The Creek (3 page)

“Man,” Mac said with a low whistle. “Remember all those stories?”

“Yeah! Nicky Kapoor told me his brother told him that Caleb showed him an old silver cigarette case. He said he’d stolen it off a sleeping bum,” Benji said.

“I saw that case!” Penny said excitedly. “And I saw the skull tattoo on his hand!”

Benji nodded sagely. “Sure sounds like him. But you know that cigarette case?”

The kids waited expectantly, hearts pounding.

Benji’s voice pitched low. “They say that case is full of pinky fingers from kids who tried to cross
him.” A beat, and then he added, “Caleb cut ‘em off with his hunting knife.”

“That’s a steaming load of horse—” Mac started to say.

“I’m not saying it’s true,” Benji shot back. “My point is, he must have been pretty bad.”

“Oh, yeah, why’s that?”

“‘Cause look at all the bad stuff
you
do, and you never got sent away!”

“That’s ‘cause
I’m
too smart to get caught!” Mac shouted back in aggravation.

“Pinky fingers does sound a little extreme,” Oren said. “But you know they say that he used to set traps here in the woods,” he added, looking around at the leaf-covered forest floor. His eyes clouded over. “We never did find Bozo.”

“Bozo?” Penny asked.

“Our dog. He was a dachshund. Caleb liked to steal people’s pets right out of their yards and kill them in the woods. I know he got Bozo,” Oren said with absolute conviction. “He wasn’t the kind of dog to run away.”

“Bozo?” Mac snorted. “That dog probably killed itself because of its lame name. I bet it sat by the road all day and ran in front of a car when it saw its chance.”

“You jerk!” Oren said, flinging himself at Mac.

Benji wrestled him away, and Oren glared at Mac.

“This is serious,” Penny said. “I don’t think we should build the fort here, because of Caleb and all.”

“Forget that. I’d like to see him try and mess with me,” Mac said, his fists clenching and unclenching in a menacing way.

Benji gave a pained look. “Yeah, the summer just started. We don’t even know for sure if he’s back in town.”

“But I saw him!”

Mac narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you sure you saw him?”

“He was driving a red Trans Am and—”

“Look,” Mac said. “If he was driving a car like that, we’d see it parked in the Devlins’ driveway, and I haven’t seen one.”

“Maybe he just got here this morning!”

“Maybe you’re just seeing things,” Mac said bluntly. “And where’s my magnifying glass?”

“I—I broke it,” Penny confessed.

“Typical. You are such a girl,” Mac spit out furiously.

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Whatever,” Mac said. “Let’s go.”

She took in the stubborn set of the boys’ eyes, even Teddy’s. “But Caleb—” Penny said.

Mac cut her off.

“I’m sick of hearing about him, so just shut up. We’ve got a fort to build.”

The day was hot and sticky as a melted doughnut.

They had broken for lunch, and reassembled on the storm drain next to Benji’s house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Heat hung thick and heavy in the suburban air, and sprinklers were on up and down Mockingbird Lane. Penny’s lime-green shorts and tank top were already damp and clinging to her skin. It was not, in Penny’s opinion, the ideal time to be doing anything as strenuous as stealing lumber. She tucked her dirty-blond hair behind her ears, happy that she’d cut it short, even though her mom hadn’t liked the idea at the time. It was much cooler.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Penny asked Mac.

“Yeah,” Mac said nonchalantly. “It’s been sitting there forever. Nobody’ll miss it.”

Penny doubted this very much. Somebody would miss it. It was just a question of when.

Just then, Zachary Evreth rode up on his bike, his plump legs pumping furiously. He screeched to a halt
and dropped his bike, breathing hard, racing to catch up with them, baseball cards and rubber balls and all sorts of junk falling out of his pockets and onto the ground. He seemed to be carrying everything he owned stuffed into his straining jeans.

“Just what we need!” Benji groaned.

Twelve-year-old Zachary was one of those kids.

With his intense eyes and thin hair, he was too fat, too eager to please, too everything. He was the kid who couldn’t keep a secret, the kid who always got hurt at recess, the kid who laughed too long at your jokes, the kid who would never leave you alone.

The kid, in short, who gave other kids a bad name.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked eagerly, all smiles, the human Labrador.

“Stealing wood from behind the skeet range for the new fort,” Teddy said.

