The Creeping

“It’ll be all séance BS and horndog jocks telling scary stories so they can get close and dry-hump you,” Michaela adds, wringing the water from her hair. It sounds morally bankrupt, and maybe it is, but every year for as long as I can remember, the upperclassmen at Wildwood High have called today the Day of Bones. At about this time eleven years ago, I was wandering back into Jeanie’s front yard, where her hysterical mother was screaming our names. At least our predecessors didn’t immediately deem the anniversary of this tragedy the highlight of their social calendars. Day of Bones started out with a bunch of drunk seniors searching for Jeanie’s bones in a demented scavenger hunt—they actually thought they were helping the investigation. I suppose they would have if they’d ever found anything. But I guess it was too much work and not enough drinking. Next it morphed into a memorial and now it’s just a twisted excuse for a keg and ghost stories. A very different kind of “boning” on everyone’s mind. Every year Wildwood students go to Blackdog Lake for a bonfire. Whatever the debauchery, I am basically the guest of honor.

“One more question, please, S,” Cole begs. She didn’t ask if the nickname was okay the first time Zoey brought her to lunch with us. But there was a hopeful quality to the breathy way she said it, and I kind of like it. It’s new, like her. I smile and nod. “So um . . . I don’t know how to say this, but nothing weird happened to you? Like . . .” The apples of her cheeks burn crimson. I know exactly what she’s getting at.

“No, I wasn’t molested or anything. The doctors and shrinks said I was totally fine in that department.” And it’s the truth. There wasn’t one caramel-colored hair hurt on my head, although Zoey is right about it being braided. As far as anyone could tell, that’s all that happened to me.

Michaela kneels at the foot of my towel and digs through her tote. “I’m staaaarving. Are we doing dinner? My mom is sooo not going to let me take her car after last time.”

Her gaze cuts pointedly to Zoey, who rolls her eyes. “Last time” was last weekend, when Zoey thought it was hysterical to tie her push-up bra to the antenna of Michaela’s mom’s sedan before we drove around downtown. It was pretty epic—C cups like a banner in the wind announcing our arrival—right up until we passed the fire chief, who lives next door to Michaela and recognized her mother’s car. Michaela’s parents aren’t as hands-off as the rest of ours. They’re ancient and already have grandkids from Michaela’s older sisters. They’re retired and constantly breathing down her neck.

Michaela stops rifling through her bag. She braces her hands on her knees and waits for an apology overdue by six days. Zoey makes a point to color code the gummies at the heart of her palm just so it’s obvious how much she isn’t sorry. “I’ll drive,” I offer. I don’t want the standoff to continue. Most of why Zoey and Michaela work is that they’re polar opposites, but occasionally opposites combust. More accurately: Zoey combusts. “I have to eat dinner with the parent, so be at my house by eight,” I add.

“But you’re never gonna make it with Taylor if you’re all stiff and sober,” Zoey whines. Cole devolves into giggles as Zoey emphasizes “stiff.”

“Maybe we should have him pick us up from Stella’s and we can watch him ogle her snowballs?” Zoey says, pressing her boobs—or snowballs as she calls them—together. She peeks up at me through thick lashes and bats them flirtatiously. Cole makes kissing noises.

“Not gonna happen,” I shout above their sound effects. Turning tonight into a flirt fest seems disrespectful. And I can’t blow my whole disinterested thing now by calling and bumming a ride.

Even Michaela, who I can usually count on as an antidote for Zoey’s antics, has this giddy grin on her face. Michaela’s sworn off boys until she finishes her early admission apps for college. In the meantime, she’s taking living vicariously through us to heart. “I’ll be DD with Stella’s car,” she says slyly.

Cole cheers and Zoey flashes a conspirator’s grin at Michaela before turning a pout on me. I take aim and lob a gummy bear at Zoey’s cleavage. I lean back on my towel. I can feel Zoey staring, but I ignore her. I’ve been off all day. Ever since she arrived at my house this morning and I answered the door with dark bulges under my aching eyes. Thinking of today made it hard to sleep last night. I’d hash it out with Zoey—the only one I ever talk to about it, since she’s the only one who lived all the aftermath with me—but lately she has zero tolerance for anything that isn’t hooking up or going out.

My eyes close, and I let the warmth of the sun wash over me. The breeze rattles the oak leaves, making them chime like thousands of miniature bells. I inhale the air, fragrant with damp soil and pine needles. Everything is still wet and gleaming from springtime showers. Soon the trees will be brittle and dry, nothing more than kindling for campfires.

The others talk about Zoey’s end-of-the-summer rager, the Fourth of July, and Michaela’s trip back east for college visits. Zoey makes a bad joke about Michaela sizing up the student body at Brown. Cole jabbers on about hosting her first house party next week. I can almost see their vivid expectations for break, brightly colored and shimmering like the fireworks they’re looking forward to, against the backdrop of my eyelids. I let their voices melt away and concentrate on the beat of wings. Overhead a large bird, maybe a hawk or raven, circles. I feel its shadow slide over my torso as it flies above us. The faint babble of a stream slices through the rustle of the woods a few hundred feet from where we sit. It’s full of skinny silver-scaled fish darting around, sparkling in the sun.