"Who is she?" I asked. "There's no one named Isabella in Steepleton."
"She lives in Margate. Chris's uncle owns a coffee shop in Margate, on the boardwalk, and according to this, his parents let him give up his paper route to be a busboy over there. This Isabella is a waitress."
"Wow..." I breathed. Creed having a girlfriend was like Uncle Wiggly going out with Miss America. "I wonder if she's weird, too."
"He said she's beautiful," Ali muttered. She turned back a couple of pages and pointed to the top entry, under the date of June 27.
I read the first lines, which went: I'm going to describe Isabella, so that even when I'm not with her, I always have a full description of her with me.
Her dark hair dances like an angry sea. Her cheeks glow like soft white lanterns. She is as tall as thunder and as lean as lightning....
I let out a breathy laugh under the weight of this goo. He described Isabella from the top of her dancing hair to the tips of her rosy red toenails. It took up, like, a page and a half. Then he went into how shy and reserved she was, so not like the girls from Steepleton, and how it had taken her three days to get up her nerve to talk to him.
I realized when she finally came over to the table I was busing that she probably wouldn't have the nerve to say what was on her mind. I was quite right. When I asked her, "Would you like to walk the boardwalk with me during break?" she looked at me with pure thanks that I had said it and saved her the risk.
As we walked, the sun beat down on us, and it was pure heaven. She was telling me about her family, how her big sister was so unlike her, but I could hardly hear. I could hardly believe this goddess had agreed to walk with me.
I read on and on. Creed was totally smarmy about her, and it went slow. Three pages later, they were still walking on the boardwalk. But a part of me wanted to give this girl a trophy.
"How come one of us couldn't have been nice to him?" I wondered out loud. If this girl could put up with him, I guessed we could have, too.
"Sometimes people need a fresh start," Ali said after a minute. "People have these geeky reputations, but they get with somebody new, somebody who doesn't know about them, and they can change almost their whole behavior."
"Yeah," I agreed. I remembered that last summer Alex had met a girl on the beach in Brigantine. She didn't know that he was class clown and supercomputer brain, and in front of her, he didn't really act like it. I kept reading.
I wanted to kiss her so badly, but I couldn't find the courage. I knew if I waited, the right moment would come. Tomorrow, the next day, or the next. I knew this much, Isabella and I would do a lot more walking and talking. She could talk forever, and I wouldn't care what she said. It all sounded like music, and the words were irrelevant. As we returned, my loins were bursting...
I threw my head back on the pillow and cracked up.
"Shh!" Ali whispered. "We're not going to laugh at him, okay?"
How could you not laugh at a kid saying loins. Ali was going overboard with the diplomat routine. I remembered other words Creed could pull out of his head, winsome, tyrannized, cathartic...
"I can't help it." I laughed again. "Ali, it's like he lived on another planet."
She sighed. "It's his parents. You know, he learned all those words from his father, and his mother kept him so under lock and key."
"What if..." I got this thought. "What if this girl dumped him, or his mother refused to let him see her anymore? And that threw him into a state of depression, and that's what made him flip?"
"I know your mom is convinced about it, but I'm still thinking Mrs. Creed did it. For Bo's sake, I sure hope this diary says something—"
I wanted to check out my own theory. I jerked the book away from her and turned to the end.
The last entry was dated September 10, the day after school started. The entry looked like a list.
1. I have excellent skin.
2. I have a nice arch to my eyebrows.
3. My teeth are straight.
4. I am not fat.
5. I can read music.
6. My mom makes great food, and I have enough to eat.
7. I can pop wheelies on the concrete at ninety-percent pop.
8. I have $3,000 in the bank, which I can claim someday.
9. I have six, no seven, friends on the Internet.
10. Isabella and I are one.
My eyes returned to the sixth thing. It didn't sound like he was pissed at his mom.
"Ali, he is so weird. What kind of a list is—"
Ali pointed at the number 10 thing and mumbled, "Whoa. I wonder if they did the nasty..."