Penny shot her brother an exasperated look.

“Great, Teddy, why don’t you tell the whole world?” Mac said.

Zachary rushed to reassure them. “I won’t tell,” he said. You could just see his mind whirring. “I can help! I can be, like, the lookout! Huh? What do you think, guys?”

The kids cast sidelong glances at one another.

“I can help!” Zachary pleaded.

“No, it’s cool, man,” Mac said, nodding his head. “Thanks anyway.” He started walking toward the woods, the other boys following.

Zachary’s face fell, tears welling up in his eyes.

Penny suddenly felt sorry for the kid. “Next time,” she promised, meeting his stricken eyes.

“C’mon, Penny!” Benji shouted.

She ran to catch up.

The skeet range was deep in the woods, behind the Albrights’ house. A small dirt road led to it from Wren Circle, but they didn’t want to draw any attention to themselves by going that way. The children were forbidden to go to the range, which made no sense, as most of their fathers owned guns and practiced on the range themselves. The fathers were big hunters and often took the boys hunting.

Most of the Mockingbird Lane boys had BB guns, too, even Zachary—which Teddy took as a personal insult, because he didn’t have one. Dr. Carson refused to let Teddy have a BB gun because he said he had treated too many gunshot wounds during his residency in Philadelphia, which Teddy thought was unfair
because even Oren had a BB gun, and his father was a gastroenterologist.

The boys were generally up to no good with their BB guns. Most of the time they’d set up cans as targets, but sometimes they’d go after squirrels or dumb, slow-moving mourning doves. Penny often thought she should learn how to use a gun despite her parents’ strict instructions that she never touch one.

The skeet range was deserted when they reached it, and as Mac had predicted, there was a large pile of wooden beams leaning against the chain-link fence that ringed the range. The boys whooped at the find.

Benji gave a low whistle. “It’s like walking into a store.”

“Are you sure about this, Mac?” Oren asked hesitantly, clearly leery of committing a crime even if it was for the good of the fort.

“It’s cool,” said Mac dismissively.

Penny idly admired a tree that kids over the years had carved graffiti on. Mickey loved Carrie. A jagged lightning bolt. Names of bands. A crooked-looking heart. It was like a taunt to the block’s fathers.
Look how close we are to the range,
the graffiti said.

“Let’s take a load now and then come back for more tomorrow,” Mac ordered. It was getting late,
nearly five, and their mothers would be hollering for them to come home for dinner soon.

They divvied up into pairs and carried the two-by-fours, except Mac, who made a show of throwing a couple over his shoulder and carrying them by himself. It was a long haul through the twisting trees as the kids followed the Indian trails. Legend had it that the woods had originally been home to the Lenni Lenape and that they were the ones who had left the dirt paths that crisscrossed all over the woods. Penny’s father said that it was more likely fifty years of children’s feet that had beaten the well-worn paths.

When she and Benji arrived at the fort, lagging behind the others, they dumped their load and relaxed.

Mac and Teddy had Mac’s Swiss Army knife out. Penny watched in horror as Teddy threw it up into the air over his head. It landed with a thump on the ground behind his back, point first.

“Teddy!” she shouted, on her feet instantly. “What are you doing!”

“It’s just a game,” he whined.

“Haven’t you ever played this before?” Mac asked. “It’s called Dive Bomb.”

“It should be called Stupid, that’s what!” she said.
“Knives are really dangerous.”

“Chill out, Penny,” Mac said, but he put the knife away.

“That’s a really dumb game.” Penny was getting worked up. “I nearly cut my finger off with a knife once, helping Mom. Look!” She held up her forefinger, the white scar a snaking line around pink skin. “I had to have ten stitches!”

“Okay, okay, chill out,” Teddy echoed, embarrassed.

“Yeah, go bake some cookies with the other moms,” Mac said sourly. “What’s your problem, anyway?”

“She has a thing about knives,” Benji said under his breath.

Penny grabbed Teddy by his hand and tugged him away from the other boys.

“What if it landed on your head? Use your brain, Teddy,” Penny said, admonishing him.

Teddy swallowed. “You think it’s okay to build the fort here?” he whispered, so that the other boys wouldn’t hear him. He looked around with worried eyes.

This was typical Teddy. He was all fearless bravado when the boys were around, but when it was just the two of them, he let his fears show.

