The Body of Christopher Creed

  "Does this look like a woman on a mission?" Ali asked.

  "Yeah..." I breathed. "It's not like she even looks sad. Just ... determined or focused or something."

  "Diabolical," Ali added, and I couldn't argue with that one.

  I watched Mrs. Creed take a few books off the shelf and rattle through the pages. We sat there for about twenty minutes more, our eyes going back and forth from Mrs. Creed to Mr. Creed, who had not moved from his chair downstairs. I was starting to get a little bored, but it was hard to be completely bored, because Mrs. Creed was being such a fanatic with this search. She had the whole top half of the closet on the bed and was starting to fold things and put them away again.

  At that point a strange noise from overhead caused me to look up. It sounded like somebody was moving bedroom furniture around, dragging heavy things across the floor. Ali looked up and sighed, cursing under her breath.

  "Whatever noises you hear tonight, just remember, I did not cause them. I have nothing to do with them, okay?" she muttered.

  "Yeah, sure." I listened some more—I mean, you couldn't help it—and I suddenly realized there was some rhythm to it. Then it struck me what it was. I thought of conversations I'd had in school with some of my friends who had actually caught their parents. Mostly they were completely grossed out. You don't want to catch your parents. But all this banging around was so loud it was ridiculous.

  "He screams at the end," Ali said. "Just ... thought I'd warn you."

  Oh my god, I thought. I was, like, dying for her. "Maybe if you laid a broad hint on your mom when he's not around—"

  "Oh, you don't understand." She shook her head hard. "They're doing this because he enjoys the fact that other people can hear him. It doesn't matter to him that it's two kids. Maybe that's part of it."

  I just stared at her. "You're not serious."

  "Oh yeah. When my mom's not around, he's asked me if I enjoy the sound effects."

  I know my jaw was bobbing. I had no clue what to say to her.

  "My mom, she's, like, asleep on her feet. I've said something right to her face, and she denies flat-out that they make any noise at all. She's had a lot of boyfriends over the years. That's why my dad finally left."

  "Oh." I was in shock. I never had any clue that Ali's mom was cheating at all, let alone doing it with lots of men. I wondered why Ali was pulling the same tricks, if she thought her mom was so awful.

  "See why I say I'm not like you?" she asked me. A match lit, and I could see her eyes looking at me from behind a cigarette. "You know anybody else in your entire life who has to endure anything like this?"

  I was starting to realize why Ali felt the need to find new friends. Ryan and Renee were fun, but they were kind of naive. Stuff like this didn't happen in any of our houses. I tried not to stare at the ceiling, but I had this totally helpless feeling there was nothing I could do for her. It made sense why she wanted to go outside. Couldn't hear if from out there.

  "I think—I'll bet this is abuse," I finally managed. "You could tell the police. He's not molesting you, but he's, like ... using you. Gross."

  "I can't," Ali said, shaking her head. "I could never tell this to Chief Bowen."

  "Are you—You're scared it would get all over school?" I was thinking of Ryan and Renee.

  She shrugged, then nodded like she wasn't really hearing me. It was hard to hear anything but that stupid banging. But one noise did come through—another door closing from downstairs. We could barely hear it, so they obviously didn't hear it.

  "Oh my god," Ali said, standing up. "It's my boyfriend. How the hell am I going to explain this?"

  She let out a sob, and I pulled the cigarette from her hand, scared she would drop it. I could heat heavy steps on the stairs, around the noise from the top floor. I kept thinking they would hear these footsteps and stop their racket. But they didn't. Finally the bedroom door swung open. My heart was in my throat for her. I was half expecting to see Creed. The light switch clicked on, and I think my jaw dropped onto the bed as I stared. The last person I was expecting to see was Bo Richardson.

  His eyes were as big and black as usual, but out of his mouth came a mild, "Hey."

  He looked all concerned at Ali but didn't even seem to notice me. I looked down and saw the tip of a knife handle sticking out of his belt. He was wearing a white T-shirt, cut off at the waist, and a huge jean jacket, and a bandanna around his neck. He looked big and kind of dangerous. I heard Ali sniff and turned to see her attempting a grin.

