The Creek

by Jennifer L. Holm

  Penny got up and went over to investigate. It was Caleb’s silver cigarette case, fallen from his pocket. She picked it up gingerly and forced herself to open it, expecting, even now, to see a row of crusty, dried-up pinky fingers.

  Three stale cigarettes tumbled out.

  She pocketed the case and ran through the woods, the heavy weight of it burning her like a hot coal.

  They met in the musty quiet of Mac’s basement to speak of the unspeakable.

  Benji looked positively gray. It had been two days since Becky’s body had been found, and he had aged in that short time. Gone were the impish lines around his mouth, the ones that made him look as if he might burst into a grin at any moment. His mouth was a grim, hard line, his eyes dull. He seemed a ghost of the boy who had kissed her in the cool, damp woods.

  “How’s your mom and dad?” Penny asked gently.

  “Mom’s sort of messed up. She won’t come out of her room. Mrs. Schuyler’s helping out with the cooking and stuff,” Benji said, the pale evening light filtering through a crack of basement window.

  Penny could only imagine how he felt. He was Becky’s brother, he was supposed to be looking out for her. What if it had been Teddy?

  “The funeral’s gonna be tomorrow,” Benji added in a hollow voice.

  Oren shook his head. “Did the police arrest Caleb?”

  “They went to question him last night, but he wasn’t home,” Benji said. “His parents say he hasn’t been home for days.”

  Since the Fourth, Penny wanted to blurt out, but bit down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood.

  “He took off,” Mac said, stating the obvious. “He’s a million miles away by now. The police are still looking for him, right?”

  Benji nodded.

  “So now what?” Zachary asked anxiously. Zachary had been particularly shaken up during the last few days, as if he was just waiting for Caleb to finish him off, too. Part of Penny wanted to tell him that he didn’t ever have to worry about being beaten up by Caleb again.

  “What do you mean, ‘now what’?” Benji was angry, angrier than they had ever seen him.

  There was a flurry of noise upstairs. From the sharp click-clack of shoes, they knew it was the moms.

  “This way,” Mac hissed, getting up and walking through a door that led to the unfinished part of the basement, where the floor was poured cement and it smelled mildewy because it flooded every spring. Mac pointed silently to a grate in the ceiling.

  “What are we doing?” Zachary blurted.

  “Shut up, you retard!” Mac shot back in a fierce whisper, punching Zachary hard in the arm.

  “Ow!” Zachary winced, rubbing his arm and flinching as Mac raised his fist again.

  Voices from the kitchen above drifted down, strong and clear.

  “Have they found him?” Penny heard her mom say, in a voice tinged with worry.

  “No,” Mrs. Bukvic said angrily. “They’ll never find him. He’s gone. He killed Buster, too, I just know it.”

  “We have to keep the kids indoors,” one of the mothers declared.

  Mrs. McHale groaned. “All summer? That’ll kill me!”

  “Maybe if we just keep them in the yards….” This from her mother.

  “I tell you, we can’t take any chances, not with him on the street.”

  “Bethany, could Phil come over and take a look at the locks on our doors and make sure they’re okay?” Mrs. Loew asked nervously. “I worry, being alone and—”

  “Of course,” her mother murmured back.

  This was how it had all started in the first place, Penny thought. They had let fear and panic and, most of all, the seductive voices of the adults convince them that it was Caleb. She could see it clearly now, how she had allowed her fears to sweep her along, like a leaf in the water, to the easy, obvious conclusion that Caleb was the culprit because he was a bad boy from a strange family who didn’t quite fit in.

  If she could only go back to that one moment when she was standing on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the creek, she would. Because now, deep in her soul, she knew Caleb had still been alive—in her mind’s eye she could see his hand shudder, reaching forward. And she had left him there to die, alone and in the dark. Didn’t that make her just as bad as Becky’s killer?

  She looked across the dark basement at Benji, his face a mask of grief. Nothing in this world would bring his sister back. Penny felt a swirl of self-hatred at how mean she had been to the little girl the last time she’d seen her, but still she couldn’t bear to let Caleb take the blame for Becky, not when the real killer was still out there somewhere.

