Bad Creek, page 11
“I figured you’d be mad,” she’d said after the confession. When he’d told her that he wasn’t, she hadn’t believed him. She’d always known what he was thinking.
* * *
Aidan’s milkshake was starting to melt. He took the cherry off when no one was looking and tossed it on the floor.
Gum continued to draw on the back of the children’s menu. It was the same coloring page since they had been born. He usually used it to play hangman or draw genitalia. But now Gum sketched the carving from the dead tree: a double cross with two crescent moons jutting out the sides.
Iris snatched the crayon from him. “Whoa, what are you doing?” she whispered. “We still don’t know what that means.”
“I feel like I’ve seen it before,” Gum said. “It’s been driving me nuts.”
“It could be for witchcraft. Aidan? What do you think?”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “I think you’ve seen too many horror movies.”
“Yeah. Because of you. I wasted two hours of my life watching Turtlegeddon.”
“Apparently the original from the seventies was scary,” Aidan explained for the millionth time. “I didn’t realize the one my dad had on DVD was the remake.”
“What about the stuff in the jewelry box?” Iris insisted. “The brush? The Bible? It was, like, personal stuff, don’t you think? That could be used for some kind of spell. Maybe we should ask Paul if he recognizes the symbol.”
Nothing about Paul’s movie was real, despite what behind-the-scenes rumors implied. The Ouija board that was used to summon the well monster didn’t mysteriously move on its own. An assistant lost it. The lead actor didn’t wake up to a pentagram burning on his chest. He just found out that he was allergic to liquid latex the hard way. Paul claimed he had done years of research before creating his famous monster, but that probably wasn’t true either. Given that he never wrote another original script, he likely stole the story for It Runs Below from one of his friends in film school.
Laughter erupted from the adults’ booth behind them.
“Did he ever get the boxers back?” April asked, snorting.
Joanna looked at Paul to confirm. “I think Mr. Hacknee threw them in the creek?”
April leaned in. “What about the flag?”
“Bought a new one, of course,” Paul said.
“And we stole that too,” Joanna squealed.
Paul coughed up his milkshake, pounding the table as he tried to recover from his laughing fit.
Aidan knew this story. The Hacknees’ grandpa used to park his big-ass truck in front of Cabin 10. He was a racist, a homophobe, and a total asshole. He always flew this gigantic Confederate flag off the side of his truck. The Disasters 1.0 stole it and flew Bruce’s underwear instead.
Aidan couldn’t imagine his father doing something that brave now.
Iris dug around her backpack for spare quarters. This was the part where Iris and Gum argued about which Billy Joel songs to play on the jukebox. They crossed the red-and-white-checkered floor to the far side of the restaurant where the Wurlitzer sat in the corner. Aidan was supposed to go along too, but before he could follow, April spun around in her seat and looked at him. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said once her daughter was out of earshot. “Really. She needs you guys. You know that, right?”
She can survive without me.
But what would she uncover without him?
Would she even look into Hudson or would she stay chasing ghosts?
“Uh, yeah.”
Aidan peeled away from the booth. He couldn’t stand the broken spring or Joanna and April smiling lovingly at him like he was some kind of savior.
As if he weren’t part of the reason that Glory was dead.
He was pretty sure he hadn’t laid his hands on her, but he hadn’t helped her either. He remembered the smell in the Jeep when he’d come to the next morning. He was drenched in the same lake that killed her. He didn’t even know how he got home. He must have driven back to Wahbee, drunk and cowardly.
Could new memories justify that? Maybe not. He’d been afraid to learn the truth, but now that there was a chance of partial redemption, he had to know. Then he could leave it all behind once and for all.
When Aidan got to the jukebox, Iris was still parsing through the song selection. “I think we need to find out who that girl in the photo is,” she said.
Gum gave Aidan a nervous glance, and Aidan forcefully shook his head. Gum chewed on the frayed edges of his blue friendship bracelet, as if that were the only way to avoid saying something he shouldn’t.
