Cricket Hunters

by Jeremy Hepler

  “You don’t know how he feels about me. We’re closer than you could ever imagine.”

  “In your dreams, maybe. He’s in love with me. And I love him.”

  Cel clenched her jaw, shook her head. “You don’t know what love is. Raising your shirt and throwing your tits in his face on your couch when he’s just there to be nice because your little brother is missing doesn’t even come close to being love. It’s desperation.”

  Abby’s mouth fell open. “You were you spying on us last night, weren’t you?” When Cel didn’t immediately answer, Abby flashed a nasty smirk and added, “Do you want me to tell you what happened when I turned off the TV? Do you want to know if we went all the way?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Cel tapped her chest and spoke with conviction. “I know Parker. He would never stoop that low.”

  Abby giggled in disbelief. In mockery. In holier-than-thou giddiness. Her I’m-so-cute-giggle. “You’re a fucking obsessed psycho, you know that, right?”

  “You’re a fucking slut!”

  Abby lunged, swinging her hands at Cel’s face. Cel dropped her cricket stick and threw her hands up to block the blows. She grabbed a handful of Abby’s hair and jerked Abby’s head down and sideways, controlling her like a dog on a leash.

  “Don’t ever touch me again,” Cel hissed.

  Abby twisted and punched Cel in the stomach. Cel gasped and buckled forward. Her hand ripped away from Abby’s head, strands of hair sticking between her fingers.

  Abby touched her scalp. “Bitch!” Then she rushed Cel, shoved her, and Cel tripped over her own feet and fell onto her haunches. Abby kicked at her head, but Cel ducked under the attempt and tried to crab-walk away.

  Abby dove on top of Cel, driving her knee into Cel’s pelvis, sending hot barbs of pain down her lower back and inner thighs. Cel collapsed onto her back, and Abby straddled her chest, lorded over her. She knocked Cel in the side of the head two hard times before Cel managed to get her hands up to shield herself.

  “Where are all your protection spells now, huh? Witch.”

  Abby grabbed the infinity necklace on Cel’s chest and jerked it, snapping the chain. “You and your stupid infinity bullshit.” She clenched the necklace in Cel’s face. “You probably thought you and Parker would get married and have babies and love each other for infinity, didn’t you?”

  Abby snapped her attention to the right when a series of light crunches echoed out from Hunter’s Haven’s tree line a few feet away.

  Cel seized the opportunity. She balled her hand and punched Abby in the jaw. When Abby canted left, Cel thrust up her hips and used Abby’s momentum to force her to the ground on all fours. Cel jumped to her feet and kicked Abby in the stomach, then kicked again, this time her foot hitting Abby’s squishy chest. Abby fell onto her side, rolled onto her back.

  Cel moved to straddle Abby, repay the favor, smack her upside the head, but when she stepped forward, she kicked her cricket stick and reached for it instead. She lowered it over Abby’s face.

  “What are you going to do with that stupid stick?” Abby asked, a cocky smile playing at her lips. “Do you think I’m a fucking demented cricket, now?” Abby giggled for a moment, and then the giggle morphed into an outright laugh.

  Cel held her stance as the laughter faded.

  “You’re pathetic,” Abby said.

  Cel didn’t make a sound or close her eyes as she drove the stick into Abby’s left eye with one swift motion. Abby’s right eye flared with shock as Cel pushed the stick until it hit the back of her skull.

  When Cel slowly slid the stick out, blood erupted from the eye socket like lava from a volcano. Abby covered the hole with her hands as though that would stop the bleeding. She opened her mouth into a horrified O and as an airy squeal escaped, Cel methodically stabbed the stick into Abby’s open mouth, driving it through the back of her throat, piercing the moist soil below her neck.

  Cel watched the pupil in Abby’s bulging, good eye swell and swell until it blocked out all traces of color. Then her eyes fell to Abby’s chest, watching it move up and down, slower and slower. When it stopped, she slid the stick out of Abby’s mouth and a death gasp followed it out. Then her jaw twitched.

