The Body of Christopher Creed (23 page)

"Fine," I said, stretching and yawning. "But forget the old burial ground where we used to play as kids. We're not walking in there, okay?"

"Whatever. What's up with the burial ground?"

I hesitated for a minute, then figured he needed some comic relief from whatever was bugging him. "Some psychic told me last night that I would find Creed's body in there. I already looked. It's not in there. But hey, guess what I did find? Remember that time you punched him out over that stupid treasure map? I think I found the treasure map."

"You looked in there for Creed's body?" he asked in amazement. It didn't sound like he was the least bit interested in the old map.

"Yeah. It's not in there."

I could hear him breathing, and he finally said, "You goddamn well better hope you looked hard enough."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Just meet me at seven. Behind your house. I have to go, Renee's coming."

I could hear him say, "Hey, babe," just before the phone clicked. I stared at the receiver, feeling disgusted enough to let my head fall back down on the couch. He was just as scared of her as all the people she mouthed off to. What a wuss. He was afraid to let Renee know he was talking to me. I figured I'd straighten him out at seven.

I met him back behind the fence, and he said, "Bring a flashlight. It's getting dark. I don't want to stumble into that burial ground with you and discover Creed's body."

I went in the garage and brought out a flashlight, getting irritated.

"Jesus, Alex," I said as we took off on a trail in the opposite direction from the burial ground. "I thought you'd be all, 'Oh my god, let's go find the body!'"

"Well, maybe I was, but now I'm not. I'm with you. It's not funny anymore."

"Yeah, I guess you heard about Chief Bowen."

"Renee says he told her mom the whole truth, like, the
whole
truth. He really had been with Mrs. McDermott, and a few other ladies, and it had been going on a long time. And he's moving out. He resigned after beating up Bo. But especially after beating him up, I guess he was even more afraid Bo would spew it all over town. He wanted Mrs. Bowen to hear the truth from him, and not from somebody else."

"'He's moving out'?" I repeated, trying to get a sense of reality about this. Mr. McDermott had moved out on Mrs. McDermott last year, and it had hardly been more than a shrug to me. This was personal. It was hard to think that me and Bo and Ali had the power to erase a twenty-year marriage.

"Oh my god," I muttered.

"Yeah, it's ugly—" A cell phone went off in his pocket and he sighed, pulling it out and staring at it. "Renee's all a basket case. She wanted to be with me, and I could see that, but I just had to talk to you. The only way I could get away to talk to you was to promise I would take her cell phone, so she could call me anytime."

"Does she know you're with me?" I asked, as he stared at the ringing phone.

"No way. Hello?"

He started jogging in place. Lifting his legs so high that you could hear sticks cracking when his feet crunched the earth. He was breathing like he had been running. "In about an hour. I want to do five miles, okay? I gotta get in shape. Basketball practice Starts in two—"

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, half an hour ... I know. I'm sorry ... Well, you can wig out on me at my house when I get there, okay?"

He was actually managing to get himself a little out of breath. He hung up.

"Alex, do you have to lie about being with me?" I asked. "Are you that scared of her?"

"Right now? She could scare Frankenstein," he said. "She is far scarier than normal."

"I thought you really liked her."

"Well, put it this way. I like her when she's not being maniacal. I like her fun side. Which is more and more sporadic these days, and that's actually why I'm bothering you," he rambled. "I mean, I'm still really pissed at you. Dissing your friends and girlfriend for Ali McDermott and Bo Richardson is totally weird, bro. But Renee's got it in for you. You are in deep shit. I might be pissed, but that doesn't mean I want to see you go to jail."

My head jerked around so fast it hurt my neck. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember our fight in front of Wawa three nights back?"

I nodded.

"Do you remember Bo Richardson saying he shot Chris Creed in the woods?"

I stood there confused. At first I muttered, "He never said that."

Then I vaguely remembered Bo making a joke. Right before he spilled the beans about Chief Bowen.

"
How did we do it, Adams
?"

"
We took a gun and shot him?
"

"
Oh, that's right! I forgot! I took a gun and shot him and left him for dead in the woods.
"

"He was joking," I muttered, but Alex was blabbering nervously.