  "Welcome to my house," she sputtered.

  His eyes shot up to the noise, and then back down again. He didn't even blink. "This is the thing? The thing your mom does that you were afraid to tell me?"

  She nodded, sniffing again.

  I figured, him being a boon, that stuff like this went on in his neighborhood all the time. I guessed a minute later that I was way wrong. He turned and left the room, and I heard him clomping up the stairs. I shut my eyes as Ali dived her head into my lap. I could not believe this couple was up there doing the nasty, banging off the walls, and Bo Richardson was climbing the stairs like taking them on was nothing.

  The banging stopped. I heard Mrs. McDermott scream and the man's voice holler.

  Then Bo's voice. "Hey, shut up ... Don't give a shit ... I'll throw you out the window, asshole..."

  The man said something in a lower voice and Bo broke him off. "You ain't calling the cops, you pervert. You're gonna be quiet or get the fuck out ... And you—you got kids..."

  Mrs. McDermott said something short I couldn't hear, then he cut her off, too.

  "Wake up and smell the coffee, woman ... Don't want to hear it ... You got kids. Now, be thinking of your kids, or I'm calling the cops on you. You got it?...Hey, tell your troubles to Jesus, Mrs. McDermott ... Don't want to hear one more peep out of this room. Just ... be cool."

  The door slammed. Bo's footsteps came back down the stairs, and Ali shot up out of my lap. I heaved a sigh, hearing him knock on her little brother's door.

  "Greg, my bro. How are you, my man?" I heard Greg say something soft and run across the floor. Bo came back into the room with the kid on his back, piggyback-style. I sat on the corner of the bed farthest away from them, wondering if I should leave. I wanted to, but I didn't want to. I watched Bo spin Greg around front so he was holding him monkey-style, wondering why I didn't have the nerve to trudge up those stairs and do what he just did. Probably because I never heard the nasty before, not outside a movie. Upstairs was so deadly quiet all of a sudden, I wanted to laugh.

  Bo sat down beside Ali, sort of slap-wrestling Greg with one hand. He threw an arm around her back.

  "He's a pervert, okay, Ali?" he said. "You want me to get rid of him? I'll go back up there right now if you—"

  "No, there'll just be somebody else next week. One of them's gonna decide they enjoy doing something worse. That's what I keep thinking—"

  "Hey. Somebody lays a hand on you two over my dead body. You got that?" He quit play-slapping Greg. "Greg, be a good man and go to bed. I need to talk to Ali, okay?"

  Greg put his feet on the floor. "Last time you came over, you said this time you would take me out for baseball cards."

  "Yeah, well ... Saturday, okay? I promise, cross my heart. Baseball store is closed now."

  "It's only eight," he argued.

  "Go to bed, Greg," Ali begged.

  He left, muttering, "Saturday. You promised."

  Bo watched Ali, letting out a sigh, and then his eyes turned to me. He stared at me, and I stared back, trying a slight grin that didn't really work.

  "What're you doing, Adams? Getting an education?"

  I decided to be truthful. "Yeah."

  He laughed and pulled the cigarette out of my hand, and I realized I'd been holding it since before Ali dived her head into my lap. He took a huge drag off it, and then Ali took it from him. Her hands were shaking still. He just stroked her back some and watched her.

  "Shit, my old lady's
been married four times. I got five younger brothers and two younger sisters. Five different dads." He laughed. "If you knew some of the shit I been through trying to keep my place from turning into an insanity fest ... My old lady never pulled this one. But she'll go off to the grocery store and show up five days later. Come on, babe. Be cool. 'S okay now."

  She took a deep breath and actually quit crying. There was a long silence, and he rubbed her arm and kept kissing her head. I guessed she was lucky to have him, funny as it seemed. Because none of us would have had the first clue what to do about her mom and Albert.

  He jerked his head at me. "You tell Adams about us?"

  She shook her head, blowing a stream of smoke out. "But he knew you were coming and all. He's cool."

  She was saying I was cool, but I guess he could tell I was surprised by the look on my face.

