The Creek

by Jennifer L. Holm

  “Thanks,” she said, chewing.

  Something fell out of Zachary’s pocket and bounced onto the street. Penny and Zachary reached for it at the same time, but Penny got it. She looked at it for a minute. A marble.

  “It’s pretty,” she said.

  Penny stared at the marble resting in her palm. It was bright solid red, an unusual color. She was used to seeing blues and greens. The glass marble glinted in the late-afternoon sun. Now where had she seen that before? It looked so familiar to her. That strange glowing red.

  Zachary eyed her warily.

  The image of a scorpion popped unsummoned into her mind, and Nana’s words came rushing back to her.

  Scorpions like to live near you, where they can do you the most harm.

  The creek. Red eyes.

  Mr. Cat.

  She met Zachary’s still eyes and knew.

  CHAPTER 17

  Penny stood up abruptly, hovering over her little brother protectively.

  “Teddy,” Penny said in a deceptively calm voice. “It’s time to go home for dinner.”

  “Now? But Mom didn’t call us yet “he said, squinting at her through his glasses.

  “Well, it’s dinnertime, so let’s go,” Penny said stiffly, grabbing his hand almost roughly.

  Penny jerked Teddy up, sending his baseball cards flying.

  “Hey! Now look what you did!” Teddy said, scrambling down awkwardly to pick up the cards.

  Benji raised an eyebrow at Penny.

  “Here,” Zachary said, getting down on the ground to help Teddy pick up the cards.

  “Thanks “Teddy said in a grateful voice, a voice that said he didn’t know why his sister was acting so weird.

  “Come on,” she urged, shoving his crutches into his hands.

  “Man,” Teddy groused, following her reluctantly.

  “We’ll see you after dinner,” Oren said.

  “Yeah,” Benji said. “Meet us back here and then we’ll head down to the fort.”

  “Okay,” Teddy called.

  Penny walked purposefully up the block, half pushing her little brother.

  “Quit it!” he said, wrenching himself away. “What’s your problem?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and looked back.

  Zachary was staring at them, an odd expression on his face.

  “But he killed Becky!”

  Penny paced back and forth on the kitchen floor, her dinner untouched. Her parents kept telling her to slow down, but she couldn’t—every minute was another minute that Zachary was out there. She had to make them understand.

  “Penny,” her mother said. “You can’t go around saying these things. It’s inflammatory.”

  “But you gotta believe me! It really is Zachary! I found the marble!” Penny said.

  “The marble?” her father asked, confused.

  “Zachary killed Mr. Cat and stuffed him and put marbles in his eyes!”

  “Mr. Cat’s dead?” her mother asked in a bewildered voice. “I thought you said you just saw him chasing squirrels in Mac’s backyard?”

  “I didn’t! I made that up! He’s dead!”

  “But why do you think Mr. Cat’s dead, honey? He probably just wandered off, the way he always does. He’ll turn up eventually,” Mrs. Carson soothed.

  “He won’t turn up! He’s dead! I saw his body!”

  “His body?”

  Penny didn’t care; she knew it was going to sound stupid. “I saw his body at the creek, and when I went to show the boys, it was gone!”

  Teddy looked up from his plate and rolled his eyes.

  “Mr. Cat might have been sleeping,” her father said reasonably. “And then he ran off.”

  “He was dead, Dad.”

  “You were at the creek?” her mother asked in a horrified voice. “What were you doing at the creek? I thought I told you—”

  “Zachary’s the one, Mom!” Penny wailed in frustration.

  “Phil,” her mother murmured.

  “Now Penny,” her father said gently.

  “Can I be excused please?” Teddy asked, already pushing away from the table.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Carson said, pushing her own chair back. “I better go pick up Sam from Mrs. Schuyler.”

  “No, Dad!” Penny shouted, knowing what was at stake here. “We have to call the police. He’s gonna hurt somebody else! I know it! He already killed Becky! See, I talked to Amy about Caleb and—”

  Her mother interrupted her. “Wait a minute. You talked to Amy and she told you that Zachary was the killer?”