I tried to imagine Creed losing his virginity before I did. Another Uncle Wiggly-type of thought.
"Guess she didn't break up with him," Ali murmured. "At least not by September."
"I don't know..." Staring at this silly list, I realized that some of the things Creed was saying about himself were basically true. It almost seemed like an exercise in trying to brainwash yourself into believing good stuff about yourself. I wondered if he had done that in his head the whole time he was growing up. I'm good at this, I'm wonderful at that... And maybe he brainwashed himself into believing that stuff, instead of believing he had just been beaten up the day before. It was a weird thought, but that was one weird list.
"You know what?" Ali whispered, running her finger down this list. "He was never ugly. Did you ever realize that?"
I muttered something about guys not looking at other guys' appearances, but she smirked and said that I could be a real guy without being blind. I knew what she meant.
"People are blind," she said. "All they see is a person's reputation."
"Well, this girl obviously saw more," I said.
"I'm going to read this all night if I have to," Ali whispered. "There's got to be something in here to prove Mrs. Creed's guilty—and therefore Bo is not."
I looked at the clock and saw to my amazement it was three-thirty in the morning. I got up to leave but froze, sitting straight up. The early part of the night had been such a brain hag that nothing had been really clear to me. But now that I was this relaxed and tired, the truth hit me.
"Get some sleep. Don't waste your time, because you won't find anything," I muttered. "Mrs. Creed spoke to me. Over the telephone at the ball field. I just thought of it now. Oh my god."
I realized something about this Hitchcock movie that I had stolen the phone-call idea from. When the murderer received his mystery phone call, he immediately asked if it was blackmail. He knew he was guilty and assumed the call was for blackmail money. Mrs. Creed asked if this was a kidnapping. If she had killed her own kid, she would have assumed it was blackmail and probably would have blurted out the same type of thing. Her knee-jerk reaction would not have been to give me that speech about how nobody takes her baby.
"Maybe she drove him to it, I don't know..." I stumbled. "She didn't outright kill him. You're not going to find anything in there to help prove that. Because it didn't happen. So get some sleep."
The shocks of the night caught up with me full force, and I thought I could roll off the bed and fall asleep on the floor. I mumbled, "Sleep tight," as I left, but Ali didn't answer me. She just stared wide-eyed at the diary, in the eerie glow of that orange light.
Thirteen
I knew we were in for it the next morning, about two seconds after I climbed on the school bus. Alex, Ryan, and Renee were staring at me all pop-eyed. I wanted so bad to not deal with them. But I had to make some attempt to act normal. I plopped down beside Ryan, in front of Alex and Renee. Ali sat down in front of me.
Ryan was looking me up and down like I was purple. Alex's and Renee's faces crept around so they were practically licking my ears on either side.
"Hear you had a bit of a run-in last night, bro," Alex said.
"We overheard my dad telling my mom that he almost had to book you last night. That's sweet, Torey, real sweet." Renee smirked, and I rubbed my eyes, which after three hours of slee
p felt like bowling balls in the sockets.
"Ali, how come you're getting on the bus on our street?" Ryan asked.
Ali was running her mouth to this girl sitting beside her, a quiet girl in some of our honors classes. I knew she was doing it so she wouldn't have to explain herself to the audience behind her. Their eyes came back to me.
"We ... uhm..." I stuttered. "Mrs. Creed has been bugging Ali. We wanted to spy out her window and see if Mrs. Creed did anything weird over there ... you know."
I guessed they didn't. Ker-BLAM, the power question came barreling out of Alex: "What were you doing with Bo Richardson?"
"Well, he was there. And, well..." I watched the back of Ali's head, almost hypnotized by it.
"My dad said Mrs. Creed thinks he killed Chris." Renee's eyes burned on me.
I saw Ali's shoulders freeze up. I felt like food for three hungry snakes. I'd known the night before that all this new stuff could make me feel sort of "out there" compared to my friends, but I hadn't known it would happen so fast. I just felt through my gut and blurted out what I felt.
"You guys, this whole thing has gotten way serious. It's too serious, I don't want to yap about it, I don't want to joke about it. I don't want to talk about it."
