let’s go to the VonHolt house,” I wasn’t paying attention. I was staring at Ben’s hand, which clutched the strap of the seat belt in front of me. While the three of them argued, I noticed the fine hairs on his knuckles, how he had clipped his fingernails fairly recently. When we’d played catch the other night, Ben’s hands looked pale, but now I noticed how tan they were—the hemp bracelet he always wore had slipped down and revealed a tan line glowing white in the
dark car. I could squint and make it look like half a set of handcuffs, glinting.

  “What can you possibly expect to find at that place?” Ben tugged at his seat belt strap. He turned to face Janie.

  “I don’t know. Something useful. There could be a link. Maybe whoever’s crazy enough to live in a house where all those kids died feels comfortable sending death threats to another set of kids.”

  Thatcher braked hard at the stop sign and Ben’s fist clenched. “Death threats? Are you kidding?”

  “I told you about this,” Ben muttered. “Another letter came—so that makes three total. Plus you said you guys got two.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t call them death threats. More like … house valentines.”

  “You’re going to need to elaborate on that one,” Janie said.

  “It sounded like some guy obsessed with the house. You know those true-life stories of people who are in love with inanimate objects? Like that man who kept trying to marry a subway car?” Ben, Janie, and I all shook our heads. “Man, you guys just radiate ignorance. Anyway—that’s what these notes sounded like.” He dropped his voice and spoke with zombie flatness. “The house is mine. You trespass on my heart.” He shrugged and smiled. “You know, that kind of thing.”

  “Nothing about blood in the walls?” Janie asked.

  Ben chimed in. “Or something buried in the floorboards?”

  “Sounds like our guy got pretty intense.”

  “He calls himself the Sentry,” Janie said. “Did he use that name in your letters?”

  “I guess so. That sounds familiar.” Thatcher pulled the car over to the curb. Outside my window the VonHolt house sat sternly, its peaked roof scraping the sky.

  “Yeah, you didn’t take note of it?” Ben sounded incredulous. “It’s kind of a creepy detail.”