  “You don’t understand!”

  Her mother gave her a level look. “Penny, you know how mean Amy is to you. It’s not beneath her to tell you a lie. She’s probably doing this to upset you.”

  “I am upset! Zachary’s going to kill someone else, I just know it!” she said, her voice rising.

  “But how do you know?” her father asked.

  “Because of the marble! Don’t you see? It’s been him all along! He’s been leaving clues. He knew everyone would think it was Caleb. And he was right!”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small figure, a blur. Teddy. He was hobbling out through the laundry room door to the garage. He was going to meet the boys in the cul-de-sac.

  “Teddy!” Penny called. “Wait!”

  But it was too late—he was gone, and her father was talking to her.

  “Penny,” her father said almost sternly. “Even the police think it’s Caleb. That’s why they’re looking so hard for him.”

  There was a loud banging on the front door.

  Mr. Schuyler stood on their porch, holding a rifle and looking shaken. “Doc, you gotta come quick. Bud Albright’s going nuts. Got himself drunk and got some crazy ideas in his head. He’s over at the Devlins’ with his twelve-gauge, threatening to shoot up the house. One way or another we’re gonna need a doctor over there.”

  Her father paled. “Someone called the cops?”

  “What good are they?” Mr. Schuyler asked.

  Mrs. Carson gave an exasperated sigh. “I better call them now.”

  “But Caleb didn’t kill Becky!” Penny insisted. She almost shouted: It’s not him because he’s rotting in the creek!

  Mr. Schuyler stared at her in confusion. “What?”

  “Penny, not now,” her father said distractedly.

  She grabbed her father’s arm, tugging him. “Please,” Penny pleaded. “You’ve got to believe me. We have to stop him.”

  Her parents exchanged a worried look.

  “Penny,” her mother said sharply. “Calm down.”

  “It’s Zachary!” Penny shrieked, having worked herself into a frenzy in the face of their total disbelief. “It’s—”

  Mr. Schuyler looked startled. “Zachary? That chubby boy?”

  “Penny—” her mother said, her face stricken.

  “—Zachary!” And suddenly it was too much, she couldn’t take it anymore. All the fear and stress of the past few weeks came barreling down, and Penny felt her chest go tight, and a light-headed feeling washed over her, and then her fingers were tingling, her lips going numb, and she couldn’t catch her breath.

  For a moment both of her parents just looked at her, and she saw it on their faces: fear for the hysterical daughter who couldn’t breathe, who was losing her mind.

  “Sweetie, slow down.Take nice even breaths. You’re having a panic attack,” her dad said in his doctor’s voice.

  “Penny, slow down, here’s a bag,” her mother said, putting a brown paper bag into her hands. Penny put it over her mouth.

  Penny tried to breathe, but it wasn’t working. The old bag trick just isn’t working this time, she thought wildly, and stars were rushing toward her.

  “Oh my God, Phil,” her mother said urgently. “Do something!”

  Her father disappeared into the hall. The next thing she knew, he was putting something cold on her bare arm, an alcohol swab, and then she saw the thin, sharp needle in his hand.


  “This is just a little something to make your lungs relax, sweetie,” her father said, holding her arm firmly and looking anguished.

  There was a slight pinch, and then a strange sensation suffused her body, made her warm all over, and she felt her lungs relax, felt the air fill them up, steadily, like a bike pump filling a tire, and she looked at her parents, at their faces flushed with worry, and she tried to take a step, say something, but in that same moment she felt the world waver, tilt crazily, and suddenly her legs crumpled and she pitched forward and was caught in the arms of her father. What had been in that shot?

  “Dad?” she asked, her voice sounding funny to her own ears, as if she was speaking underwater.

  Zachary.

