The Creeping Read Free

rifling through her bag. She braces her hands on her knees and waits for an apology overdue by six days. Zoey makes a point to color code the gummies at the heart of her palm just so it’s obvious how much she isn’t sorry. “I’ll drive,” I offer. I don’t want the standoff to continue. Most of why Zoey and Michaela work is that they’re polar opposites, but occasionally opposites combust. More accurately: Zoey combusts. “I have to eat dinner with the parent, so be at my house by eight,” I add.
    â€œBut you’re never gonna make it with Taylor if you’re all stiff and sober,” Zoey whines. Cole devolves into giggles as Zoey emphasizes “stiff.”
    â€œMaybe we should have him pick us up from Stella’s and we can watch him ogle her snowballs?” Zoey says, pressing her boobs—or snowballs as she calls them—together. She peeks up at me through thick lashes and bats them flirtatiously. Cole makes kissing noises.
    â€œNot gonna happen,” I shout above their sound effects. Turningtonight into a flirt fest seems disrespectful. And I can’t blow my whole disinterested thing now by calling and bumming a ride.
    Even Michaela, who I can usually count on as an antidote for Zoey’s antics, has this giddy grin on her face. Michaela’s sworn off boys until she finishes her early admission apps for college. In the meantime, she’s taking living vicariously through us to heart. “I’ll be DD with Stella’s car,” she says slyly.
    Cole cheers and Zoey flashes a conspirator’s grin at Michaela before turning a pout on me. I take aim and lob a gummy bear at Zoey’s cleavage. I lean back on my towel. I can feel Zoey staring, but I ignore her. I’ve been off all day. Ever since she arrived at my house this morning and I answered the door with dark bulges under my aching eyes. Thinking of today made it hard to sleep last night. I’d hash it out with Zoey—the only one I ever talk to about it, since she’s the only one who lived all the aftermath with me—but lately she has zero tolerance for anything that isn’t hooking up or going out.
    My eyes close, and I let the warmth of the sun wash over me. The breeze rattles the oak leaves, making them chime like thousands of miniature bells. I inhale the air, fragrant with damp soil and pine needles. Everything is still wet and gleaming from springtime showers. Soon the trees will be brittle and dry, nothing more than kindling for campfires.
    The others talk about Zoey’s end-of-the-summer rager, the Fourth of July, and Michaela’s trip back east for college visits. Zoey makes a bad joke about Michaela sizing up the student body at Brown. Cole jabbers on about hosting her first house party next week. I can almost see their vivid expectations for break, brightly colored andshimmering like the fireworks they’re looking forward to, against the backdrop of my eyelids. I let their voices melt away and concentrate on the beat of wings. Overhead a large bird, maybe a hawk or raven, circles. I feel its shadow slide over my torso as it flies above us. The faint babble of a stream slices through the rustle of the woods a few hundred feet from where we sit. It’s full of skinny silver-scaled fish darting around, sparkling in the sun.
    â€œ. . . I said I’d totally go, but only if it was a group thing . . . .” I listen in to Zoey. Michaela responds with something agreeable, Cole giggles, and I tune out again.
    The bird circles for another loop. The momentary lapse of the sun’s warmth on my skin as the bird eclipses it sends shivers through me. I peek through my lashes and try to decipher the featureless silhouette in the sky. Long, straggly black feathers that twitch in the wind and a white hooked beak protruding from a head covered in what looks like orange melted wax.
    â€œEwww,” Michaela says. “A vulture