The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

Author:Carol Plum-Ucci
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Fourteen

I got in the car with my dad and faked sleep so he wouldn’t ask me stuff. I’m sure my mother had told him that something came down the night before, but the nurse told him my story—that I puked in the John—which gave me an advantage. He wouldn’t nag at me if he thought I was sick, but I could feel discomfort wafting off him like a horrible smell.

I felt the bump of our driveway and opened one eye.

“Your mother’s not in her office, so if you need her, call her on her cell phone,” Dad told me, and I nodded. “She’ll be late. She’s doing something for that Richardson boy after she gets out of court.”

I turned and looked at him. He was staring into the steering wheel, gripping it until his knuckles were white. He hadn’t said it mean. He just looked like he was agonizing. I wanted to tell him I was sorry about getting hauled into the cop station. But I didn’t want to admit to anything. I decided on something in the middle.

“Bo Richardson’s not all bad, Dad. He’s got a good streak that . . . runs really deep. It’s just not . . . wide.” Whatever. I was tired.

“Your mother said things like that.” He let out one of his confused sighs. I grabbed my book bag, and as I opened the door, he let fly with another complete shocker. Up until this point, I had been ready to throw myself onto my bed and sleep. But what Dad said next changed my mind.

He said, “Your mother told me being charged with murder is not the Richardson boy’s worry at the moment. Apparently the police told him they confiscated the phone receiver at the ball field to have it fingerprinted. Before they went to the trouble, he confessed to making that phone call. That call could cost him dearly.”

I slammed the car door and headed for the house in a complete haze. I didn’t even say good-bye. I figured that silence was the biggest lie I’d told so far.

I paced around the house. Bo hadn’t even mentioned anything when we were standing outside with Ali. He knew I would go nuts on him. But I should have known he wouldn’t let me hang. Now I could only sit around or pace until Ali came over and we figured out what to do about this. Especially considering that phone call was your idea, Torey, you idiot.

I went clomping down to the basement and picked up my acoustic guitar and headed back up the stairs. The basement was spooky. I hadn’t spent more than three minutes down there since that night I thought I was feeling Creed’s ghost. I passed the kitchen window and decided it was too spooky to be in the kitchen, too. I didn’t want to sit in there playing guitar near that window, where you could see the Indian burial ground.

I finally lay down on the living-room rug and stared at the ceiling, playing a bunch of scales and runs in that awkward position.

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