His real question hung in the air, unspoken between them. Teddy feared Caleb Devlin like they
all did, but he was not like Benji Albright or Mac McHale. He was not scrappy. He was easily hurt and scared when out of the circle of their rough, confident influence.

“It’ll be fine, Teddy,” Penny said automatically.

She stared into the woods, squinting slightly, looking past the big fallen oak as the late afternoon sun cast dappled shadows, and she imagined she could see the brooding boy from the car, glaring at her with dead eyes, his skin gleaming with sweat and dirt, the heat rising off his body, the musky smell of danger. Caleb Devlin. She could almost see him standing there, leaning against the sturdy pine tree, grinding marijuana into his cheap rolling papers, inhaling deeply, taunting her, scaring her, scaring them all.

She blinked twice and he was gone.

Mac carried a pile of boards over to where Benji was hammering and dropped them at Benji’s feet. One of the boards hit Benji’s foot.

“You jerk,” Benji said, glaring at Mac. Fighting and bickering were a way of life with the boys, Penny knew. It wasn’t personal; it was just something they did.

Mac snickered. He loved a fight. But then he looked up, past Benji, and his smirk turned to a scowl. “Look who’s coming,” Mac said scornfully.

They spotted her way down the trail. It was Becky Albright, Benji’s six-year-old sister, a picture with her curly white-blond hair, robin’s-egg-blue eyes, and hand-smocked dress. She clutched a doll in her clean pink hands. Penny thought she looked like a china doll come to life.

Benji shook his head and gave a harassed-sounding groan. “Becky, go home.”

“I wanna go up in the fort,” she wailed.

“You’re too small,” Benji said, exasperated. “It’s not even finished. It’s just beams.”

Becky considered, looking up at the raw beams suspended in the trees. “But I wanna.”

“No way, Becky, get lost,” Benji said. Becky was the bane of Benji’s existence. “Don’t be a pain.”

“I’ll tell Mom you went to the range,” she threatened. “I saw!” Becky was no dummy; she knew all the right buttons to push.

“Yeah? Well, I’ll tell her you’re the one who spilled the ice cream on the living-room rug.”

“But I wanna go up,” she said babyishly.

“Tough,” Benji said. “Go home and stop spying on me.”

“Yeah, get out, bratty Becky,” said Mac.

And then all of them started shouting, “Bratty
Becky, Bratty Baby Becky!” and she began to cry.

“C’mon, Becky,” Penny said, snatching the little girl’s hand. “I’ll take you home. Leave the boys alone.” Becky wasn’t so bad. She was just a little girl.

Penny led Becky out of the labyrinth of woods and up to the storm drain at the cul-de-sac where Becky promptly started crying harder, dramatically, knowing that Mrs. Albright was within hearing distance.

“Becky, don’t get them in trouble or they’ll never let you play with them,” Penny said in a low voice.

“They’re so mean to me! I hate them!” Her face was all red and sort of scrunched up. Penny understood why the boys wouldn’t let Becky play with them. It was like baby-sitting.

Penny wiped Becky’s nose and gave her a shove in the direction of her house, and then she started back up the block toward her own.

T
hat evening, Penny was sitting on the curb in front of her house with the guys, waiting for Oren to show up. Oren’s family always ate dinner late, at seven, so everyone had to wait until he was finished before embarking on any evening activities. Tonight they were going to play flashlight tag.

“This is such a pain,” Benji groused. “Why don’t they eat dinner at six like normal people?”

Mac grunted in a noncommittal way. He was using a stick to push around a frog that had been dead for some time. It was flat and looked a little crusty around the edges, as if it had been run over by a steam engine and then grilled on a barbecue. It didn’t smell so hot, either.

“How could someone run over a frog?” Penny asked, feeling a little queasy.

“My mom once ran over a turtle,” Mac said, looking across the street to where his mother was sitting on the Bukvics’ porch with Mrs. Albright and Mrs. Bukvic.

The three women were deep in conversation, glancing up occasionally to eye the kids. They were probably organizing the annual Fourth of July block party, Penny thought. The Fourth of July was a big deal on Mockingbird Lane. The day-long block party featured tons of food, kegs of beer for the grownups, and contests and games. They were all looking forward to it in a few short weeks.

Mrs. Bukvic was in charge of the block party this year, which was perfect because Mrs. Bukvic was probably the bossiest person on the block.