The Creek (6 page)

“Little,” Penny thought, was not a word that described Zachary Evreth.

Zachary drew a ragged breath. His skin, which looked positively rubbery to begin with, looked even paler in the white light of the kitchen.

“What happened, buddy?” Penny’s father asked gently, sitting Zachary down on a chair. Her mother, who was used to people showing up in her kitchen like this, pulled out a box of bandages and medical supplies.

“Go on, Zachary, tell the doctor what that boy did to you,” Mrs. Evreth coaxed.

He wore a pained expression. “He punched me like a hundred times right here,” he said, tapping his chest. He held out his arm. “And he twisted my arm. It really hurts.”

“And he smashed you in the head, too,” Teddy added helpfully, pointing at Zachary’s blood-matted hair.

“Oh, yeah,” Zachary said.

Dr. Carson put his hands on Zachary’s chest. “Does this hurt?”

Zachary gave a huff of pain.

“And here?”

A wheeze of discomfort.

Penny’s father gently touched Zachary’s shoulder, and Zachary yelped.

“Look, Zachary, we’re gonna have to take you to the hospital,” he said in a deceptively calm voice.

“The hospital!” Mrs. Evreth screeched.

Penny and Teddy exchanged a wide-eyed look.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Bernadette,” he explained patiently.

“But the hospital!”

“He needs to get an X-ray.”

“An X-ray!”

“Yes, an X-ray. He may have a dislocated shoulder, and I want to rule out any broken ribs.”

Mrs. Evreth burst into tears. Zachary’s lip worked tremulously, as if he, too, was getting ready to cry.

“Bernadette, calm down. Zachary, why don’t you
sit here and relax while your mom and I talk for a moment,” her father said, steering Mrs. Evreth into the adjoining living room, with Penny’s mother following close behind.

Mrs. Evreth’s loud voice rang through the house. “Poor Zachary! He doesn’t even know how to defend himself. I don’t know how he’ll survive his teenage years!”

“Now, Bernadette,” her father murmured soothingly in his doctor voice.

“And he won’t even say who did it!” Mrs. Evreth wailed, her voice rising in pitch. “I just know it was that Caleb Devlin! He’s back! I heard from one of the girls in the hair salon!”

Looking at Zachary’s pathetic figure, Penny felt a twinge of regret. She knew he wouldn’t have gotten beaten up if he’d been with them at Wallaby Farms.

“Uh, you want some ice cream?” Penny offered awkwardly.

Zachary’s eyes lit up a fraction. “Sure,” he wheezed.

Penny got a bowl, took a carton from the freezer, and scooped out a big chunk of vanilla ice cream. “Sprinkles?” she asked.

He nodded. Penny wasn’t surprised. He was a sprinkles kid for sure.

Penny placed the bowl in front of him, and he grabbed the spoon with the hand of his uninjured arm.

“Thanks,” he said. His eyes closed in relief as he took a bite of the ice cream.

Penny’s eyes met Teddy’s for a long moment, and then she asked the obvious. “So, was it Caleb?”

Zachary’s mouth screwed up. He took a deep shuddering breath. “It was—”

Penny and Teddy leaned forward to catch his words.

And watched as Zachary tumbled off the chair onto the floor in a dead faint.

Penny had an elaborate series of bedtime rituals.

First she said her prayers. She was very careful to name every member of her family because she knew that if she omitted one, the consequences would be dire. One time she had forgotten to ask God to bless Teddy, and the very next day he had gotten chicken pox.

After the prayers, she lined up the runner on her bedside table so that it was perfectly straight, and turned her pillow so that the open end faced toward the door. The closet had to be shut all the way, because who knew what would come out of it during the
night? She knew she was too old for this, but still, the shades had to be pulled down to the ledge, and she positioned her old bear Georgie at the foot of her bed, the first line of defense. It wasn’t so much that she feared monsters, but rather an unnamed feeling that if things weren’t in the same safe, predictable places when she went to sleep every night, then she was jinxing herself.

And now, with the threat of Caleb heavy in the air, she felt it was especially important for everything to be just right and in its place. Penny painstakingly double-checked her room, taking extra care to make sure that her windows were locked, that the shades were pulled tight, that her flashlight was under her pillow, within easy reach.