  “You guys,” she said tentatively. “What if it was someone else? You know, like the policeman said: who else knew that we were playing flashlight tag?”

  Mac exploded. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve been the one all along who’s been saying that Caleb’s after us. What about Teddy?” Oren asked.

  “Yeah, what about me?” Teddy said, stricken. “I told you it was Caleb!”

  “It’s just that I don’t think he killed Becky,” Penny said in an awkward rush. “I mean, why would he do it?”

  Benji walked right up to her, a terrible expression on his face. “Because he’s evil, Penny,” he said in a voice so hard she almost flinched. “Got it?”

  She looked at the coldly furious faces, and she got it all right. It was just like Mr. Schuyler always said.

  The only person you could count on was yourself.

  Penny sat quietly in the pew.

  It was a huge church, bigger than the one she and her family occasionally attended. The ceiling arched high, and the walls had lots of ornate stained glass depicting the life of Jesus: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus and the apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus suspended on the cross. Jesus’ eyes seemed dark and cool and condemning. A little like Caleb’s eyes, Penny thought with a shiver.

  Teddy sat next to her, stiff and uncomfortable in his suit jacket and tie. He was wearing sweatpants, and his cast poked out of it, a dark reminder to Penny of all that had happened.

  Farther down in the pew were her dad and mom, and Baby Sam. Penny swung her shiny black patent-leather shoes back and forth, thinking hard. She remembered how the police had questioned her and the other kids after Becky’s body had been found. How they had kept asking her the same questions over and over. Had she seen any strangers in the neighborhood? Or any big kids she didn’t recognize? What about odd-looking cars?

  Her own parents had lectured her and Teddy in the car on the way to church.

  “You two are to keep your eyes open from now on,” her mother said, a fierce look on her face. “If you see Caleb, you are to run to the nearest house immediately. Do you understand? He’s killed a little girl. There’s no telling what he’ll do next.”

  They had nodded mutely back. Penny knew the other kids had all received similar lectures from their parents.

  It was obvious to Penny that with everyone looking for Caleb, the real killer would be off guard, careless. She had to find him before everyone discovered that Caleb was dead. Her gaze swept the church.

  He could be right here, she thought slowly.

  Penny craned her neck to look through the crowd. There was Zachary and his mom, way up front. Zachary’s mom was wailing away like a professional mourner, and it struck Penny as odd. Had Mrs. Evreth even known Becky? And wasn’t there something just a bit creepy about the way she was always trying to lure the kids to her “Bible group”? Mrs. Evreth wailed loudly, and with each loud sob an embarrassed-looking Zachary seemed to sink lower in his seat. Penny felt sorry for him.

  She spotted Oren and his mom. Oren’s dad was sitting on the other side of the aisle with his new girlfriend. Oren sat very still, his curly hair tamed, his suit • pressed. Oren was very smart, she knew, the smartest of them all when it came to school and grades. He always got straight A’s. He was an easy kid to play with, fair and reasonable. But he had also been act
ing strange lately, sort of angry and withdrawn, something that she had chalked up to his parents getting divorced. But maybe there was more to it.

  Mac, wearing a dark, tight-fitting suit and a belligerent expression, sat hunched over in front of Oren and kept turning around to whisper to him, clearly bored by the proceedings. Penny thought of all the times that Mac had dismissed her fears. Also, he had always hated Becky the most. As if sensing that Penny was studying him, Mac turned around and stared at her, his face hard.

  Penny’s swinging feet banged into the pew ahead in nervous excitement.

  “Penny!” her mother hissed, a look of displeasure on her face. “Settle down.”

  Penny looked down, chastened. But when she looked up, Mac was still staring at her.

  The next morning, as Penny walked down the street toward the cul-de-sac, a police car drove by, moving slowly down Mockingbird Lane. There had been a lot of this lately, a lot of police cars and policemen wandering about the streets, watching and looking and, Penny rather hoped, protecting.

  “Hey, Penny! How ya doing?”

  Her head whipped around. It was old Mr. Schuyler. He was sitting on his front porch, wearing a pair of faded overalls and drinking a beer.