Iris’s face was lit by the changing hues of the Wurlitzer, green to blue to purple. She stared at the song selection like it was a life-or-death choice. Guilt ate away at Aidan, but this was for Iris’s own good. She would be happier when she had someone to blame.
What if it’s you? A tiny voice whispered in Aidan’s head. What if you really are to blame?
“We’re getting off-track,” Aidan said. “Don’t you think Hudson was way less of dick than usual today?”
“Yeah,” Iris agreed. “He tried to talk to me yesterday too.”
“He skipped Mass,” Gum added. “And he wasn’t invited to my grandpa’s for archery.”
“Exactly. The Claveys might know.” It was coming together now. “What if it started as an accident and became a cover-up?” Aidan suggested.
“Did they do an autopsy?” Gum asked.
That last word stung. Autopsy. It was hard to think of Glory covered in a white sheet, in a cold room. Being cut open and sewn back up. His chest ached.
Iris looked at Gum like he’d just stabbed a puppy. “No.”
“Sorry, I—”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, though she still sounded wounded. “It’s a good question. It probably would have been the right idea, but no one wanted to believe it was anything other than an accident. I don’t think the cops even suggested it. But . . . you guys really think it might be Hudson? She drew eyes all over her sketchbook. The same ones, over and over again. I’m pretty sure they’re his.”
Aidan’s stomach did an Olympics-worthy backflip. He had to tell himself it was a good thing. Hudson’s guilt meant his own innocence. But jealousy wasn’t something that could be controlled with a leash. He felt it bite at him, sucking on his bone marrow.
Glory had drawn that house. And she had drawn him. Maybe Hudson had shown her that awful place. Aidan could envision it now. They giggled and twirled around the broken glass, and Hudson brushed her hair out of her eyes to lean in for a kiss. All the suave moves he used on every girl he ever wanted.
Joanna waved them over. “Pizza’s here!”
That put an end to discussing Hudson. For now. Iris selected today’s Billy Joel song and bounced across the checkered floor.
But before Aidan sat down to eat, he stopped at the adults’ booth. “I changed my mind,” he told his dad.
Paul smiled like he’d won the Parent of the Year award. “Knew you’d come around,” he said.
Yeah, Paul was never going to book the flight for tomorrow. But Aidan was staying out of necessity. They could play detective one last time. Gum could get insider info from the Claveys while Iris could make Hudson nervous. Garren girls were already his type.
If all of this was Hudson’s fault, maybe Aidan could sleep better. Maybe he could handle the rest of the week. Hell, maybe he could bear coming back next summer. The Disasters didn’t have to be besties anymore, but they could at least be a team. Three heads were better than one, right?
Unless the heads tried to eat each other.
Chapter 15 Iris
The scene almost looked normal.
After pizza, the three of them sat on the floor of her room in Cabin 4. Hours in the sun had deepened Aidan’s freckles. Gum was red all over. And Iris was left with the memory of hands squeezing her throat. Aidan flipped through Glory’s sketchbook, considering each page carefully. He barely touched the corners, as if it were an ancient holy document. Gum licked his fingers as he shuffled a deck of cards. He was bad at it. An ace went flying out.
If the bunk beds were still there, Iris could have pretended Glory was just at the beach with Savi or something. Instead, there was that hideous queen bed, too big for her faded quilt. And there were the things hidden under her floorboards. Iris took them out to study them again. The Bible, the hairbrush, the flower brooch. They had to belong to that girl. Hudson was the more viable suspect, but Iris couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever had happened to the girl in the photo was connected to Glory.
“You guys want to play war?” Gum offered.
“I’m good,” Iris said. Gum shrugged and turned to Aidan, who closed the sketchbook and held his hand out. He reshuffled the cards and dealt them.
Iris would have liked to play a mind-numbing card game, but she couldn’t relax. They only had until the Fourth of July to solve this, and that was already four days away.
She grabbed the Bible, which sported a faded pink cover. She checked for any highlighted passages, any bookmarks. Nope. Nothing.
