Creep

by Eireann Corrigan

  Ben pointed and yelled, “The gas valve. By the shed.” He dove for Ned’s waist and held him back. “Now!” Ben screamed. But Ned wasn’t chasing us anymore. His blank stare had focused completely on the pipe as he swung and swung at it.

  Mr. Donahue crouched with his arms over his head and ran forward as if the ceiling was already on fire. Mrs. Donahue guided Janie and Lucy out and yelled at me to follow. I couldn’t hear outside myself. I might have only screamed Ben’s name inside my head.

  But probably not. Because for a split second right before Mrs. Donahue yanked me forward, Ben looked at me and said calmly, “I know what to do.” And then he let go of Ned McGovern and stepped backward into the opposite tunnel, the one leading back to 16 Olcott.

  Mrs. Donahue was boosting me up when we heard the explosion. It sounded like the noise when they launch fireworks, right before the sky lights up. That deep thunderous sound of igniting. We felt a fierce gust at our back. It pitched Mrs. Donahue forward, smacking her head against the hinges of the trapdoor. Sprawled on the ground, I felt myself trembling everywhere but then realized it was the earth shaking beneath me. Janie and Lucy knelt down and together we hauled Mrs. Donahue out of the hole.

  “Gavin?” Mrs. Donahue asked desperately.

  “I got it.” Mr. Donahue had reached the valve and almost tore off the handle in his panic. We collapsed in a pile—all of us—entwined and weeping beside the old wood shed. We shielded our eyes against the thick smoke and stared at 16 Olcott, expecting it to fall. And then the night filled with sirens and the red lights of fire trucks.

  In the middle of all that chaos, Mrs. Donahue asked, “Where is Ben?”

  In answer, Mr. Donahue scrambled to his feet, trying to run back inside. We all screamed then. He didn’t get far before needing to turn around. Thick plumes of smoke streamed from the passage, blocking any entry.

  When the firemen found us, they moved us farther back, to the edges of the property. They examined Janie’s arm and Mrs. Donahue’s forehead. They kept shining a penlight into Lucy’s eyes and she kept swatting it away, staring at the scorched ground like she expected someone to crawl out. One of the firefighters spoke into his radio. “Various degrees of shock. One case requiring stitches.” My parents were with us too. With me. Asking me questions. But I could only look at the house.

  Then I saw him walking toward us, a firefighter on either side.

  Ben was covered in dark soot, except for light streaks around his face where he’d wiped away sweat or tears. His hair stuck out wildly and his clothes were frayed. “Hey, guys,” he called out as if it were any ordinary Saturday night and he’d shown up late for dinner again. “There goes the neighborhood.”

  I know for certain that I didn’t shriek his name out loud that time. I left that to Lucy and Janie, who knocked him to the ground with their hugs, quickly followed by their parents. The firemen looked over and grinned. One of the firemen stepped forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Donahue, I don’t know who taught this young man to shut off the internal gas valve in an emergency, but that was time well spent. Your boy’s actions saved your home, possibly lives up and down the street.” Their dad reached down to squeeze Ben’s shoulder and their mom wiped away tears.

  The fireman nodded and gave a moment before he continued. “Now we’ve resolved the small fires at the front and back of the main domicile, with minimal damage to the building. Obviously there are structural issues that will take weeks and months to address. I would recommend that you spend tonight in a neighbor’s home or a hotel.” He cleared his throat. “Because of the history of the property and your most recent conversations with law enforcement, we do have some questions. We would like to conduct interviews tonight.”

  “Absolutely.” Mr. Donahue nodded. “As soon as my family checks out medically, you understand.”

  “Of course.” The firemen looked at each other. “Your son did indicate this was a deliberate act. Of course this is a small town in terms of news. We’re familiar with the letters you’ve been receiving.”

  “A sick man, Ned McGovern.” Mr. Donahue looked away. “Particularly shocking because he was a friend of the Langsom family.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to say the team hasn’t found anyone else inside. That root cellar in your backyard is, for all intents and purposes, incinerated. We’ll get down there as soon as we can. Heck of a shame.”

  My father spoke up then. “Ned McGovern. Someone should inform his wife.”

  If the firemen were shocked at the unveiling of the Sentry, they didn’t show it. In the weeks and months that followed, nobody showed it. That’s the thing about towns like Glennon Heights—we circle up around our own. Mrs. McGovern had fled often enough to her parents’ house in Delaware that no one blinked when she up and left for good as soon as his body was found. No one blinked and no one blamed her.

  People talked more after the Donahues moved. Probably because they felt guilty. They hadn’t believed them. They had judged too harshly. In the weeks after the explosion, Mr. Donahue turned down all interview requests. He asked Officer Wycoff to escort one of the more persistent news magazines off our street. He even nailed a sign to the front door: Please respect my family’s need for privacy.

  At first I made a game of giving the press something to work with. I sat in old Halloween costumes on our front steps. Mostly I was bored, but also it entertained Miss Abbot. She tried to talk the New York News into interviewing Horatio, the cat.

