Mr. Albright looked hard at his wife. She put her face in her hands and started sobbing softly.
“We’re moving,” Benji said in a dull voice.
“Moving?” Penny asked in a hollow voice. Moving?
“We are not moving! Why should we run and hide when that monster’s the one who did this!” Mr. Albright shouted, his face reddening, pointing furiously in the direction of the Devlins’ house. Penny could smell the beer on his breath from where she stood.
“Because I can’t take it anymore!” Mrs. Albright wailed, and threw down the mug she was holding, smashing it on the floor. Penny knew that mug. She remembered drinking hot chocolate with marsh-mallows from it.
Mr. Albright turned and stalked out of the kitchen, slamming the front door so hard it shook the house.
Mrs. Albright visibly tried to get herself under control. “Don’t mind him, Penny.” A shuttered look came over Mrs. Albright’s face, and she said, in a deliberately bright voice, “I think we need a change of scenery. I’d like to be closer to my parents. They live in New Jersey. We’ll only be a few hours away. And you can visit us anytime you want.”
Penny looked at Benji, met his stricken eyes, and said, “Great.”
Penny wandered home and went up to her bedroom.
She felt sick to her stomach. Things were never going to be the same. Not now. Not with Benji leaving. She kept playing the words over and over in her mind. Benji was moving.
She lay on the bed, staring up at the canopy, and felt a wave of exhaustion swamp her. She hadn’t been sleeping much lately. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she felt herself drift off. And then someone was shaking her shoulder softly. She rolled away from the hand, but it kept shaking her insistently. She peeped out through narrowed lids. And then her eyes widened in horror.
Becky stood by the side of the bed, wearing the white cotton eyelet dress, her face a waxy mask, blood dripping down her neck and pooling on the pink carpet.
“Penny, why are you being so mean to me?” Becky whispered, reaching out a hand to her.
Penny flinched, screaming, and then someone was shaking her hard and she blinked to see her mom standing over her.
“Penny! It’s just me. Mom!”
Penny stared wordlessly at her mother.
“Are you okay, sweetie? Were you having a nightmare?”
Penny nodded mutely, and her mother smoothed back her sweat-matted hair.
“Why don’t you go splash some water on your face and then come downstairs. I have to go to the grocery store, and I need someone to help me with all the bags and the baby.”
“Sure,” Penny said shakily.
Penny shepherded Baby Sam around the store while her mother took the cart and shopped. The baby was being good, just looking around at all the shapes and bright colors and listening to the sounds. He reached for a can of tomato paste, and Penny gave it to him. He clutched it in his grubby, fat hands, gurgled happily, and immediately started to gnaw on it. Penny pushed his stroller along, pausing in front of the comic-book rack. She was flipping through a comic book when she saw them.
Mr. and Mrs. Devlin.
The Devlins were older parents, in their late fifties. Mrs. Devlin sat slumped in a wheelchair, wearing a faded housedress. She had lost so much weight, it looked like she could blow away. Her skin was paper-thin, stretched taut over her bones. Mr. Devlin was tall and heavyset, with a resigned sadness etched around his eyes, as if all the blows life had dealt him had finally taken their toll.
Penny craned her head to look at their purchases. They were buying bananas, crackers, and ginger ale. Sick food.
They didn’t even know that their son was lying dead in the creek.
Bile rose in the back of Penny’s throat, and the image of Caleb’s dead body flashed before her eyes.
Mr. Devlin saw Penny staring at him, pale and wide-eyed, and gave her a tired smile.
“Honey, will you go out to the shed and see if there is any charcoal?” Penny’s mother asked when they had returned home. “I forgot to buy some, and I don’t want to have to go out again. It’s almost six thirty and I haven’t even started dinner.”
The shed was in the back corner of the yard, bordering the woods, and it was where her father kept the lawnmower, sleds, and other junk. Sure enough, Penny found half a bag of briquettes at the back, near a pile of mouse droppings. She was closing the door to the shed when she heard the yipping.