The boys flipped over their cards. “Hey, Iris!” Gum said without looking away from the game. “Go to First Deuteronomy. Verse twenty-three.”
“Isn’t that the one about crushed balls?” Aidan said.
“Wait? How’d you know?”
“You tend to reuse material. You’re worse than my dad.”
“Whatever. It’s a classic.”
When Iris got to the end of the Bible, however, her heart sped up as she saw the inside flap. There was something written in a painstakingly perfect penmanship.
“Property of Helena Crawford,” Iris read out loud.
Gum glanced up. Aidan smacked his shoulder.
“What?” Iris asked. “Do you know that name?”
“No,” Gum answered—too quickly. He was an awful liar, and Aidan was clearly disappointed in him. How did they know something Iris didn’t?
“Crawford . . . like, Rex Crawford?” Iris guessed. Bad Creek didn’t have a huge population. They had to be related.
Neither of the boys answered. Gum bit his lip.
What was going on?
“Guys!” Iris snapped, trying to exert some of Glory’s authority. How were they already hiding things from her? How was everyone hiding things from her? Iris hated being the youngest. She was always last. The last to learn the swear words, to ride a bike, to swim in the deep end. She hated the knowledge that there was more out there but she wasn’t allowed to experience it yet.
Aidan shot Gum another warning glance, but it didn’t work. Gum crumbled. He spoke without breathing, like if he didn’t get it all out as soon as possible someone would hit him. “Okay, please don’t be mad, but according to the Richardsons she drowned in the lake in 1973 I guess it was a freak thing and no one ever figured out what happened and people don’t like to talk about it.”
Iris set the Bible down. Her head was spinning. “Wait, but—”
Gum interrupted her. “They said so after volleyball because Rex was acting sketchy, but Aidan thought—”
“We should be looking into Hudson,” Aidan finished. “There’s gotta be a way to prove he did something.”
“So you guys just weren’t gonna tell me?” Iris tried not to let the pain show, but it was obvious. She hated the way her voice slid up when she was upset. Her words sounded so pathetic. So whiny. But she wasn’t sad, she was pissed.
There was a beat of silence. Gum held his mouth open like he was going to protest, but he obviously realized there was nothing he could say. He’d been caught playing both sides. Again.
And Aidan had avoided her at the cookout. Iris thought he had come around, but here he was, pulling away. He didn’t trust her with her own emotions, and he must have convinced Gum not to either.
“We only have a few days left. We have to look into everything,” she said. “If this Helena girl drowned—”
“That makes three times,” Gum said.
Aidan shook his head. “Technically—”
“I knew it.” Iris looked at the objects scattered on the floor. The Bible. The pin. The hairbrush. The picture of the girl smiling. She looked so alive. Radiating with power. She was the kind of girl who hypnotized a room. “I think if we find out what happened to her, we find out what happen to Glory.”
“I agree,” Gum said. “I’m sorry. It was stupid not to say anything.”
Now wasn’t the time to hold grudges. She needed the boys more than ever. But every betrayal was another piece of her carved out and left to rot.
“There have gotta be records of her,” Iris said, trying to keep her voice even. If she sounded like she was about to cry, then that would just prove Aidan right. She needed them to know that she could be practical. That she wasn’t the crybaby little sister. “It can’t be a total mystery,” she continued. “Even if people want to forget, there’s gotta be something official, right? Old newspapers. An obituary. What if . . . what if we checked the library? It’s only four. It should still be open.”
She had gone through archives at her school’s library for a book report. If Bad Creek held on to its records, the library downtown would have them.
“Okay,” Gum agreed. Iris had a feeling he would agree to anything she suggested right now. But Aidan’s mood had soured. He collected the two stacks of cards, putting them neatly in the box. He stood, muttering something about walking his dad’s bulldog. But it was just an excuse to leave them.
