The Creek (11 page)

“Sure.” Pennv hefted her backpack, weighted down now with tools. “Let’s go.”

They stepped out of the garage and a wave of heat hit them, thick and suffocating as an old quilt. Penny looked across the street and wondered if Amy was swimming at the public pool with her new, older friends.

Penny and Teddy walked out of the backyard and right into the woods, something they wouldn’t have dared to do if their mother had been home. But she had left to go to the grocery store after breakfast, and wouldn’t be back for a while.

“Have you seen Mr. Cat?” Mrs. Carson had asked curiously that morning, eyeing his food bowl.

Penny had hesitated. Surely her mother would believe her? But then she considered that she had seen Mr. Cat while she was down at the creek, somewhere she was not supposed to be—and after the fire, she knew that admitting she’d been in the creek was a bad idea.

“Uh, no,” Penny had said.

The woods were cool after the bright heat of the sun. After the scare yesterday with Caleb and Doug, Penny and the boys had unanimously decided to rebuild their fort much deeper in the woods, far from Caleb’s old stomping grounds. Mac, with his infinite resources, had located a new source for lumber, a building site a few blocks from Wren Circle, and the boys were already there, picking up the wood. Well, actually they were stealing it, but Penny didn’t like to think about that.

They reached the location of the new fort, a high
stretch along the creek, far from the burned part of the woods. Penny dropped her backpack and started to pull out the tools.

“Darn,” Penny said. “I forgot to bring nails.”

“I’ll go back and get them,” Teddy offered.

“No, you stay here. The guys’ll be here any minute and you can help them. Don’t go wandering off, okay?” she said.

“I won’t,
Mom,”
he said.

She trotted off through the woods at a jog, wending her way back up to their house. The mini van was still missing from the driveway, so she went into the garage. There were several boxes of nails, and she stole a few nails from each of them, filling the pockets of her shorts until they bulged. Then she headed back through the dark, cool woods.

Penny was out of breath when she finally reached the clearing. And Teddy was nowhere in sight.

“Teddy?” she called, a frisson of fear running up her spine.

Silence.

“Teddy!” she shouted. “This isn’t funny!”

Her only response was chirping birds. Teddy wouldn’t wander away for no reason at all, would he? Maybe he was going to the bathroom—yes, that was it!

“Teddy!”

But what if something bad had happened? She should never have left him alone! She took off into the brush, running blindly through the woods, the nails falling from her pockets to the forest floor, scattering.

She circled the clearing, calling frantically, her eyes scanning the ground, the trees, the weeds.

And then she saw it. A red tennis sneaker sticking out of the brush.

But Teddy’s sneaker, Penny thought shakily, was white, not red, and the edge of the sneaker poking out of the brush was definitely red. A bright sort of red. A weird splotchy red.

She took a step closer.

Blood red.

She was running through the woods, tree branches slapping her face, her heart pounding. It was just like her nightmare, except that it was worse than anything she had ever imagined.

Teddy was lying in the woods, maybe even dying. She had tried to get the trap off by sheer force, but in the end had run back to where they had dumped the tools and gotten the wrench. When the trap had finally sprung open, the sudden release of pressure
had caused Teddy to buck wildly, like a corpse come to life, shrieking in pain.

And now he was back there—unconscious, hurt, and alone!—while she ran to get help.

What if Caleb was still in the woods somewhere? The very thought caused her breath to catch, her heart to thump hard against her ribs. She heard a crackling sound behind her and looked back—and slammed right into someone, knocking herself to the ground.

“Whoa!” Zachary said, stumbling back and falling, a paper bag dropping from his hand.

“Teddy …,” she gasped, her voice a squeak.

Zachary stood up leisurely, brushing himself off. “What’s the hurry? Are the guys already at the fort?”

“Teddy!” she wailed, feeling her chest go painfully tight.

“Penny?” Zachary asked, wide-eyed.

She gasped, trying to catch her breath, desperation rising in her.
Teddy was back there in the woods and she couldn’t even help him!

Zachary scrambled around the forest floor desperately. “Here,” he said, shaking the paper bag, sending newly bought sandpaper flying. He pushed the empty bag into her hands. “Here.”

Penny breathed in and out of the paper bag and
felt her lungs cooperate.

Zachary hunkered down in front of her. “You okay?”