“You in bed?” her mother called from the doorway.

Penny scrambled into bed.

Her mother stepped into the room, looking tired and worn-out, a baby spit-up towel over one shoulder. “Ugh,” she said, looking down at the floor. “Penny, hand me a tissue. I stepped on a bug.”

Penny plucked a tissue from her bedside stand, hoping that if it was a spider it was dead. There was nothing she hated worse than spiders.

“What was it?”

Her mother grimaced. “A ladybug.”

From the bed, Penny gasped.

“Penny,” her mother said in a weary voice.

“But, Mom!” Penny insisted. “It’s bad luck. Really bad luck. Nana says that every time you step on a ladybug, someone dies.”
Now she’s done it,
Penny thought with a sinking feeling.

Her mom sat down on the bed and smoothed the wispy hair off Penny’s forehead with a soothing gesture. “Your Nana is getting superstitious in her old age, and you shouldn’t take her so seriously, okay?”

“But—”

“But nothing,” her mother said firmly, and switched off the lamp. “You better be asleep by the time your dad gets home.”

Just then the front door opened, and Penny heard the heavy footfall of her father.

“Bethany?” he called up the stairs.

“Phil, don’t shout. I just put the baby to bed,” her mother whispered urgently, and started down the stairs.

Penny slipped out of bed and crept down the hall, pausing outside her parents’ room to look in at Baby Sam’s crib. He’d managed to throw off his blanket and was fiercely clutching a small pink pig. As if sensing
her presence, he snuffled a little, and then settled into soft whispery snoring.

She continued down the dark hall and crouched on the worn carpet on the top stair, listening to the conversation in the kitchen below.

“Want a beer?” her mother murmured.

“More like a dozen,” her father said. “What a mess.”

“So, is he okay?” her mother asked.

Suddenly Penny felt something brush her leg. She opened her mouth to scream but caught herself. She whirled around.

It was Teddy in his pajamas, hair still wet from his bath. She glared at him.

“What’s going on?” he whispered.

Penny held a finger up to her silent lips.

“A sprained shoulder. A couple of stitches. He probably passed out because his mother was carrying on like he was going to die. He’ll be okay. But it gave me a scare for a minute, the way he just suddenly keeled over. Reminded me of my residency nights in the ER.”

“There was blood all over this kitchen,” Penny’s mother said.

“You should see the inside of the minivan,” her father added ruefully.

Her mother sighed, a sigh that seemed to say that kids bleeding on kitchen floors and on the seats in your minivan were part of the deal when you were married to a doctor.

“Poor kid. Did he say who did it?”

A pause, and then her father said, in a low voice, “When Bernadette asked him if it was Caleb, he started crying.”

“But he didn’t actually say it was Caleb?” her mother countered.

Her father hedged. “Not in so many words. But he looked like he’d been worked over pretty good by someone.”

“Not you, too, Phil,” her mother said, her voice thick with disapproval.

Penny looked at Teddy and could see that he was thinking the same thing.

“Phil, don’t say it. Don’t buy into this small-town hick nonsense,” her mother said angrily. Penny and Teddy could hear the sound of dishes being thrown into the sink, water running.

This was so like her mother, Penny thought. Always sticking up for the underdog. As if Caleb could even be remotely considered an underdog!

“I’m sorry,” her father said in measured tones. “You
have to see my point, Bethany. Being open-minded doesn’t mean we have to be blind to the facts. It
could
have been Caleb.”

Penny gasped, startling her brother, who was crouched close behind her. Teddy lost his balance and fell back against the dresser at the top of the stairs, rattling the photos on it. Penny leaped up to steady them.

“Did you hear something upstairs?” her mother asked suspiciously.

“No,” her father said, and then murmured something else, something they couldn’t hear.

Teddy looked at Penny and gulped fearfully.

Maybe,
Penny thought,
it would be a good idea to learn how to shoot that BB gun after all.

T
he swimming hole shimmered with the same blue intensity as the sky after a hard rain.

