The Creeping

Fat droplets of lake rain down on us, and Cole sniffs indignantly. “Well, excuse me if this is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, two little girls are playing in the front yard, they vanish, and then only one comes back. Creepy.” A chill runs from the nape of my neck down my spine. I glance over my shoulder and squint into the woods. I’m usually an unshakable pro at recounting this story—even as a precocious third grader narrating the tale for show-and-tell—but there’s something about today that makes me want to whisper its details, hushed and mumbled so the trees can’t hear.

“Don’t forget the bit about Stella’s hair being braided. Her mom swore it was in piggies when she dropped her off, but she came back with a French braid.” Zoey smacks her lips salaciously as she wades through the shallows and out of the lake. Her blond pixie-length hair hangs in her eyes, and she adjusts her too-tiny bikini top. Zoey has huge boobs; her favorite hobby is making them look even bigger by wearing the scantest triangles to cover up little more than nipple. Zoey is my oldest friend. She was supposed to be there that day, picking juicy red strawberries from the tangle of vines that lined the dirt lane in front of Jeanie’s house, the day Jeanie disappeared. Caleb came down with chicken pox the night before, and their mom put Zoey on lockdown. Funny that an infectious virus likely saved Zoey’s life. I can’t help but wonder what saved mine. The vines of berries were all hacked down soon after Jeanie went missing, like their fruit was poisonous or somehow to blame.

These are the things I focus on: Zoey home that day; Jeanie being taken; rotten strawberries smashed into the ground. I don’t like to focus on my part in the story. Not because I’m traumatized; I’m not. It gives me the creeps, though, that ultimately, somewhere in the never-never land of my brain is what happened to Jeanie. No matter how much I want to, I can’t help her.

There are already too many things in the world that are out of the control of a seventeen-year-old girl. I don’t need another.

Zoey winces, tiptoeing over the pebbled shore. “You know, now that I think about it, you look a lot like Jeanie did.” She props her hands on her hips, examining Cole. “Maybe whatever skeeze grabbed her will come out of hiding and try to snatch your slutty ass. Maybe you’d like it.” Zoey runs her tongue over her lips suggestively before combusting into giggles. Cole manages a laugh, but her eyes cut to the tree line.

I nail Zoey on the forehead with a green gummy bear. “You look nothing like her,” I tell Cole. “Jeanie had bright-red hair and freckles. And anyway, the police think it was a crime of opportunity or something. Nothing like that has happened since, and they couldn’t find any suspects, so they don’t think whoever did it was local. They’re long gone, and Savage is safe and boring again.”

“You’ve got the boring right.” Zoey rolls her eyes and bites the head off the recovered gummy. “And the cops are total jerk-offs, since I can think of at least two handfuls of creepies in this town that I’d consider suspects solely based on how pervy they look.” Michaela cannonballs into the lake and Zoey screams, “You slutarella!” I shield my soda from the splash.

“Change of subject now, please, because this scary drivel is all anyone is going to talk about tonight,” Michaela groans as she wades to shore. She’s wearing a conservative black one-piece; her long, dark-brown hair is plastered to her head, making her large, cat-shaped eyes look like giant mutant almonds. Michaela’s gone to school with Zoey and me since her family moved from Michigan in the eighth grade. She’s on the honor roll, is an insanely talented web designer, and is the founding member of the Female Leaders of Tomorrow club at school.

Michaela is the polar opposite of Zoey in just about every way. She’s reserved and chaste and believes in getting ahead by following the rules better than everybody else. She’s also ridiculously pretty in that blazer-and-jeans-wearing sort of way. Zoey either goes braless or wears a push-up; she thinks all first dates should end with making out and doesn’t think a skirt can ever be too short. Zoey doesn’t follow the rules; she breaks them right in authority’s face, with so much gut that teachers end up stifling smiles. Zoey lives for now, now, now; Michaela lives for tomorrow. I ping-pong between these two poles.