They made all the I'm-insulted groans, but I didn't let myself get sucked down as they filled the air with comments.
"You think we're gossips, thanks a lot—"
Ryan went, "Torey, bro. We're just glad you're not bones this morning, man. Bo Richardson? Whatever happened, we assured our dad that he forced you into it. Pulled that ... that stiletto he carries around on you, or something—"
I stared at the back of Ali's hair. It would kill Ali if I didn't do something.
I got up, walked toward the front of the bus, and plopped down beside Lyle Corsica, who was known as a science geek. There were no other empty seats near him, so there was no way they would follow me. I started a conversation with Lyle, like Ali had started with that quiet girl. I didn't care that they were gawking, probably wondering why I could run my mouth to Lyle Corsica, about I-don't-even-remember-what, but I couldn't talk to them. I kept telling myself I didn't care. I figured I would start to believe it by the time we got to school.
I didn't see any sign of Bo in the cafeteria and hoped he wasn't still at the cop station—as in, his old lady was out drinking again and never showed up to sign him out. My mom said she had to stop there anyway and would make sure he'd been picked up, before she dropped Greg off at school.
Since I didn't really feel like talking to anybody, I just went to homeroom early and fell asleep with my head on my desk. I woke up because someone was nudging me, and when I opened my eyes, the room was half filled with kids. I shot my head up as Alex quit nudging me from behind. Our names, Adams and Arrington, meant I sat in front of him. There was no getting away this time.
"You didn't even hear the bell?" Alex asked me.
"No." I rubbed my eyes and shivered. I couldn't believe I slept through a bell.
"You look like you're on crack."
"Well, I'm not," I snapped. "I only had next-to-zero sleep."
"Look. Whatever's going on with you, Torey, I'm not the enemy."
My eyes moved past all these kids who were finding their seats, pushing each other and fooling around. Lyle Corsica was sitting just about in the middle, looking up from an Algebra II book. He was watching Justin Briggs and Mike Carroll, two jocks, arm wrestle in the front row. He looked back and forth from Briggs to Carroll sort of cautiously. He's wishing he could jump into Carroll's set of muscles and walk around in them. He's wishing he was somebody else. He's wondering why his old man had to pass on chicken legs to him, while Carroll's old man is a tennis pro.
I had never given Lyle Corsica a real thought before, and all of a sudden I felt like I could look into his head and see his thoughts. See pain there. I realized Alex had his hand cupped to my ear and was whispering in it. Lyle's head turned, and his eyes caught mine this time. Adams and Arrington whispering. Nobody's ever whispered anything to me. Nobody thinks I'm that important.
I grinned at him. I had been running my mouth to him on the bus about the weather, the puddles, the snow coming, all this stuff. He should have thought I was insane. Now, here he was looking at me all admiring because some bro was giving me some secret lowdown. I wondered if being a geek made you a better, less judgmental person.
"Where in the hell did you pick up Bo Richardson? I can't see why we should protect you if you won't even let us in on what you were doing!"
I jerked my ear away from Alex and turned to stare at his concerned face.
"Protect me from what?" I asked.
He looked all around the room in amazement. Flocks of kids were all doing their usual homeroom things—talking, laughing, finishing up the homework they didn't do before. But they had fangs like snakes that came out when something rubbed them wrong. I knew it. I'd been part of it. They could bite. They could ruin my life, turn me and Ali into a sideshow.
"You want all these people looking at you and thinking you're a candidate for Future Convicts of America?" Alex asked, right on cue.
"No." I had two years to finish in this high school. Two years is a long time.
Leandra stuck her head in the door and waved at me. She looked all cute in her jeans and this little tiny sweater.
"Your chem teacher's still out! I'll see you third-period lunch. I'll buy you french fries, your favorite breakfast!" she said in that Southern accent that drove me nuts.
She left, and I felt Alex's eyeballs burning a hole in my cheek. "We're your friends," he reminded me, in that same voice as a teacher.... You're going to fail if you're not careful.