"Bo asked you how
'we'
did it, to which
you
responded something like,
'We shot him.'
Meaning, the two of you shot Chris Creed in the woods."

I shook my head like a dog, trying to get a straight thought.

"He ... was joking," I stammered. "Well, we don't think he was."

I watched him, watched his eyes, waiting for them to laugh. They didn't. "You think ... Bo Richardson and I ... shot Creed in the woods..."

I sounded like I was down a tunnel, trying to shout but didn't have the air.

"No.
I
don't think that. Renee thinks that.
7
think Richardson
told
you that
he
shot Creed in the woods. And that you just knew about it. After the fact—"

I got a fire in my gut that I thought would explode. I shoved him totally hard. I watched in awe as he stumbled backwards. "It was a joke, Alex! I thought it up out of my own head! I was thinking of the Digger Haines thing, where his dad supposedly took a gun into the woods ... something ... I don't know! Bo jokingly asked me how we did it, and I just spewed out the first thought that came into my head!"

Alex looked totally confused, like he'd had this pat little theory going and I had foiled it, but he still didn't want to give it up. His mouth was moving in a panic, and his lips were all shaky.

"Well, Renee was right there in front of him, and she thinks he was dead serious. I'm just concerned about you. I need to know. Did he tell you this beforehand? And did you think he was joking? Because if you thought he was joking, then you're not an accessory to—"

I hauled off and slapped him, sending him flying into a tree. "You guys are not stupid! You
know
that was a joke! What the hell are you guys trying to pull?"

Alex screamed in my face, "Richardson wasn't joking about the second thing he popped out with—about Chief Bowen and Mrs. McDermott! So we don't think he was joking about the first thing, either! I'm just trying to save your ass! You've got to tell me that Richardson merely told you, and you thought he was joking—"

That stupid cell phone went off again. I stared at it, in awe of this girl's superhuman nerve. I tried to talk louder than it.

"Damn it, Alex! I'm telling you, I thought of the thing about shooting Creed off the top of my head!"

"No, no, no," he muttered around that ringing. I thought of Mrs. Creed in the cafeteria. "No, no, no ... Christopher did not write that note..." He stared at the ground. He couldn't look at me. I wanted to put his head through a tree.

"Why can't you believe me?" I shoved him again. "What, does it destroy your whole version of reality, Alex? Let me tell you reality! Renee is pissed that Bo spewed about her dad's sex life! She's pissed at me for standing up for him! Maybe she can't admit the truth to herself, but she just wants revenge! She knows a goddamn joke when she hears one!"

"No, no, no," he just kept saying.

"Well, guess what? You're in as big a state of denial as Creed ever was!"

"I'm just trying to help you!" he hollered back. "Renee just told the cops that Bo confessed to her. She told them I heard it, too! I'm just trying to save you from—"

I thought if that phone rang one more time I would go insane.

"Goddamn it!" Alex yelled. He punched the line all wide-eyed and confused, and said, "Hello?"

"Give me that thing!" I snatched it from him, despite him hollering, "No—"

"Renee, what the hell are you trying to pull? You are so goddamn selfish, why don't you wake up?"

"What are you doing there?" She recognized my voice somehow, though I don't think I ever screamed at her before.

"I'm here. Why don't you drag your ass over here and say your stupid lies to my face? You know that was a joke, that thing Bo said!"

"It was not a joke." Her voice cracked, and for once she didn't have any attacks. She just let the silence hang, and I could hear sniffing and crying.

I was glad. "Go ahead and cry. It's your guilt making you cry, you lying sack of—"

She blasted out a string of what I could do to myself. "You can go to hell! I'm telling the cops you knew! I'm telling them Richardson confessed to us, and Alex heard it, and we both heard you, too! Now get out of my life!"

"You—" I was going to tell her she would never pass off a lie like that, but she had hung up. I watched Alex stare at me all terrified, and it struck me like an oncoming train that maybe she could pull off a lie like that. If she could confuse Alex, who had known me since forever, she could confuse other people.