  Cel dropped the cricket stick and stood over Abby. She felt numb, paralyzed. Deaf. Mute. Like someone or something else had taken over her body. Like she was in a dream. She looked toward Hunter’s Haven, at her abuela’s backyard fence, down at Abby’s lifeless body.

  What had she done? Oh, shit. She’d killed…She’d murdered…

  Her stomach lurched, and she suddenly was thrust back into her body. Her hands trembled. She could hear her heart pounding, a drumbeat to her whooshing breath. She ratcheted her head left and right. What should she do? Should she call the cops? Explain it was self-defense? Abby had approached her, attacked her, right? But was it really self-defense? Was it? She had wanted to hurt Abby. She’d stabbed her through the eye and added another hole to her throat. And it had felt good when she did it. Justified. The right thing to do. But now…

  Her cover-up instincts kicked in. She needed to hide the body. She grabbed Abby’s feet and started dragging her toward Hunter’s Haven, but every imperfection in the soil, every blade of grass, rock, weed, seemed to fight against her efforts, grabbing onto Abby’s body, holding it. Abby was so heavy, so cumbersome. So…dead-weight. Tears fell from Cel’s cheeks as she tugged. Fearful tears and guilt tears alike. What was she doing? She fell onto her backside, stood, pulled. Was this real or a nightmare?

  She’d dragged Abby about a yard into the trees when her abuela called out, “Mija? Where are you?”

  She dropped Abby’s legs and hastily wiped the tears off her cheeks as if Yesenia could see them from that distance. Oh my God, she thought. Had Abby knocked on the door and talked to her abuela before coming out here? “I’ll be right there, Buela.”

  “Okay.”

  She picked up one of Abby’s legs and tried to tug on the body again, but Abby’s arm or head or something was caught on a root or bush. Grunting in frustration and bursting into tears, she pulled harder, but her sweaty hands slipped off Abby’s smooth shin, and she fell down again.

  She jumped up when she heard dry twigs snap behind her. “Hello? Is someone there?”

  Distant crickets were all that answered. She was so hyper sensitive. So Paranoid.

  She repeatedly whispered the calming spell. She needed to go inside before her abuela came out here. She needed to hurry. She needed to move the body deeper into the woods. But how deep? To where? She couldn’t bury it. She couldn’t…

  Her legs started moving without thought. She marched for the backyard fence. She needed time to think. She would sneak back out here later, after Yesenia fell asleep. By then she would know what to do.

  As she approached the backdoor, she could see Yesenia’s silhouette in the kitchen window, working over the stovetop, probably brewing tea. She froze when her eyes fell on Abby’s bike in the grass to the right of the window, in front of the other cricket sticks. Knowing her abuela sometimes sat on the porch to drink a cup of tea before bed, she sprinted to the bike, wheeled it out to where the field met the woods and dumped it on the ground near Abby’s body.

  When she finally reached the back door, she took in a deep breath, and released a measured exhale. She walked past the kitchen with her head down, and when her abuela asked, “How’d it go? You feeling any better?” she replied, “Good, I just need to take a shower and clean off.” To her own ear, she sounded so unnatural, so wrong. She expected Yesenia to bust into the bathroom and demand to know what had gone on out there. Why she’d sounded so odd. But she never did. And her abuela must not have talked to or seen Abby, or she would’ve said something about it.

  Cel showered until the hot water ran out. Then she showered ten minutes more. She didn’t wash her hair, she didn’t wash her body. She stood there with her eyes closed, picturing Abby’s face.
Abby’s eye. The twitch of her jaw. Anyone watching would’ve found it impossible to see the tears mixing with the water raining out of the shower head.

  When she finally came out of the bathroom in her purple robe, Yesenia was in her bedroom, lying in her bed with her eyes closed. The TV was on but turned low. Cel tiptoed back to her room, shut the door, and lay in the darkness worrying.

  No matter how far into Hunter’s Haven she hauled the body, it would be found. There would be searches.

  And Abby’s blood was all over her cricket stick.

  And her infinity necklace was probably still clenched in Abby’s hand.

  And someone probably saw Abby riding her bike over to Cel’s.

  And who all knew she was coming over, anyway? Her mom? Parker? Jeff? Natalie? Omar?

  And her fingerprints would be all over Abby’s body and clothes.