“Teddy’s hurt,” she said at last, still feeling lightheaded.

“Where?”

“Follow me,” she said, willing herself to stand up.

Teddy was lying right where Penny had left him, his foot mangled-looking.

“Holy cow!” Zachary blurted out.

Penny started to shake, just looking at her little brother. He was so still and pale, his face white as ash. He looked dead, like Mr. Cat.

“Penny!” Zachary shouted.

She stared at him numbly.

“Come on!” Zachary urged her. “Take his shoulders.”

“What?” Penny asked dully.

Zachary lifted Teddy’s hips gently. “His shoulders, Penny! We have to get him help!”

Something in his voice shook her, and she snapped into action.

As they carried him out of the woods, cradled between the two of them, Teddy mumbled one word from his bloodless lips, a word that almost made
Penny drop her little brother.

“Caleb,” he whispered.

“I saw him, standing over me, in the woods,” Teddy said, his voice shaking with remembered fear.

The kids were arrayed around the hospital bed, in a stark room in the pediatric ward.Teddy was wearing hospital pajamas, the thin bedsheets tucked around his waist. He seemed so broken, lying in the bed, swathed in wires and tubes.

Zacharv and Penny had carried Teddy all the way to the Schuylers’ house, right into the kitchen. Old Mrs. Schuyler had dropped the pie she was holding when she saw Penny and Zachary standing there, swaying and white-faced, Teddy suspended between them. Penny hadn’t uttered a word the whole way to the hospital. She’d just sat in the backseat of Mrs. Schuyler’s car, Teddy’s head cradled on her lap.

“Did he say anything?” Zachary asked, a worried expression on his face.

“I heard someone say, ‘Hey kid, what are you doing with my trap?’”

Zachary pressed him. “But was it Caleb?”

“I’m not sure,” Teddy whispered, his face pale. “But it had to be him,” he added, as if trying to
convince himself. “There was a trail blaze on the tree! A lightning bolt! That’s what I was looking at when I stepped in the trap.”

The kids nodded grimly. They had all gone back to the spot and seen the freshly carved lightning bolt on the tree, so new the exposed wood was still green.

The antiseptic hospital smell of the room invaded Penny’s nose. She went to the window and looked out at the beautiful sunny day, the sky blue and bright. It was all her fault, she thought. She should never have left Teddy alone in the woods. She had overheard her parents talking in the hospital corridor. Her mother had just wept and wept and wept. “I should’ve listened to you about Caleb,” her mother had said in an agonized voice to her father.

“How’s your foot?” Benji asked.

Teddy’s foot, suspended above the bed in a sling, was wrapped in a plaster cast. Teddy winced. “It’s broken. I’m gonna have the cast on for at least six weeks, Dad said, and maybe even longer. And I have to use crutches. This is gonna ruin my summer.”

“That’s a pain,” Benji said.

“Did you tell the police you saw Caleb?” Oren asked quietly.

Teddy bit his lip, saying nothing.

“Police? Why bother?” Mac snorted. “They can’t do anything.”

Penny knew that Mac was right. Officer Cox and a young cherub-faced recruit fresh out of the academy had questioned Teddy the day before. She had heard the police telling her parents that there was nothing out of the ordinary, that the trap had been a run-of-the-mill animal trap that you could pick up at any hunting store. A very popular model, in fact.

“Good for foxes,” the young police officer had said, as if he’d set a few himself.

“It’s illegal to set traps back there out of season, but a lot of the local hunters do anyway, and there’s just too much land to cover. If you have any idea who might have set it, I can look into it, but otherwise the best thing to do is just keep your kids out of the woods,” Officer Cox had suggested. “Best thing really.”

A nurse poked her head into the doorway. “Visiting hours end in five minutes,” she said sternly.

“Okay,” Mac said, with a false cheery smile. The door swung shut, and he muttered, “Witch.”

Penny’s head spun. The rat. The guts. Mr. Cat. The fire. And now Teddy. There was no question in her mind anymore. It was all so clear. Caleb was after her
family. After her. Something in her hardened, resolved.

“He’ll never stop. Nobody’s ever gonna stop him. Not the police, not our parents. Who’s gonna be next?” Penny demanded, her voice rising sharply.

No one said anything.

Clutching his sheet as if it would protect him, Teddy whispered in a low voice, “The nurse said they were gonna let me out the day after tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” Benji said.