  “No!” she howled, going wild, arms flailing, smacking her father in the face, her mouth working but nothing coming out, it was so hard to speak, to focus her eyes, like she was caught in a nightmare and was screaming and screaming but couldn’t wake up, and she heard her mother’s anxious voice, and then she was being lifted by her father’s strong arms and carried upstairs, the world a blur. Penny’s head flopped back and she looked at the ceiling, a fuzzy kaleidoscope, her eyelids so heavy she could barely keep them open. She struggled against the drug raging through her veins, trying to fight the sweet lassitude that was pulling her down, dragging her deeper, like a veil in front of her eyes, so hard now to resist.

  “But, Teddy,” she said finally, her words coming out all mumbled and garbled, like something Baby Sam would say.

  “Penny,” her father said, and his voice was muffled like he was talking through cotton. “Everything will be okay. Just close your eyes.”

  As if from very far away, she heard her mother ask tearfully, “What did you give her?”

  And then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 18

  Penny struggled up from the hazy depths of blackness, the world a swirl around her.

  She sat up quickly, but the motion jolted her stomach and she almost threw up. She collapsed back on the bed, looking up at the canopy spinning fuzzily above her, like some magnificent amusement park ride. With an effort, Penny turned her head to look out the window. The sky looked darker. The clock on the bedside table swam in her vision, unreadable. No, there it was, she hadn’t been out for long. What had her father given her?

  She counted to ten and then tried again, managing to sit up on the edge of the bed. Get up, she told herself, one foot on the rug and then the other. The pink rug seemed to swirl around like a whirlpool, its tendrils reaching for her like the tentacles on a sea anemone. She shook herself. Get up and call the police before Zachary kills Teddy!

  Tentatively, one step at a time, she maneuvered her way down the hall, weaving back and forth, using the wall to guide her. She had no sense of distance or depth, and the hall seemed to go on forever, like that ride in the fun house, the one where the tunnel keeps getting longer, the door at the other end farther and farther away.

  When she reached the stairs and looked down, she started to shake. They seemed utterly terrifying, impossibly steep. There was no way she could walk down them. She got on her rear end and slid down the carpeted steps, one at a time, as she used to do when she was a small child.

  Finally she was at the bottom. She sat still for a moment, listening for the voices of her parents, but the house was quiet, with only the cranky sound of the air conditioner laboring in the background. She stood up shakily, her vision fuzzy, and navigated the dark, windowless hall to the kitchen more by memory than by sight. She pulled open the French doors that led to the kitchen and closed her eyes instinctively against the bright hanging light; it hurt her eyes. She raised a hand to shield them, and when she lowered it, she peered through slit eyes and saw the vague outline of a person.

  “Dad?”

  And then her vision cleared, and she saw that it wasn’t her dad at all.

  It was Zachary.

  He was holding a plastic bag, and something red was dripping from it onto the floor. Blood?

  She drew in her breath. “How did you get in here?”

  “The spare key. You know, the one under the rock.” Zachary smiled and then, seeing her shocked expression, let his smile slip. “I biked and got Popsicles for the guys, and I got you one, too “he explained in a rush. He held out the bag. “Strawberry’s your favorite, right?”

  She scrambled backward, feeling sick, the kitchen wavering. “You killed Becky!” she blurted out through cottony hps.

  His eyes widened in shock. “Me?”

  “The marble! You have a red marble just like … like the one in Mr. Cat’s eyes!”

  He shifted from foot to foot, awkwardly. “The red marbles? Oren gave them to me.”

  “Oren?”

  “We traded.” He shrugged. “I gave him a few baseball cards.”

  “Oren?” Penny whispered, not wanting to believe.

  “Yeah,” Zachary said, setting the bag of melted Popsicles on the floor. He dug around in his pockets and pulled out a pile of stuff. “And he gave me these cool silver ones, too. He said they’re from Mexico. Pretty cool, huh?” There was a tinge of excitement in his voice.

  Penny walked over to the counter and slumped onto a rattan stool, her head in her hands, suddenly remembering the way Oren’s eyes had narrowed when she’d told him about finding marbles in Mr. Cat’s eyes. It was all falling together now. It could have been Oren chasing her in the woods that first night, and then, of course, he could have staged the guts—he was right next to her—not to mention the rat and the trap in the woods. He could even have somehow rigged the fire at the fort. What had he said?