  There was no reason to try to hide the body or the bike.

  She was doomed. She’d fucked up. Major. There was no point in going back out there.

  She pretended to sleep when her abuela opened her door at eleven-thirty, came in, gave her a soft kiss on the forehead, whispered a soothing spell, and then closed the door behind her as she left. But she didn’t actually sleep until many days later.

  Chapter 37 - Cel

  Yesenia forced Cel to go back to school the following morning, saying if she was well enough to cricket hunt, she was well enough for math and science. Cel walked to school with her eyes on the sidewalk, books clutched to her chest. She didn’t risk a look toward Hunter’s Haven as she left the house much less check on Abby.

  As the morning crept by, she didn’t take notes, participate in class conversations, or complete a single assignment. In the halls, she responded to her teachers’ and friends’ welcome backs with a simple closed-mouth smile rather than words. In the classrooms, she sat in her desk and stared at the door rather than the teacher, her stomach knotted, waiting for a gang of cops to arrive, weapons drawn, stern commands for her to put her hands in the air. In the bathroom, she cried in the stalls, took deep breaths in front of the mirror, splashed cold water on her face.

  At lunchtime, she sat on the front lawn with Parker, Natalie, and Omar as usual. But as they talked about school gossip and speculated about why Abby might not have come to school, Cel watched the parking lot and streets beyond, expecting a slew of Oak Mott PD cruisers to speed up at any minute, sirens blaring and lights flashing. When Parker asked why she was so quiet, she said she was tired, still didn’t feel a hundred percent.

  The afternoon passed more slowly than the morning.

  After school, Parker offered to give her bike back, to ride home with her and help her with makeup work, but she refused both taking her bike and his company, telling him she felt queasy and wanted to take a nap right when she got home. She walked home the same way she walked to school: eyes glued to the pavement, arms hugging books to her chest. She paused when she reached Cobalt Street and glanced up at her house. Seeing no cop cars in the drive way or yellow tape surrounding the yard, she lowered her head and continued.

  Inside, she greeted her abuela, who said she looked exhausted and suggested she take a nap. Cel agreed, went to her room, closed the door, dropped her books on the floor, curled up on her bed, and stared at the wall. She lay there for an hour, fighting off the urge to flop her head into Yesenia’s lap and cry and spill her guts, explain how and why Abby’s one-eyed, lifeless body was out in Hunter’s Haven. Her abuela had forgiven her for many things over the years, the most heinous action being stealing and killing Frito, but killing a cat and killing a person were two different beasts. Cel feared—knew—the latter was unforgivable. Cel wanted to delay seeing that look of disappointment and heart ache in her abuela’s eyes, the only family she had, for as long as possible.

  She rose from bed an hour later when Parker called and told her Abby was missing.

  The investigation and city-wide searches started immediately.

  The cops, led by newly elected Chief Robert S. Sterling, questioned the Cricket Hunters, seemingly everyone in Abby’s grade level, and everyone close to Abby’s family, and what they gleaned from the interviews led them to focus their efforts on three people: Tom Powell, Jose Lopez, and Parker Lundy.

  Tom was initially considered the prime suspect because of his relation to Abby, his lengthy arrest record, the threats he’d made since his release from prison, the fact he’d broken into the Powell household just a few days earlier, and the allegations Sheila Powell had made about him molesting Abby. Sterling put out a statewide APB on Tom, who hadn’t been seen since the afternoon at Rita’s.

  Due to the Tits-on-the-Mustang incident and the fair fight, Jose was brought in for questioning, but within thirty minutes he lawyered up and refused to cooperate.

  Parker became a key suspect because Jeff told the cops he’d last seen Abby outside arguing with Parker the night she went missing. Jeff told the cops she’d never come back inside that night. Parker denied having anything to do with Abby’s disappearance, and his parents and the other hunters, including Cel, professed the same. Four days after Abby vanished, the same afternoon her bike was found in an alley a block away from Parker’s house, forcing Sterling to zoom in on Parker even harder, his parents retained a lawyer for him as well.