  I tried a shrug. I had already decided I wouldn't have a problem if Ali was with a boon. I stared back as he looked me dead in the eye for an eternity. Finally he muttered, "Yeah, I guess maybe you are cool. God knows why. But you gotta keep 'us' to yourself, okay?"

  He kissed her on the side of the head one last time. "She's been going through a heap of shit around here. She don't need any more from school, okay?"

  "Yeah. Fine." I watched him, thinking, He's so old. He's so mature. I mean, for all the stuff he got in trouble for around school, you would never think he had this big side, this side that was unselfish enough to think of Ali. I felt young in the room with them, like they could almost babysit me. It was a stupid thought, and to break out of the silence, I said something. "This is stupid, but I thought you might be Creed. All I knew was her boyfriend was coming, and she's been acting all mysterious and—"

  They both cracked up, not like they were laughing at me or at Chris but like it struck them as funny.

  "No, no," Ali said. "Cross my heart. I have no idea where that little bugger is. I wish I did."

  "I've hit him before," Bo said. "I've hit him hard a couple times before. He just could get so far up your ass ... coming up to me all, 'Bo! Guess what?' Blah blah blah. Like I hadn't just beat the shit out of him three weeks ago. Guy's got a memory problem."

  I laughed. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  "It's not like I ever thought he'd pull a stunt like this." Bo shook his head. "But if he shows up next week? I am really, really gonna hit him for scaring everybody half to death."

  "Shook you guys up, too, huh?" I asked, meaning him and the other boons.

  He laughed, like I was stupid. "Shook us up? Them ain't the words. We're pissing ourselves in the Barrens, because—you mark my words—if Creed don't show up soon, one of us is gonna hang."

  "They'll blame you?" I asked innocently, but I couldn't help remembering Leandra prattling on at the lunch table about them being killers. And Mrs. Creed had supposedly been saying that, too.

  "Yeah. They'll find some way to blame one of us. I hear Mrs. Creed already started on that. She don't want to admit her part in it. Either she drove him to it or she outright did it. Look at her. She's in there trying to find the evidence that will hang her, so she can burn it before the cops find it. Then she can waste one of us. It'll probably be me."

  "Don't even say that," Ali begged, and I started getting all churned up for her.

  "How could they pin it on you?" I asked. "I mean, they need evidence or something."

  "No, they don't." He smirked. "They'll find a way. I ain't that smart to guess on how. But I have a pretty good idea."

  I watched him, waiting for him to say more. He just kept watching Ali, who looked all worried. Finally I broke my stare and looked over to see Mrs. Creed putting one last sweater on top of the shelf. The closet looked as neat as an army barracks locker.

  "Guess she didn't find it, Torey," Ali said, as Mrs. Creed put out the overhead, leaving just the little lamp on. She shut the door on her way out. "God. She doesn't even look upset. Just ... focused. She'll find it tomorrow night. Yeah. Miss Methodical. She's coming around to that wall in her military search."

  "She didn't find the diary?" Bo muttered, and Ali nodded. They must have had a few conversations about this before, I gathered, by the knowing sound in his voice.

  Bo started breathing sort of funny, sort of seething. The two of them were staring out the window, and I could see so much fire in their faces. Their own moms were such a problem, I didn't guess they would even bat an eye to imagine Mrs. Creed as a murderer. All of a sudden, I didn't know what to think. I never would have thought of Mrs. Creed as a murderer, but I never would have thought of Mrs. McDermott as a turbo slut. And I never would have thought of Bo Richardson as a courageous person.

  Bo started yanking off his shoes. They were big work boots, and he shook the whole bed, pulling them off. Then he took off his jean jacket. I thought he was just making himself comfy.

  "Piece of cake," he muttered, never taking his eyes off the Creeds' house.

  "Bo, don't!" Ali tried to grab his arm, but he shook it off easily.

  "Who do you want to have that diary, babe? Her? Or us?"

  "Oh my god," Ali said, putting her face in her hands as he charged out the door.

  Something inside of me went off. I charged over her and went flying out the door behind him. I knew I didn't want to feel like a helpless little kid for the second time that night.

