The Creeping

“It might not be,” Sam says softly. “We haven’t found proof that there were any past disappearances yet.” I try to smile at the reassurance but fail. I’m about to share the gnarled hand—at least gnarled in my memory—twisted in Jeanie’s hair when Sam adds, “There’s something else.”


“What?” I ask, guilty with the relief of not having to regurgitate the memory that found me under the water. If I don’t say it out loud, it doesn’t have to be real. Those twisted fingers don’t have to be real. They don’t have to be wound in Jeanie’s hair, pulling clumps by the root from her bloody scalp as she struggled.

“It’s more something that I have to show you.” He cracks a smile that is more hopeful than suggestive. “Can we go to your house?”

“Sure, as long as you don’t mind that I’m a little tipsy.” I lean my temple against the cool window and close my eyes, letting the car’s easy rhythm on the highway rock me. “When do you have to work?”

“Tomorrow. I have shifts Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from three to nine. I’ve been trying to pick up more, but everyone else needs extra hours too,” he says. I place my hand on his knee and shift my weight to lean against him rather than the window. I don’t know why . . . I just want to show him that I understand it’s hard.

He chuckles softly. “What?” I ask, glancing up at his profile.

“You’re sweet when you’re drunk.”

I straighten up, my hand to my chest, mouth open wide in mock outrage. “Why, Sam Worth, are you saying you like me better under the influence of alcohol?”

He leans over the steering wheel and stares at the graying tufts of clouds. They’ve accumulated in the sky since I stampeded through the woods. They explain the smell of rain in the air. “No, just that you’re the only person I know who doesn’t transform into a much uglier person when they’re drunk.”

My face falls and I chew my lip. “Does your dad change when he drinks?”

Sam tips his head. “He fights with my mom. Says things he shouldn’t. He never drank at home when he worked. He tried to hide it from my mom before. As a kid I knew what it smelled like when he came home and hugged me. I guess now he needs a way to cope all the time, but . . .”

“But it’s not what you and your mom deserve.” I lean into him again. It occurs to me that I’m not usually this affectionate when I drink, and dimly I contemplate that it is Sam bringing it out in me and not the cloying vodka. I try to bat that train of thought away. So what if the concept of personal space loses its meaning around Sam? We basically grew up together; of course being near him is a little like digging up our fifth-grade time capsule. I may crave the simplicity of being ten—I may even feel the familiar ping for unicorn stickers—but I’d lose interest after five minutes. I’d get bored with all the artifacts of my childhood.

I stare at the darkening clouds, smothering the sun completely, washing everything in plum and gray. Hopefully, Michaela’s noticed them and hustled everyone back to the cars.

I fiddle with the radio, trying to find something upbeat that comes in clear this far out in the sticks. There’s nothing but some religious talk-radio show, rattling off forty ways to survive the rapture. I flip it off. I can’t shake the sense that Sam isn’t like the sticker books I grew out of. It doesn’t feel as if I left him with two feet firmly in the past. I wonder why that is, and it becomes sharp and clear. “Sam? Do you remember what you said a few days ago about you having friends who don’t care who you’re friends with?”

His lips part, and his eyes cut from the road to me. “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have said that. I was upset.”

I consider this for a second. “It was true, though. How did you know that Zoey didn’t want me hanging out with you anymore?” See, I didn’t outgrow Sam or give him up willingly. I lost him to keep someone I loved more.

His jaw clenches and then unclenches. With that little tick of his muscle, the sky cracks open and dumps rain. “She told me,” he says.

I was lounging back, feeling kind of soupy. Now I sit straight up. “What?”

He takes a drawn-out breath. “Right before she told you to choose, she told me you only had room for one best friend and that she was going to make you decide who you wanted to keep. Zoey never liked me, and when you weren’t around she was a real . . . well, she was mean-spirited, even as a kid. When you didn’t show up to swim that Sunday afternoon, I knew.” His big, sensitive eyes flit to me like he’s checking that he isn’t hurting my feelings.