I wanted to tell him parts of it. But I knew I'd be screwing up his version of reality by telling him Bo Richardson was a nice guy. And if I told him Bo was going out with Ali? Forget it. He'd tell Renee, and it would be all over school. Guess who McDermott's doing it with now, oh by the way?
I just got up and wandered out into the hall, forgetting to take the hall pass. I was trying to think up what great lie I could tell the nurse so she would send me home. I leaned against the lockers, thinking how twenty-four hours had turned my whole life into one lie after another. I heard my name in some whisper and looked behind me. Ali was out in the hall, waving the pass from her homeroom so I would follow her. She moved quickly toward the emergency exit, and I followed her.
She shut the door behind us and stared at me. "You look terrible," she said.
I sighed. "This is like some stage show, Ali. I'm lying my ass off every time I turn around. My folks, my friends; I'm about to lie to the nurse. It's like being an actor, only you never get offstage. It's complicated. I want to cut out of here."
She lit a cigarette and blew out a trail of smoke. "You want to go home?"
"Yeah," I muttered. "Go back to sleep, so at some point I can think again."
"Torey, I'm really sorry." She looked sad all of a sudden. "I shouldn't have brought you into all this. You're not cut out for it. Do you see what I mean about your perfect life?"
I didn't say anything. I couldn't think.
"Look," she said, dragging on the cigarette, and I could see her fingers shaking, "whatever you have to do, just do it. If you don't want to talk to us anymore, it's okay. If you have to lie about us, just do it—"
"I don't want to do that, Ali," I snapped. I looked out into the woods and sighed. "Creed ... he's got a real talent for creating problems. Even when he's gone."
"Yeah." She laughed sadly. She stared off into the woods, too. It was a calm, sort of gray day with no wind. I could sense her scanning the trees. Like maybe Creed would just materialize and walk out of them or something.
"I have the diary in my locker," she mumbled. "I went into the girls' bathroom this morning, sat in a stall, and read some more. Kept me from having to be in the cafeteria, you know?"
I nodded, watching the woods alongside her.
"Toward the end, he went to a p
sychic with that Isabella."
"Really?" I looked at Ali. That didn't seem like something a sheltered kid like Creed would do.
Ali nodded. "She was a relative of Isabella's or something. The psychic told them she saw death in the woods. The death of one of them, I guess."
I felt the skin on my arms starting to crawl as I stared out toward the woods again. I was thinking, We can be pretty sure it wasn't her death. She's from Margate, by the ocean, and there aren't any woods in Margate.
For some reason I thought of Alex and me playing in that burial ground when we were about seven, and walking these woods. We used to walk through there telling stories about the ghosts of dead Lenape Indians. I would get an image in my head of an Indian ghost with a Mohawk and stone earrings and all those feathers. This Indian ghost was always half crouched with a bow and arrow poised in his arms, staring at me like I was an animal and he was hunting.
One time, when I was seven, something materialized about twenty feet in front of me. It looked exactly like this image I had conjured up in my head—crouching Indian, staring, ready to shoot an arrow through my heart. I screamed and pointed, but as fast as the Indian materialized, it disappeared again. I got so freaked that Alex half dragged me by the hair back to tell his dad, the shrink. Alex hadn't seen it.
Dr. Arrington told me that by virtue of the fact that the Indian looked exactly like something I had long been imagining, it had to be my imagination. He somehow managed to calm me down. He was a grown-up and a very confident doctor. Alex and I ended up playing in those woods a lot as kids, and I didn't constantly look over my shoulder. I never did see that Indian again.
But now I was remembering it and feeling like I could see a dead Chris Creed just materialize and walk out of the woods. I watched between the trees, watched for a skinny blond kid to appear and stare back at me. For the first time ever, I thought maybe Dr. Arrington was wrong. Maybe I had some special gift to see things like that. Maybe I saw the Indian exactly like I had been imagining him because the dead Indian somehow "put" the image in my mind before I ever "saw" it. I shivered. Felt like I was losing it.