  When Natalie called and told Cel about Abby’s bike being found, Cel thought the information had been wrong. Maybe they’d found a similar bike but not Abby’s bike. Abby’s bike was out in Hunter’s Haven, inches away from her decaying corpse. Right? She hurried off the phone and sprinted out to Hunter’s Haven for the first time in days. Abby’s bike wasn’t there. Neither was Abby. Or Cel’s cricket stick. Everything was gone. Cel nearly fell to her knees with shock. She couldn’t find words to complete a thought.

  Weeks passed. Time moved in irregular, disjointed stops and starts for Cel. Some days seemed to linger on forever, every minute detail wedging deep into her mind, while others passed in a blur, leaving no lasting memories.

  Local newspapers ran front page stories, and TV channels ran short bits with Abby’s previous year’s school picture in the top corner of the screen. People all over town eyed Parker and Jose and their families with crooked eyes. Rumors whispered in supermarket corners and church pews and in schoolyards spread like wildfire. Abby had run away because she was pregnant, or because she was a closet lesbian. Parker had killed her because she wouldn’t sleep with him. She’d overdosed and her body was hidden by her mom to conceal the truth. She had been gang-raped by Jose and his friends and her body had been burned in the dunes behind the town dump. Her dad had owed people money, and they’d kidnapped her for revenge.

  The police held four official searches that focused on the Gateway area, but some of Sheila Powell’s co-workers formed a group that fanned out and scoured the entire town from top to bottom, searching for any signs of Abby.

  The Cricket Hunters joined in on many of the searches, passing out flyers and knocking on doors, and also spent many hours huddled around the table in Cel’s kitchen, speculating about what could’ve happened to Abby, what they could’ve done different to prevent whatever happened from happening, crying on one another’s shoulders.

  When with the other hunters, Cel made little eye contact, rarely spoke, kept her hair down to shield her face and her hands drawn into her sleeves. In general, she walked around in a perpetual state of paralyzed confusion. Zombie-like. She spent every night either sitting on the back porch or standing in front of the kitchen window, staring out at Hunter’s Haven, wondering what had happened to Abby’s body, the bike, her stick. Was she losing her mind? Had she hidden everything and blocked it all out? Had Abby lived? Could she have lived? No way. Had someone else taken her? Kidnapped her? The questions were relentless, pressurizing. Day after day, night after night, no answers came. She never felt relief. Out of frustration one night, unable to sleep, needing to feel, wanting to know she was still alive, she went to the bathroom, removed a razor blade from her
leg razor, and sliced her upper thigh. As the blood ran down her leg, a wave of relaxation ran through her mind, quieting the relentless questions. This became her nightly routine before bed. First a goodnight kiss from her abuela, then a soothing spell, then spilled blood, then sleep.

  A month passed.

  A vigil was held in the Oak Mott High gymnasium. The Texas Rangers were brought in to re-canvas the town, re-interview suspects and friends, but they found no new suspects, no new evidence, no sign a crime was ever committed.

  More months passed.

  The Oak Mott Gossip Train slowed. The town’s hysteria faded. Wind and rain eroded missing person flyers off of telephone poles and storefront windows. Abby Powell’s name was mentioned less and less. Cel learned how to compartmentalize to survive. Her anxiety morphed into depression, which morphed into denial. She stopped cutting. She and Parker began holding hands in school hallways, kissing in public, calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. It had been difficult and burdensome, the road to get there unplanned, but he was hers. When asked, she told Yesenia she’d lost her infinity necklace somewhere out in Hunter’s Haven, but that she knew about where and planned on finding it.

  In early January, Tom Powell was caught stealing from a Kmart outside of Houston, and when he was arrested and questioned about Abby, provided an alibi—later proven by fast food transaction receipts and security camera footage in Austin—he’d left town the same night he’d broken into the Powell’s house.

  In mid-March, Jose and Maria Lopez sold their house and moved to Mexico. According to one of Yesenia’s friends who also knew Maria, the police had been following Jose all over town and had also been responsible for Maria losing her job at M&R Liquor. They felt singled out, picked on, harassed, by both the police and media, and decided suficiente es suficiente. They wouldn’t take the fall for some chica blanca tonta. They left and never looked back.