  For months, the media didn’t seem to understand that the Donahues didn’t live on Olcott anymore. They lived at an extended-stay hotel and then left right before winter break. At first they said they couldn’t live in the house because it was structurally unsound. But Janie told me it was easier to fall asleep in a hotel room. She said, “At least there’s supposed to be other people in a hotel.”

  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Ned McGovern and ways that people can be structurally unsound. And then how other people somehow possess a surprising strength, as if they’ve got solid wooden beams braced above their hearts. Sometimes Jillian and I sit quietly together in the dugout and I know we’re both wondering what happened to little Teddy to cause so much damage at his core.

  And sometimes I go to the baseball field alone. Sometimes I run. Sometime I sneak out at night and bring along the mitt that I tried to give back to Ben, the one he made me keep. I knew when they moved, the Donahues were gone for me too. Janie and I lied. We said we would text, but I remembered what she’d said about her old friends and how pointless it seemed to hang on. I knew there would be a girl in the next town on whom Janie would come crashing down. I would keep floating along in Glennon Heights, where everyone seemed to know me.

  Ben showed up on my front stoop his last night in town. I was dressed for a run and my dad must have seen him on his way in from work. But he didn’t stop me from going out. He let me walk out there and find Ben sitting with the baseball glove beside him.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I believe in goodbyes.”

  “You barely believe in anything, but you believe in goodbyes?” I asked.

  “I believe in lots of things.”

  “Name one thing that’s not an eighties movie or pop culture phenomenon.” I was jogging by then but he refused to run, so I just had to awkwardly jog circles around him as we made our way up the street. It helped to have a distraction.

  “I believe in the power of a good game of catch.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

  “But it’s got to be a well-matched game of catch.”

  “I know what you mean.” I slowed to a walk. I felt the cotton of the sleeve of my T-shirt brush up against the sleeve of his T-shirt. I didn’t always know what to make of people but I heard how Ben said my name differently from anyone else’s name. I hadn’t merely invented the way his eyes slid to me every time he made a joke, each moment he had a reason to feel proud. I knew Ben liked me. But I also knew he wouldn’t let that matter.

  “The thin
g is, Livvie, you’re really good at catch. I want you to keep that mitt and make sure when you throw, it’s to a person who deserves—”

  “Okay.” I cut him off then and picked up my pace. I held up the glove and clutched it to my heart, recognizing it for the treasure that it was. “I get it.” I nodded to him.

  “That’s it?” Ben asked. “Okay?” At first his face wrinkled with worry and then it broke open in wonder. In that moment I was the coolest girl he’d ever met.

  “That’s it.” I took a deep breath, the kind I always did right before sprinting on the last block home. “Goodbye, Ben Donahue,” I said and ran fast enough that he could not see me cry.

  In my bedroom closet, I keep a wooden crate. Just inside my ordinary closet—it’s not a closet behind a closet or anything. That’s where I store Ben’s baseball mitt. I have some newspaper clippings too both from that summer and after that summer. And at the very bottom, I have Teddy McGovern’s artifacts wrapped in the old Boy Scout kerchief.

  I still sometimes need to spread the crate’s contents out on my bedspread. I arrange those fragments in a way that makes some kind of sense. I convince myself that it all actually happened. Eventually though, I’ll bring the collection to the library and see if that librarian wants any of it for the local lore room. There are plenty of people who have heard of Glennon Heights, who stop by to look at a yearbook photo or old newspaper clippings.

  I used to mind that, but now it seems right that in a town like ours, there should be a place we might go to visit the past.

  Love and gratitude to the Corrigan, McKay, and Ryden families, as well as Anne Glennon, Steve Loy, and Pat Neary. I have been writing for most of my life now and feel profoundly lucky for so many years of their encouragement and steadfast support.

  Thank you to Cormac and Maeve, who I hope will one day understand why their mom sometimes focuses so ferociously on her laptop. And to Rose Abondio, Rob Franzmann, and Ella Nowak, who have shown us that families grow in all kinds of ways.

  I am grateful for my friends, especially those who helped talk through this book and all its sinister possibilities: Joe Chodl, Hannah Garrow, Elijah Kaufman, Stacy McMillen, Billy Merrell, Mark Nastus, Sara Nardulli, Sherry Riggi, Denise Ryan, Meredith Santowasso, and Nina Stotler.

  Every day and every page, I count myself lucky to work with David Levithan and his team of wizards at Scholastic.

  Finally, I spend my days at Rutgers Preparatory School, surrounded by remarkable characters. While no aspect of this book is based on individuals or events on campus, our exceptional community inspires me every day.

  Eireann Corrigan’s novels for YA readers include Accomplice, The Believing Game, Ordinary Ghosts, and Splintering. She is also the author of the acclaimed YA memoir You Remind Me of You. She lives in New Jersey in a house that she hopes remains unhaunted.

  Copyright © 2019 by Eireann Corrigan

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First edition, October 2019

  Jacket photo © Sandra Cunningham/Trevillion Images

  Jacket design by Christopher Stengel

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-09509-8

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