* * *
Iris and Gum parked their bikes in front of the brick building. The public library was across from Dolly’s Fudge, so Gum had suggested they go halfsies on a bag of truffles afterward. But Iris wasn’t in a very chocolaty mood. Though it was nice that Gum didn’t abandon her, she knew it was self-inflicted punishment. He didn’t want to be here, and he was pretending for her sake.
A bell chimed when they walked inside. The place looked and smelled like any other library: charming, but a little sad. There was a single librarian at the help desk—a woman in her sixties with spiky white hair. She was plucking away at an outdated desktop computer. Iris approached the desk while Gum hung back.
“Hi,” Iris said to the librarian. “I was hoping you could help me with a research project.”
The old woman looked up. “What’s your name dear?”
“Iris Garren.”
“Ah.” She pushed up her square green glasses. “Is your mother Joanna Garren?”
“Yeah,”
“Oh yes, I remember her and her gang. They were all such little shits. I mean that in the best way.” Then she went back to typing, pressing hard on the chunky keyboard, with each click being more obnoxious than the last. “So sad, what happened here, though,” the librarian continued. Iris braced herself for the sympathy. “The Clavey girl . . .” False alarm. “I still see Bill from time to time, though. He hardly comes into town. Crazy they all keep coming back, after that mess.”
“Yeah.” Iris checked on Gum, who was still perusing the shelves. He was standing in the center of an aisle, reading an open book. Iris hoped he hadn’t heard what the librarian had said. He always got weird about people talking about his mom. Did Iris get weird when people talked about Glory? No, she made an effort not to. It was everyone else who tiptoed around her. They were the ones who decided she was delicate. They were so wrong. She’d prove them wrong.
“What was it you needed, hon?” the librarian asked.
“Um, newspapers. From 1973. Probably the summer?”
“We have local newspapers on microfilm.”
“That’s perfect! Thank you.”
The librarian led her away from the desk, which Gum took as his cue to follow. After digging out a few rolls of film from the set of beige drawers in the back, the librarian showed them how to load it into the viewing machine. Iris had used microfilm before, so she didn’t need a demonstration on how to focus the screen but she let the woman explain anyway, since she seemed excited to show the process.
Iris was grateful the librarian didn’t linger, though. Once she believed Iris had the hang of it, she returned to the desk. Iris then began scrolling through every page of the first newspaper, while Gum spun himself around in a swivel chair, playing on his phone. Iris didn’t see anything of interest, just news of a new gas station being put in. Black-and-white photos of a new plaque for the giant crucifix. She read through every obituary from June. All retirees, passing away peacefully in their beds. No mention of Helena Crawford.
“So, what are we looking for exactly?” Gum asked.
Iris loaded a new film roll. “The truth no one wants to talk about.”
Gum stopped spinning. “That’s real fucking ominous.”
“Did you know that, after the Salem witch trials, people tried to bury the story?” Iris said. “Everyone was so ashamed. It wasn’t till, like, a few hundred years after, when all the accusers and the convicted were dead, that people actually started talking about it.”
She’d learned that in an episode of Dark Unknown. Now Salem was on her bucket list. She wanted to see the old buildings for herself. She wanted to sit at Judge Corwin’s dinner table and know if the tourist destination still harbored his hateful energy.
“What if it’s not a shame thing?” Gum asked. “What if Rex never mentioned his sister because he’s traumatized?”
“Doesn’t make a difference,” Iris said. She couldn’t understand how Rex avoided saying her name, how he didn’t drive himself crazy searching for answers. She couldn’t survive fifty years without knowing what had happened to Glory. She couldn’t live in uncertainty for the rest of her life.
She skimmed articles about the 1973 Fourth of July fireworks show and opinion pieces about Nixon. And then, in blocky letters—the headline she was waiting for. Iris had wanted to see it, but the words still filled her stomach with rocks.
“Found it,” she said.
Gum leaned in, reading over her shoulder. “Local Woman Drowned.” Iris scrolled down, revealing a new photo of her. Her curls looked so silky, her eyes so bright.