Standing at the edge of the dark woods was Buster, caked from head to toe in mud.
“Hey there, Buster,” Penny said. He jumped up, his feet scrambling at her legs. She bent down and he licked her face, as if grateful to finally be back in civilization after what had clearly been an adventure. He yipped at her and wiggled his tail.
“Boy, are you in big trouble,” Penny said, shaking her head. She grabbed the dog and carried him around the side of the house and across the street to the Bukvics’. She hesitated a moment before knocking, just listening.
“Amy!” Mrs. Bukvic’s voice demanded furiously. “Where do you think you’re going, young lady? You know you’re grounded.”
“You can’t ground me for the rest of my life—it’s not fair!”
“Well, that’s too bad. You don’t have the sense that God gave you. How could you even think of dating Caleb when you know what he did to that little girl? And what about Buster?”
“What do you know? Leave me alone!”
“What were you thinking, running around with someone as dangerous as Caleb Devlin in the first place?”
“You don’t know anything!”
Penny knew that the police had been by to question Amy.
“Don’t you talk to me like that!” Mrs. Bukvic shouted.
“You’re ruining my life!” Amy screamed.
“Amy!” Mrs. Bukvic called.
Suddenly the door flew open and Amy stood there, her eyes red-rimmed. Mrs. Bukvic appeared behind her, framed in the doorway.
“Um, hi,” Penny said awkwardly, looking down at the muddy dog cradled in her arms. “I found Buster.”
Buster yipped happily.
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Amy turned and shot her mother a triumphant look.
She pushed past Penny and ran out the door and up the block.
Later that night, Penny sat at the desk in her bedroom, reviewing a list she had drawn up of possible suspects, scribbling down notes. The police still believed Caleb was the killer, and continued to search for him. They’d even looked in the woods, checking out his old haunts. She’d watched from a distance as they’d walked methodically through the trees. If they’d only looked down into the creek, they would have seen his rotting body lying there and known the truth.
But they hadn’t.
“What are you doing?” Teddy asked, opening the door and limping in like he owned the room. He was wearing his pajamas.
“Teddy! Get out. Don’t you ever knock?”
“No,” Teddy said, confused, steadying himself on his crutches. “Why are you acting so weird?”
She flipped her pad over.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said, walking casually over to the bed and flopping down on her belly. He immediately hobbled over to her desk and picked up the pad.
“Put that down!” she ordered him, leaping up and rushing over.
“What’s this?”
“I told you. Nothing,” she hissed, tugging on the pad.
But Teddy was already reading the list. “Why do you have all these names here?”
“Nothing,” she said in a terse voice.
“You really don’t think Caleb killed Becky?” Teddy said, a look of shock dawning on his face.
She said nothing.
“But Caleb killed Becky!” he insisted in a shaken voice.
“How do we know for sure?”
Teddy gestured emphatically. “Because everybody says so!” He looked at her closely. “Aren’t you scared of him?”
> “I was. I mean, I am,” she amended herself. “But how do we know he killed Becky? How do we know for sure?”
“What about me?” he said, holding up his cast.
“Teddy,” she said gently. “Maybe he just found you.”
“He did it! He was laughing at me! I remember!”
“You don’t know that for sure—”
Teddy stood up, clearly distraught. “You’re wrong.”
“Teddy—”
“You’re wrong!” he shouted defiantly, and limped quickly out of the room.
The next afternoon, Penny’s mother cornered her just as she was leaving the house.
“Have you seen Mr. Cat lately?” her mother asked.
Penny paled, thinking fast. “Yeah, he was chasing this squirrel in Mac’s backyard but wouldn’t come when I called him.”
“That cat.” And then her mother narrowed her eyes. “Where are you going?”
“To play with the guys. Why?”
“I just want to know where you’re going to be, that’s all. That’s part of the deal with me being a mom. Things are very tense right now, Penny.”
