The Creeping

I throw my hands up in exasperation, opening my mouth to argue, tongue tingling to howl and fight. His sensible explanations are wrong. He snaps his radio off his belt and speaks into it. His words swim in my head. “Let the judge know that Kent Talcott is ready for sentencing . . . . Bring Zoey Walsh . . . . Yeah, the spirited girl throwing a fit out there . . . No, don’t cuff her . . . . Thanks.”


He returns the radio to his belt. “You and Zoey are going to leave out the back door to avoid the press. I’m going to figure out a way to smooth over what you said about remembering. I’ll call your father, and we’ll figure out a way to spin it so it’s forgotten.”

He waits for a response that never comes.

He tries to pat me on the back as he rises, but I push his hand away. “You’re going to enjoy the rest of your summer and your last year of high school. You are going to move on from all this. Do you understand, Stella? It’s over.” His fist pounds his palm, like if he asserts it with enough force he can make it so.

The room revolves slowly. Everything is muddled. Jeanie’s dad confessed. Daniel believes he did it. Jeanie’s case is closed. Shane doesn’t believe me. But I know. I know there’s something just under the surface of all this, watching me with alligator eyes, hungry for little girls, leering through the water’s skin, but I can’t find it because my reflection keeps getting in the way.

Zoey gets to the office, and Shane fills her in. Her face is unreadable, even to me; I’m too bogged down in my own head. She takes my hand and leads me through the door, down a dimly lit hallway. Before we turn a corner, I call back to Shane, “Ask Jeanie’s dad where he learned to French braid.”

It’s probably my imagination, but I think I hear him swear.





Chapter Twenty-Two


Back in Zoey’s car, we don’t talk for a long time. She sends a few texts on her phone and holds up a response from Michaela for me to read.

Meet @ S’s in 30 w/backup.

Zoey steers toward my house. The unmarked cop cars are gone by the time we arrive, my bodyguards dismissed because according to the police, the killer has been caught. Moscow greets us, meowing as an angry sentinel at the front door, and Zoey delivers us both to the couch. She bumps around the kitchen for a minute, returning with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and two spoons.

I shovel up a bite with a large chunk of chocolate, but even that doesn’t banish the sinking sensation in my stomach.

After a while Zoey lisps with a slightly numb tongue, “I made you choose because I knew you loved each other. We were only ten, and his whole face would explode with light when he looked at you. I knew you loved him back. And that I’d be the third wheel. It wasn’t about being popular.” She spoons up a giant red cherry and chomps down on it. “I thought you’d get over him. There are so many hotter guys. But it was like we were living freshman homecoming on an endless loop.” She shrugs, licking her spoon.

“What do you mean?”

“Sam and that corsage. You sent him away, everyone laughed, and you looked like a puppy run over by a car the whole night. That’s what it was like every time you rejected him. It was painful to watch. And out of all the guys you’ve messed around with or flirted with or gone out with, you haven’t wanted any half as much as you wanted Sam when you were ten. I may be mean, but I’m not stupid or blind. Apparently you were.” She stares at me, her eyes growing wet. “I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I figured you knew.”

“No, I didn’t,” I say. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re right. I chose. Over and over again.” It’s true. I was stupid. I was embarrassed by how Sam acted like every little thing we’d shared as kids was so important. I didn’t see that that’s what makes Sam important. He understands that things matter. “I didn’t think you remembered the corsage.”

“I’m not the one with amnesia,” Zoey deadpans. She looks down at her hands. “I think about it a lot.” She doesn’t sound remorseful exactly, just thoughtful.

I want to ask if what she did to the trio of junior girls from the dance—systemically taking their boyfriends and relegating them to the lower castes at school—was her version of reaping revenge on my behalf. Yes, popularity is a zero-sum game to Zoey. Yes, bringing down girls who claim it for themselves makes her glow like she has radiation poisoning. But she has a code of honor and rarely goes after other girls’ boyfriends—that’s for leeches and barnacles, as she would say. Those girls we were so eager to impress were served particularly cruel social executions by Zoey. And if we hadn’t been with them at the dance, she would have done little more than rolled her eyes at Sam and we would have had no audience to prove ourselves in front of. I don’t ask, though; she would have told me if she wanted me to know.

Zoey acts engrossed in shoveling through the pint, mining for cherries. “How was it? Messing around with a guy who isn’t just drooling over your snowballs but who actually gives a shit?”

It makes me sad to hear how sad she sounds asking me. “I love you, Zo.”