The Creeping

It isn’t raining, but the sky is still brimming with clouds. Not the wispy kind, but the ones that look like sponges soaked with water, begging to be squeezed. I ring the doorbell rather than use my key. Zoey’s lost five spare keys to my house; I’ve hung on to hers since I was ten. Shuffling on the other side of the door, and then the lock clicks open.

“Hey,” Caleb says as he flings it open. He drags Zoey’s yellow Lab Nanny back so that I can squeeze through and shouts, “Zoey! Stella’s here.” Nanny lunges forward, snorting furiously and sniffing my shoes like she means to inhale them. I scratch Nanny behind her ears, where the fur fades from gold to white. She’s fourteen and the reason we spent so much time at Jeanie’s as kids. Jeanie was allergic to dogs, and both my parents worked. That left Jeanie’s house for playdates.

“Calm down, girl,” Caleb croons to Nanny. Then to me, “You left yesterday without saying good-bye. Are you really that pissed at me?”

I shift my weight from foot to foot. “I’m not mad at you.” I smile sheepishly. “It got awkward with Taylor, and it was either fight or flight.” I wink at him, trying to make it a joke so I don’t have to give him all the gory details or talk about where we’re headed and why.

“You and Zo really know how to pick douchewads,” he says, chuckling, as Zoey stomps from the hallway.

She rolls her eyes and purrs, “And you pick such lovely young ladies, don’t you, Caleb? Didn’t your last girlfriend drop out of school after screwing a professor and posting the pics on her photography blog while she was dating you?”

She nails us both with critical stares and then walks out of the house without another word. “So if you’re not pissed, where are you guys going and why wasn’t I invited?” I catch an undercurrent of hurt or suspicion in his breezy tone. “Zoey isn’t in a sharing mood,” he adds.

I hang in the doorway. I’ve never been more grateful for Zoey’s gripe with Caleb. I don’t like lying to him, but it’s an unpleasant necessity. “I’ve been hanging out with Sam Worth.” I say it like I’m telling a scandalous secret—how I would have whispered it only a week ago. “We started talking the other night at the bonfire . . . before everything happened, obviously. And I don’t know . . .” I try to will on a blush. Make it convincing, Stella. “It just made me want to keep talking to him.” I wave vaguely. “It’s not going to turn into anything. I just want to see if Zoey can play nice.”

He snorts loudly. “Good luck with that.” He’s totally buying it.

“Yeah, I should really go supervise.” I walk backward, flashing an apologetic smile. “Text me tomorrow, ’kay?”

“You got it, Cambren.” The front door clicks shut as I spin around and jog down the gravel path.

Zoey is frozen halfway between the station wagon and the house. She’s staring daggers at Sam with her hands on her hips as she shouts, raspy-voiced and outraged, “What is he doing here?” Red-faced and shaking, she rushes to the car and flings the passenger door open, practically crawling into the car on her knees and stabbing her finger at Sam’s chest. “Why are you trying to ruin Stella’s senior year? Do you realize that she blew off Taylor Martinson for you? Taylor effing Martinson. Captain of the varsity lacrosse gods! Every girl at Wildwood would kill—literally kill—to hook up with him. And he wanted her.”

She pauses for the full weight of her words to sink in. Instead Sam cranes his neck, looks past her, and smiles at me. That slow smile he gave me when he offered me the corsage and after our first kiss and in the cemetery the night I shouted at him in front of Janey Bear. The one that says he knows something that no one else does. I can’t stop it; I smile back.

Zoey ducks out of the car and looks around hurriedly, like it’s just occurred to her that someone might see her in the throes of an argument with a peasant. She smooths her tank top, straightens her miniskirt, and tucks her pixie hair behind her ears. Satisfied that there’s no one around but her obese neighbor rocking on her porch swing, Zoey looks back to me. I give her a helpless shrug. Her jaw drops.

“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” she says. “You like him.”

I cover my mouth to hide that I’m still smiling. “Zo, please come with us. I need you.”

“What gives, Stella? I’m your best friend forever.” She waves her palm at me furiously, showing off the hardly there scar from where we pricked our hands with tweezers to be blood sisters in middle school. She backtracks until she’s right in front of me and holds me by my shoulders. “How did this happen?” she whispers like I’ve contracted some rare and tropical disease. Sam strains his neck to hear.

“I don’t like him,” I whisper back. I’m unnerved by how feeble it sounds.