Her mother took her hand, rubbing it in a soothing gesture. “Believe me, I never thought something like this would happen, either. That’s the whole reason we moved here in the first place. But I guess bad people don’t just live in cities. Caleb’s a scary boy. It’s okay to be worried.”
“Uh, I’m not worried,” Penny stammered. Not much to worry about from a dead boy. She had more to fear from the living.
“But you seem to be having a lot of nightmares. And what about these panic attacks? Your dad and I thought you’d grown out of them, but Mrs. Albright told me you had one the night of the haunted trail. That’s not good. And Nana said that you were pretty upset when you called her.”
Penny went still. What else had Nana told her mother? How much had Penny said to Nana? She couldn’t remember.
Finally Penny said, “I guess you’re sort of right. I guess I am worried about Caleb. You know, Becky.”
“Well, that’s perfectly natural,” her mother said, pleased with the answer. “You know you can tell me anything.”
Penny looked at her mother and thought: Really, Mom, anything? Can I tell you that there’s a dead boy rotting in the creek and that I killed him? Can I tell you how I need to find the real killer so that the boy rotting in the creek will get out of my head?
“I know,” Penny said.
Her mother smiled in relief. “I’m so glad we had this little talk.”
“Me too,” Penny said, then turned and went out to the garage to get her bicycle.
She biked up the block and waited at the top of Lark Hill Road for the guys, wondering if she was any closer at all to catching the real killer.
Zachary came huffing slowly up the slope of the hill.
“Hey, Penny!” he shouted, his eyes brightening when he saw her.
“How’s it going?” she asked with a smile.
“Pretty good,” he said, pausing to wipe a trickle of sweat off his forehead.
Oren wheeled up a moment later.
“Where’s Mac?” Penny asked.
Oren squinted into the sun. “The dentist, I think.”
“The dentist? Didn’t he just go a few weeks ago?” Penny asked.
“Yeah, he’s been going to the dentist a lot,” Oren said with a shrug.
“That’s weird.” Penny flipped her bike around. “Look, I’ll go check his house and meet you at the store.”
Mrs. McHale’s station wagon was sitting in the driveway. Penny had raised a hand to knock on the front door when she heard Mac shouting.
“I’m not going!”
“Angus, stop screaming,” Mrs. McHale said soothingly.
“I don’t want to go! All that guy does is ask me how I feel, and I don’t feel like going!”
“Well, I don’t care. Either you go or it’s Catholic school for you. It’s not up to me! I’m missing work for this, you know!”
“But I already told Amy I was sorry!”
“Well, it’s not up to her, either. You’re going to have to be a grown-up about this.”
“I don’t care!” Mac roared, and then a door slammed. Penny ducked down and watched as Mac tore out of the garage on his bike, pedaling away hard.
Penny stood there and thought, What was that about? It seemed that even Mac had a deep, dark secret. Fear pooled uneasily in her stomach. She instinctively knew that asking Mac about this would be hazardous to her health. If he was the murderer, he’d kill her for asking too many questions. And if he wasn’t, he’d probably just beat her up.
There was only one person she could ask.
Amy.
Penny found her sitting on the Lark Hill bridge, legs dangling over the dry creek, smoking a cigarette.
“Hey,” Penny said.
Amy nodded curtly and held out her cigarette, an unspoken challenge.
Penny surprised herself by taking it and drawing deeply. The smoke tickled her lungs, and she started coughing violently. Amy slapped her hard on the back.
“Relax,” Amy said, laughing, not unkindly.
Penny’s eyes were wet with tears. And then she started laughing, too.
Amy grinned at her, taking the cigarette back and puffing out smoke rings. “Remember that time we were spying on Mrs. McHale and that mechanic she was dating and you started wheezing and she threatened to call the cops? Man, she is something else. No wonder Mac’s screwed up, the way she’s always bringing all those guys home.”
Penny nodded.