It was a perfect day for a swim. The boys had been silly not to come with her. But she didn’t care. She was hot, burning up, her skin prickly with heat rash, and the only thing she wanted to do was float in all that cool water.

Penny perched on the edge, curled her thin body, and then, in one smooth motion, dove into the water, dove deep, deeper than she knew she should have. She opened her eves, but it was too murky to see; everything was thick and brown as an old shoe. She struck out hard, moved her arms strongly, and broke the surface, gasping for breath. With her eyes still closed, she felt her way to the mossy bank on the other side, hoisted herself up, and crouched there,
rubbing furiously at her eyes.

She opened her eyes to a squint and the world wavered in front of her for a moment and then miraculously cleared. That was when she saw the hard black boot in front of her. A cigarette stub fell to the ground, and the boot ground it out. Only then did she look up.

Caleb towered over her, darkly attractive, all hard boy. Her eyes traced the length of his body, noticed the way his legs seemed like whipcords, saw the dirt under his fingernails, the skull tattoo on the back of his hand. He was holding a beer bottle. He took a swig, his head tilting back casually, his thick hair falling in dark waves, like the hair of the Black Knight in her book about King Arthur.

The Black Knight,
she thought.

The atmosphere changed abruptly, the sky darkening, the air filling with menace.

Caleb reached out a hand and ran his fingers lightly down her smooth, damp shoulder, raising goose bumps.

She froze, wanting to scream, the hysteria building in her, mounting until all she could do was look on in shock as he brushed a rough finger down her arm. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came
out; she couldn’t make her mouth work.

He smiled at her, his eyes hinting at what he wanted to do, what he could do with stupid little girls like her. He leaned forward, and she felt his breath, pressing, hot on her ear.

“Penny,”
he whispered huskily.

The bottle of beer fell from his hand, the glass shattering in slow motion, green shards flying through the air.

And then she woke up, breathing hard.

Penny slipped out of the house through the side door in the laundry room while her mother was distracted trying to give the baby a bath. She walked up Mockingbird Lane and took a right down the steep curving slope of Lark Hill Road.

Lark Hill Road was the location of more than one fantastically bloody skateboard wipeout, and was also the best place to go sledding when it snowed. At the very bottom of the hill was a wide old fieldstone bridge, under which the creek flowed. The Lark Hill bridge was a popular place for older kids to smoke and drink beer, usually underneath its wide arches, and empty beer cans spilled out from beneath it.

The woods crowded in on either side of the
bridge. Benji was meeting her here with his BB gun. He was going to teach her how to shoot. There were no homes on Lark Hill Road, and so the bridge was an easy place from which to slip into the woods, because it was out of sight of parents’ eyes. Penny’s mother would not be happy to see Penny heading into the woods with Benji and his BB gun.

Someone had posted a sign on the bridge wall:

Benji biked up a minute later, BB gun in hand.

“Ready?” he asked, chaining his bike to a tree.

They headed deep into the woods, past the fort, where the shots would not be heard by adult ears. The woods were dark and thick, with shafts of sunlight breaking through here and there.

“You getting excited about the Fourth?” Benji asked.

“Yeah,” Penny said. “Especially if Mom gets a babysitter. I don’t want to get stuck watching the dumb baby all day.”

As they worked their way through the brush along
the trail, the landscape seemed to change, to turn in on itself, get darker, as if each step away from the bridge was a step farther back in time. The woods had always been a safe place for Penny, a place where nothing bad ever happened, but she found herself looking at it with new eyes, wondering what the mothers meant about Susie and that kid Jeffy.

Penny picked up a long stick, good for walking. “Benji, do you think it’s okay that we’re back here in the woods? I mean, what about Zachary and all?”

Several days had passed since Zachary had showed up bleeding in the kitchen, and news of his accident had spread like wildfire through the neighborhood. Everybody—kids and adults—was talking about it.

He stiffened slightly and looked at her. Benji was different from the other boys. He was always the first one there when she fell out of a tree, or got the wind knocked out of her during touch football.

“I don’t think Caleb really beat Zachary up. Why would he bother? You know how Zachary is,” Benji said, his meaning clear. Zachary was just one of those kids who invited bullies. He had years ahead of him filled with black eyes and stolen lunch money.