  “Hi, Mr. Schuyler,” she said, walking up to the porch.

  “Sure is hot,” he said. A lopsided little smile wreathed his red face.

  “Sure is,” she agreed.

  “You want to go to Wallaby Farms tonight?”

  “That’d be great,” Penny said with a bright smile, thinking, Why is this old guy always doing stuff for us? Always organizing softball competitions and taking us for ice cream? And that look he’d given her a minute ago. It had seemed just a bit, well, weird.

  He rocked back in his chair, and Penny noticed a number of empties lined up at his feet. “Come on down after dinner, all right?”

  “You bet,” she said. “And I’ll bring the boys.”

  “Of course, of course. Bring the boys.” Had his smile slipped for a second?

  Penny walked across the cul-de-sac and flopped down on the curb next to Teddy, Mac, Oren, and Zachary. The sun was hot and the air tangy with the scent of fresh-cut grass.

  “Where’ve you been?” Oren asked, looking up from his task. He was zapping ants with Mac’s new magnifying glass.

  Mac said, “Here, let me do the worm.”

  Penny shrugged. “Around.”

  Benji was absent. Penny had gone over earlier that day to see if he wanted to play, but he had merely shaken his head when he answered the door, the sound of his mother’s weeping loud in the background.

  Penny relaxed back on her elbows, looking over at Mr. Schuyler. “Do you guys think that Mr. Schuyler’s weird? The way he hates the government and the police and all?”

  “I hate the police,” Mac muttered.

  “What do you mean by ‘weird’?” Oren asked.

  “You know, always doing stuff, buying us ice cream,” Penny explained.

  “I like ice cream,” Teddy said.

  “Me, too,” Zachary said. From his bulging belly, Penny had no doubt that Zachary liked ice cream.

  “Yeah, but don’t you think it’s kind of odd that he spends money on us?” she persisted.

  “No,” Teddy said quickly, like Penny was going to screw everything up for them.

  But Oren saw where she was going. “But they don’t have any kids. That’s why he does it. We’re, like, his … I don’t know, grandkids or something.”

  “Don’t question a good thing,” said Mac, who was frying a long, plump worm. It sizzled. “If he wants to spend his money on us, let him.”

  “Yeah, let him,” Teddy seconded, waving a crutch in the air.

  The next morning, Penny headed over to the Schuylers’. Mr. Schuyler was fast asleep on the front porch, snoring away.

  The trip to Wallaby Farms the previous night had not been very much fun. Everyone was still freaked out about Becky, and Mr. and Mrs. Albright wouldn’t let Benji go.

  Penny knocked gently on the screen door, and Mrs. Schuyler opened it, all smiles.

  “Penny, dear!” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. Mrs. Schuyler was wearing a flower-print dress, the kind grandmothers usually wore, and a nice fragrance rose from her, the smell of flour and melted butter.

  “Hi, Mrs. Schuyler.”

  The elderly woman took a long look at her dozing husband.

  “Why don’t you come in so we don’t wake him up? He needs his beauty sleep,” Mrs. Schuyler said, holding open the door and ushering her into the cool of the house. “I’m afraid you caught me in the middle of baking,” she added.

  “That’s okay,” Penny said easily. “What are you making?”

  “My famous gingerbread.” Mrs. Schuyler smiled.

  “I love your gingerbread,” Penny declared, following her into the kitchen. The kitchen counter was strewn with tin pans and ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs.

  “Why don’t you sit there while I finish, and when it’s baking, we can go out back and have some lemonade. How does that sound?” Mrs. Schuyler asked.

  It sounded pretty good to Penny, especially the lemonade part. “Okay.”

  Penny sat on a high antique stool while Mrs. Schuyler kept up a steady stream of conversation, telling Penny how she had learned this recipe when she was at her mother’s knees; it was her grandmother’s recipe, and the secret ingredient was nutmeg.

  “Nutmeg,” Penny said, looking around, seeing with new eyes the kitchen she had been in a million times. It was a very old-fashioned kitchen, with hanging pots and dried herbs suspended from hooks in the ceiling.

  “Will you be okay?”

  Penny snapped her head back to look at Mrs. Schuyler. The old woman was taking off her apron. “What?”