They sat there for a moment in companionable silence. It was so weird, Penny thought. It was almost as if Caleb’s death had brought them closer together. Except, of course, for the little fact that Amy had no idea that Caleb was dead.
“You okay?” Penny asked tentatively.
For a split second Amy’s face looked vulnerable, and then she glanced away. “I guess. Hasn’t been the greatest to find out my boyfriend’s wanted by the cops for murder.” She said this as if it was an annoyance, like not getting her driver’s license on the first try.
Penny prodded her. “Do you think Caleb really killed Becky? I mean, you knew him, really knew him.”
Amy met Penny’s steady gaze. “No. He would never. He …” Here her voice trailed off as she stared into the distance for a minute. “He was really messed up when he was a kid, you know, back when he was sent away.” She shook her head vehemently. “But not now. He told me that place was a living nightmare, that he’d never do anything ever again that would get him sent back there. There’s just no way.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Penny said simply.
“You don’t?” Amy asked in an astonished voice.
“Who do you think did it?”
Amy worried her lip. “I don’t know.”
“What about Mac? What happened between you two?”
Amy scrunched up her eyes. “That kid is a total freak.”
“What do you mean?”
She inhaled deeply and then raised her pinky to smooth her lipstick. “He was spying in my bedroom window, watching me get dressed. What a disgusting creep.”
“Is that why he’s seeing a doctor?”
Amy shrugged.
A red Trans Am roared down Lark Hill Road, screeching to a stop next to them. Penny was so startled, she almost fell off the bridge.
The car idled there for a moment, and then the window rolled down.
Penny flinched, half expecting Caleb’s pale eyes to appear.
“Come on,” Doug Coles said impatiently, his greasy hair tied back in a ponytail.
Amy took her time, elaborately grinding out her cigarette with the heel of her shoe.
“Where are you going?” Penny whispered.
Amy’s face hardened. “None of your business,” she said, her eyes flinty now.
She walked over to the car and got in without a backward glance.
The boys were sitting on the curb in t
he cul-de-sac, comparing baseball trading cards. Swapping and flipping them around.
“Man, the Phillies blow,” Mac said in a disgusted voice, throwing down a pile of cards.
“I like the Phillies,” Teddy said loyally.
“You can have all of mine if you give me your Yankees cards,” Mac said, with a sly look.
Teddy hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Penny sat down next to Zachary. “Hey,” she said.
He grinned at her.
“Did you guys know that Amy Bukvic gets undressed in front of her bedroom window?” Penny announced.
Mac’s eyes narrowed.
Oren hooted. “No way. You mean I can see those melons of hers anytime?”
“What melons?” Teddy asked, confused.
Benji poked him in the ribs. “Her boobs, man.”
“Her boobs?” Teddy echoed, a look of shock on his face.
Oren grinned. “They’re as big as real watermelons.”
“More like cantaloupes,” Zachary said, squeezing the air.
“Or grapefruit,” Teddy offered, eager to be part of this grown-up boys’ game.
Benji looked at Penny and shook his head, smiling.
“What do you think, Mac?” Penny asked pointedly. “Watermelons or cantaloupes or grapefruit?”
“What are you trying to say, huh, Penny?” Mac asked, his voice low and threatening.
The boys stared at Mac.
“What’s going on?” Benji asked.
“Ask Mac,” Penny challenged, looking directly at Mac.
Mac stood up and walked over to her, his skin glistening with sweat. She suddenly realized how much bigger he was than her.
“Whoa, whoa,” Oren said, stepping between Mac and Penny.
Mac stared at Penny for one long minute and then stalked off, up the block.
“What was that about?” Benji asked.
Penny released a held-in breath. “Nothing.”
“Anybody want some gum?” Zachary offered, eager to restore normalcy to the little group.
“I’ll take some,” Penny said.
“You got it,” he said cheerfully. He dug around in his pants and pulled out a stick. It was warm from being in his pocket, and already soft. Penny put it in her mouth anyway.
The Creek Page 15