  Nine

  I didn't know what his plan was, and I was scared he didn't have one. I didn't want him to go shuffling up the drainpipe or something, with Mrs. Creed right in the next room. I grabbed his elbow as he got to Ali's curb and said, "Hold up."

  He huffed a little, and I did, too. I was also shaking, even though I had my coat on and he didn't. He didn't even have shoes on. He stood there dancing a little in his socks.

  "You got a plan?" I asked him.

  "No. I just got guts." He laughed but didn't take off again. He stood there on the curb, staring at the Creeds' house.

  "Okay, we've got to have a plan," I said.

  After I stood there in stunned silence for a minute or two, he said, "Well?"

  I was clueless. "You ever do a break-in before?"

  "Yeah. Lots of times."

  "So, how do you do it?" I wondered why he was waiting for me to think it up, knowing I was all wet.

  "Usually we wait until dark and get all drunk. And then we just try it. I probably broke into twenty places. After a while I just stopped doing it. Last year, probably."

  "How come?" I asked.

  "Because I always got caught." He kept laughing.

  "Always?"

  "Always. I had bad luck. Once, it was a trailer and the windows were real small. I got stuck on the way in. Cops had to wedge me out with a crowbar before they could charge me."

  I looked at him with my jaw hanging. "Seems like if you tried it twenty times, you would get a little bit good at it."

  He shrugged. "Maybe I didn't really want the stuff. Maybe I was just trying to raise some hell. Make some kind of a point. I don't know. All I know is I didn't want that stuff as bad as I want this diary, or whatever it is."

  "Why do you want this so bad?" I hunted for something that made sense behind this insane-looking determination of his. He pulled a cigarette out of his jean jacket pocket and lit it with a lighter. He inhaled really deep, then exhaled.

  "I got called into the principal's office on Thursday for cutting out at lunchtime. In my car. Proctor seen me."

  He took another drag on the cigarette. It was no secret that he tried to cut out at lunchtime every day in his car. Half the time the proctor didn't even bother writing him up anymore. It wasn't worth the slip, because Bo never learned his lesson.

  "Anyway, I was in there after school when Ames made the first call about Creed to the cop station. I could hear him from his inner office. He said, 'I have this e-mail here. Could be a runaway, could be a suicide. I need you to come down here.' Of course, my ears perked up. Suicide? This could be way interesting. Then I hear him tell Chief Bowen it
was sent from the library. I stick around long enough to realize Ames is, like, hanging by his balls over this, and he ain't gonna even remember to give me no detention, okay?? Next morning, me and Ali sneak up to the library. There was nobody too interested in the terminal yet, because they still figured he just ran off. But we were jumpy, looking up that note, because we were together and didn't want to get seen, start a lot of talk. We found it pretty quick, but instead of wasting time there reading it, we moved it onto a floppy and figured we would read it at Ali's later, which we did. After school we looked at the note at Ali's house. We closed the file, and she gives me the disk, god knows why. It was just one of those things. I took it. Stuck it in my locker the other day with this other pile of shit from my car."

  He flicked the cigarette and stared across to the house next to Creed's. I looked where he was looking and thought I saw a curtain flicker but didn't focus on it. This story was too interesting.

  "Mrs. Creed had started in that it was some boon, and they killed her kid in the Pine Barrens," he went on. "I don't know why—probably because I messed Creed up so bad last year with that bleachers thing—but Ames broke down, hauled me into his office yesterday and asked me where I was Thursday after school. I mean, for the first half hour after school, I was sitting in his office watching him sweat bullets. He wanted to know where I was before that. I actually had gone to class for once, so that was good. Alibi. Then the cops want to know where I was after that. I was laughing at them, you know, "After that? Ames already had the good-bye note after that.' But since there's no body, there's no saying when he died. I was all, 'Shit, man, what do you think? I holed him up in my trunk, alive, then sent an e-mail from the library? Then went to get my detention slip, then went back and finished him off?' Does that make sense, Adams?"

  "No." I laughed, feeling nervous. Seemed like the cops were really reaching.