  “I’ve run out of cinnamon. I’m just going to run next door. Will you be okay here on your own?”

  Would she be okay? You bet she would. “Sure,” she said.

  Mrs. Schuyler smiled. “I won’t be a moment.”

  A moment was long enough.

  “Okay,” Penny said with a cheery smile as the woman disappeared out the front door.

  Penny waited until she heard the door slam and then ran to the den, pausing to glance out the front window to make sure Mr. Schuyler was still asleep. He was.

  The den sported a worn-looking Barcalounger and old, dark furniture—big, heavy, masculine pieces. A desk was set against the wall, with a big chair pulled up to it. Probably Mr. Schuyler’s. She quickly rummaged through the drawers, her heart pounding fast. The top drawer contained lots of scraps of paper—ancient receipts from the look of it, all for feed. And a list that said “Hogs Slaughtered,” with the year, weight, and name of each pig neatly written out: Jack Daniel, Old Rye, Brandy, Tom Collins. What was with the weird names? Why would you name a pig Old Rye? Pigs should be named Porky or Curly Tail. She hadn’t even known that Mr. Schuyler had been a pig farmer; she thought he’d grown corn, or hay, or something involving fields and tractors.

  Penny rifled through the bottom drawer. It was stuffed with tattered copies of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. She paused when she reached the bottom of the stack, her eyes widening. The naked girl on the front of the magazine winked up at Penny. Penny had seen girly magazines before—the boys had kept an ancient one at the fort—but this one was something else. Penny paged through it and then slapped the magazine shut and closed the drawer quickly, looking behind her. Mr. Schuyler was right on the front porch! What if he came in for a beer and found her snooping through his desk?

  In the corner of the room stood a tall, dark oak cabinet with an old-fashioned key in the lock. Penny turned the key and the door popped open. She drew a breath.

  Row after row of gleaming guns blinked out at her. Long, black-barreled rifles; shotguns; sleek black handguns; an old ivory-handled pistol; deadly-looking arrows; and a scary-looking bow. There were boxes and boxes of bullets and a pair of binoculars … and thick hunting knives.

  “Penny!�
��

  Penny whirled around and shut the door to the cabinet quickly. Mrs. Schuyler was standing there, holding a container of cinnamon, a puzzled look on her kind face. “You weren’t looking in that cabinet, were you?”

  “Uh, no,” Penny stammered.

  Mrs. Schuyler walked over and locked the cabinet, slipping the key into the pocket of her dress. “I’ve told Al a million times to keep this thing locked,” she said. Then she wagged her fìnger at Penny. “Guns are very dangerous. Now promise me you’ll stay away from this cabinet.”

  “I promise,” Penny replied, appropriately penitent.

  “Good.” Mrs. Schuyler smiled warmly. “Now let’s go finish that gingerbread.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning, when Penny went down to the Albrights’ house, the front door was open, and so she walked right in.

  Cardboard boxes were stacked all along the entryway. They had been neatly labeled with thick black Magic Marker: “Baby Clothes.” “Wedding Box.” “Winter Sweaters.”

  “I’m not letting that criminal drive us out of this house!” Mr. Albright roared, his voice carrying to where Penny was standing. “We are not the Wine-gartens! We are not running away from a kid!”

  “Well, I’ve had it! Do you hear me?” Mrs. Albright shouted back, her voice breaking.

  Penny was astonished. She had never heard Mrs. Albright yell at Mr. Albright.

  There was a long moment of silence, and then the sound of china shattering rang through the house.

  “Now look what you did!” Mrs. Albright cried, sounding close to tears. “That was Becky’s baby cup! It’s ruined.”

  “Mom, it’s okay,” Benji’s voice said beseechingly. “Look, I’ll bet I can fix it.”

  Penny stepped into the doorway of the kitchen. “Uh, hi.”

  Mrs. Albright stood on a high stool before the open cabinet. The top shelf was empty, and the table was stacked with plates wrapped in newspaper. Mr. Albright was glaring at his wife, and Benji was frozen, crouching next to the shattered cup on the floor.

  “What’s going on?” Penny asked.