The Creeping

Michaela laces her fingers in mine, and Cole sympathetically squeezes my shoulder. Of course it was Daniel there at the cove today. I knew he looked familiar. I guess I haven’t seen him all up close and personal since I was twelve and he was fifteen. The last time he came back, when I was a freshman, Dad threatened to file a restraining order and the Talcott family became more reclusive than Bigfoot. I never saw Daniel again, although Zoey swore she could feel him watching us.

“Wait for it,” Zoey says dramatically. “He’s here tonight.” Michaela not only gasps this time, she staggers backward like the words have a physical weight that barrels into her. Cole’s eyes look about to pop from their sockets. The earth tilts, and my knees bend and straighten like I’m trying to find my sea legs. I close my eyes to steady myself, but all I can see is fifteen-year-old Daniel, holding me against the brick retaining wall that framed my middle school parking lot. Its ragged edges scraped the skin on my back. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded for the millionth time, teeth bared. And as always with Daniel, I took a deep breath and promised him that I really didn’t remember anything. I was choking on tears, but I managed to get the words out. He asked me again and again, stopping only because Sam heard me howling and came to my rescue, threatening to call my dad. Sam did tell Dad, and Daniel was sent off to another reform school.

Even as a kid I was in awe of Daniel’s devotion to his sister. I dreamed of having a big brother who loved me like that. It was only frightening because his boundless suspicion was directed at me. I never blamed him for it. He’d gotten it in his head that I knew more than I let on, and as early as I can remember, he insisted that I was a slippery shit-faced liar. Those were the exact words he shouted at me when I was seven and he was ten, at a school assembly. That got him suspended for the first time, but not the last.

Zoey wraps her arms around me, and for a moment I am completely safe. Zoey is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a love like Daniel had for Jeanie. I scrunch my eyes closed. Plump drops of water begin to fall. At first it’s only one on the bridge of my nose and then another caught in my eyelash. Within a few seconds the pitter-patter of random drops crescendos, and sheets of warm rain cascade down on us. The party erupts into chaos.

“You’ve got to be effing kidding me!” Michaela shrieks, futilely shielding her pin-straight hair with her palms. “I just blew my hair out.” Zoey releases me and holds her head back, catching drops in her mouth. Her cheeks are flushed pink; her lip gloss is smeared. Groups of drenched teens stampede toward the parking lot, hooting and laughing. Others stay put, swaying to the music still shaking the ground. Zoey lets rip a witch’s cackle and claps her hands in delight. She lets the seriousness of the moment wash away with her mascara. A senior footballer whose neck is as thick as his head chants for a wet T-shirt contest, and Zoey disappears into the crowd on the shore.

“Zoey!” I shout after her. “You’re not even wearing a T-shirt.” The rain pounds on relentlessly. My sundress is completely soaked, and the insides of my shoes are soggy. “You guys go to the car and I’ll get her,” I yell as our faces are illuminated by a bolt of lightning.

Cole and Michaela take off running. I watch them disappear into the rush of cars swerving over mud and around underclassmen begging for rides. The thunder follows quickly, and the roaring clap is so loud it’s everywhere, surrounding me, a part of me. You’d think that thunder and lightning lakeside would send more of my peers searching for shelter, but when I turn to find Zoey, the number of dancers bumping on the shore has multiplied. The bonfire sizzles to nothingness, the flames extinguished. Only the battery-operated lanterns and the moon cast light. In the dark the dancers’ limbs and torsos dissolve together, becoming a rhythmic shadow creature, shuddering and pumping.

Bottles of alcohol soar from open hand to open hand. I catch sight of Zoey’s slender fingers groping one. The gold bangle she’s worn since she was a little girl winks in the light at me. She’s a good fifteen people deep in the crowd. I shout her name, but I can barely hear my own voice. Elbows jab my sides. My toes crunch as a heel grinds into my wet sneaker. I curse and fight forward. Hands grope my butt, and I try to slap them away. By the time I squeeze through the drenched and drunk cluster of bodies, she isn’t where I thought she was.