Teddy nodded seriously. “But I’m thinking maybe I’ll stay here.”

“How’sTeddy?” Benji asked several days later.

Penny and Benji were biking home from the convenience store. It was early afternoon, and the sun beat down on them in hot, stifling waves. The bike ride to the convenience store had felt twice as long in this heat. They were both soaked through with sweat.

Mac was at the dentist, and Oren had to mow the lawn now that his dad had moved out of the house, and nobody knew where Zachary was, probably being tortured by his mother in one of her “Bible groups.”

“He’s getting pretty good with the crutches,” Penny said. They had let Teddy come home from the hospital after two days of observation. “He really
wants to do the bike competition, but he doesn’t get that cast off for a while.”

Mr. Schuyler had organized a bike-decorating competition for the Fourth, and it was just a few days away now.

“Maybe he can, like, decorate it, and you can ride it for him,” Benji suggested.

“That’s a good idea,” she said.

What she didn’t say was how weak and pale Teddy still was, or how his nightmares had gotten worse, that a night didn’t go by that he didn’t wake up screaming that Caleb was going to get him. Not that she was sleeping all that well herself.

They stopped their bikes on the bridge at the base of Lark Hill, contemplating the steep slope, a hard ride even in cool weather.

“Let’s take a break,” Benji suggested.

Penny walked to the side of the bridge and looked down at the creek. Part of her couldn’t bear to look down at the rocky creek bed because it reminded her of Mr. Cat. Where was his body? she wondered. What had Caleb done with it?

The creek was dry as a bone, studded with big, smooth rocks and old trash. A rubber tire. An aluminum can. Penny leaned over and could just see
one black motorcycle boot almost directly below her. She waved at Benji to come over.

“What—?” Benji started to ask, but then stopped when Penny held a finger to her lips.

They leaned over the edge to listen to the voices echoing from beneath the bridge. For a moment she didn’t catch anything, and then she heard a satisfied laugh.

“Yo, Caleb, this is good stuff,” Doug Coles said, his voice sounding a little funny, sort of squeaky, like Mickey Mouse.

A pause, and then a gravelly-sounding voice said, “Best there is, right now.”

“Man, I’ll have no problem moving this stuff,” Doug said, inhaling deeply.

The sweet smell of pot wafted up.

“Don’t smoke it all,” Caleb said, an edge to his voice.

“How much you got?”

“Enough.”

“Cool. Everyone should be in a partying mood, the Fourth and all. Same plan?” Doug asked.

Caleb grunted in agreement. “I’m outta here.”

The sound of Caleb climbing the incline toward the top of the bridge shook them, and Penny and Benji
ran to their bikes and pedaled away hard, up the hill, never looking back.

They never saw Caleb Devlin turn to stare at their departing figures.

“So what?” Mac said, slamming the hockey puck across the table to Zachary, who missed. “So he’s dealing drugs? Big surprise. He’s moving up.”

They were playing air hockey in Mac’s basement, where his mother had banished them all so that she could get ready for her date in peace. The washing machine was also in the basement, so the whole room smelled of dirty socks and washing detergent and mildew.

“Who cares,” Oren seconded, with such a Mac-like gesture that Penny blinked in surprise.

Mac slammed the puck into the goal. “Six-nothing!” he crowed to Zachary. “You suck.”

Zachary flushed darkly.

Benji shared a frustrated look with Penny. They had rushed over to tell the boys their news, and this was not the reaction they had expected. “We just thought you guys would want to know, is all.”

The humming sound of the table rose in the room.

“But the thing is, he’s kind of on parole now. From
the juvie home,” Zachary said carefully.

“Because of his mom?” Penny asked.

“Yeah,” Zachary said. “And if he got caught with drugs on him …” he added suggestively.

Mac’s eyebrows went up. He turned and looked at Zachary. “They’d send him back,” he said in dawning comprehension.

Zachary grinned.

Zachary still had his lame moments, but he was a lot cooler than he used to be—rescuing Teddy in the woods, and now this. The boys must be rubbing off on him, Penny decided.

“So what’s the plan?” Penny asked excitedly.

Everyone turned to Mac.

Mac thought for a moment. “We have to somehow tell the cops. And get them to show up while he has the drugs in the house. That way they can bust him.”