  “I can’t believe he won’t come home with all the stuff that’s going on with Caleb! I thought he’d come home!”

  He’d been doing it to get his father to come home. Only it hadn’t worked. Not yet, at least.

  “The guys, they’re down in the woods with Oren! We gotta go!” she said urgently, standing abruptly.The kitchen seemed to close in on her, a rush of nausea slapping her so hard that she almost threw up right there.

  “Whoa. You okay?” Zachary said, concern in his voice.

  “I feel sick,” she whispered.

  “Man, you’re not gonna barf, are you?” he asked worriedly.

  Penny shook her head, even though she wanted to. She looked up at him and said, in an anguished voice, “Oren’s the killer.”

  “What do you mean?” Zachary asked, wrinkling his nose.

  “It’s not Caleb doing all this stuff. It’s Oren”

  “I don’t understand why you’re saying all these crazy things. The guys have been talking, you know.” He paused. “That policeman asked all of us who had been the last one to see Becky alive.”

  “What?”

  “Penny,” he said simply. “You were the last one to see Becky alive. You walked her out of the woods, remember?”

  “But, but—” But the policeman didn’t ask me that question! she wanted to shout. Pain sliced through her head. Did everyone think she had killed Becky? Was someone trying to frame her? Make it look like she was the kind of person who could kill—

  An image of Caleb’s bloated, rotting body appeared before her eves, and she stumbled back, grabbing the stool.

  Zachary held out his hands in a calming way. “Don’t worry, it’s cool. We didn’t tell him, Penny. Evervone knows it’s Caleb.”

  “But it’s not!”

  He stared at her, disbelief plain on his face.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, slurring her words. You don’t unnderthand. She sounded like Elmer Fudd.

  “Penny,” he said, shaking his head.

  She stared defiantly at him. He was just like her parents. “Nobody listens!”

  His round face grew gentle, his cheeks softening. “I’m listening.”

  “Can’t tell,” she whispered brokenly, the weight of Caleb’s cigarette case heavy in her pocket.

  Zachary’s voice thrummed in her head. “Sure you can,” he said en
couragingly.

  Sure you can.

  “Caleb’s dead!”

  The kitchen was silent for a long moment.

  “Caleb’s dead?” he asked, taking a wary step back.

  “I saw his body,” she whispered. It felt so good to finally tell someone, to get this weight off her chest, this horrible weight that had been pushing down on her soul, dragging it to some dark place. The words spilled from her mouth. “His body, it’s in the creek”

  “But how? I mean, who killed him?”

  Penny shrugged helplessly.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “He’s dead. His body—” Then she gulped hard and sat back down on the rattan stool, knowing her legs wouldn’t support her a minute longer. “Look,” she said miserably, holding out the silver cigarette case. It gleamed dully in the kitchen light.

  Zachary stared at the case, transfixed.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” he whispered.

  “Because,” she said, her voice catching. “Because of Becky. I knew he didn’t kill Becky, and I was trying to figure out who did. And now I have. It’s Oren.”

  Zachary looked at her and then at the bag of melting Popsicles on the floor.

  “Whoa,” he said, almost to himself. He picked up the bag and went over to the kitchen counter, with its sink full of dirty dinner dishes. He flipped on the faucet and looked out the window, into the backyard.

  “We have to tell the police,” he said. “We’re just kids.”

  Penny sniffed miserably. “I know.”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” she heard Zachary say in a soothing voice. He was standing right in front of her with a glass of water in one hand.

  And then there was a flash of silver, a glinting arc, and Penny moved instinctively, tumbling back off the stool and slamming hard onto the floor. She scrambled up, the world spinning, and pumped her feet fast, toward the French doors and the hall leading upstairs. Zachary followed her slowly, the long, pointy kitchen knife in one hand.

  Zachary was shaking his head in disappointment. “Penny,” he said. “Why did you have to go and do this? Everything was going so great.”