"I don't know what to believe," he said. His voice was cracking like he might cry. "I almost believe you, okay? But what ate you doing now, talking about some psychic saying Creed is buried in the woods? It sounds really fishy, Torey."

"What do you mean?"

"It sounds to me like you're warming up some cock-and-bull story so you can get the body found. Maybe because you know where the body is, and it's bothering your conscience too bad, and you want to get it found without it looking bad for you and Richardson."

"Oh, go to hell!" I screamed. "You're insane!"

He stormed off down the trail, leaving me heaving rocks and sticks after him Until a fire lit up in my shoulder socket. I flung myself down on the ground and bawled my eyes out.

I wondered if I could go to jail. Even if I didn't, I knew I might live with that question mark hanging over my head in other people's eyes forever.
Was Adams involved? Since there's no body, no evidence, how will we ever know for sure he wasn't?
I stood up. I didn't even realize where I was going until I looked down at the flashlight in my hand and saw that I had turned it on.

I think half of it was a rational thought. If Chris Creed's body was found, just maybe there would be a huge suicide note in his pocket in his own handwriting. Or maybe whatever he used to kill himself had his fingerprints all over it. Or maybe a time of death could be determined, and if Bo and I were both covered at that time ... maybe, maybe, maybe. The psychic said I would be alone. Well, I was alone.

I didn't understand
how a dead body could appear at a spot where it had not been earlier. I don't think I understood anything, except that I was more scared of living people than dead people. I needed dead people to help me fight living people.

The back of my house shone in front of me, almost like a cartoon drawing, something that wasn't real. It's like the whole world wasn't real, except those three rocks. I cut across a few yards of woods until I was running up the trail to the burial ground. The psychic's voice was banging in my head like some tape I couldn't stop ... "
You will find him shot through the head on a primitive grave ... marked with three large rocks ... He's ready. He will be seen now. Just remember ... Be very careful about your actions. A person's liberty is at stake...
"

I stopped.

The same trail that Ali and I took so easily in daylight lay in front of me, dense with shadows, nearly black. I stood huffing.
Not Bo's liberty. It was
my
liberty she was talking about...

"Oh my god," I muttered, and new questions choked me up.
How will it look if I find the body after everything Alex just said? He thinks I know where the body is. How will it look if I say, "A psychic led me to this place"? People will think I'm lying. I'll wind up in jail if I find that body...

I mushed tears off my eyes so I could see my way home. I turned slowly around to go back. The eyes that met mine sucked me into a hypnotic return stare. Brown eyes that burned some fire of emotions while not being threatening ... begging me for something. I watched in stunned fascination as the Indian moved past me down the trail, then stopped and stared at me again. He carried the same bow and wore the same feathers in his Mohawk as when I'd seen him when I was seven. But he wasn't aiming at me with that bow ... he was beckoning me with it.

I shut my eyes.
Torey, you are messed up; you're losing it; you know it because you're seeing things again like a seven-year-old.
When I opened my eyes they were so filled up I could see only a blur ahead, but a black silhouette seemed to disappear into the burial ground.
Oh Christ, you really are losing it
... I wiped my eyes and could hear a bunch of gasps and chokes, and I realized it was me, choking on hypocrites and selfish people and lies.

I kept moving toward that burial ground because it was the only real place in the world. Everything else was a vapor. I turned off the path in a trance, half expecting to see the Indian on the rocks. I saw only darkness and the outline of the rocks in black. I could hardly feel my legs moving. It seemed more like the rocks were floating toward me. The sad sound of crickets rose to a moan as those rocks got closer and closer.

Three huge rocks floated up to me. When they were so close I could have kicked one, I raised the flashlight with a wrist that shook like it was broken.

The light beamed slowly across the rocks in shaky flashes. Shaky but sure. Flat, smooth, shining. There was nothing to break the air except an orange beam across flat, smooth rock. I stood there, shining the beam, waiting for I-don't-know-what—a ghost to appear, Creed to fall from the sky. The longer I waited the more tense I got, the more irritating those crickets sounded.