What Happened to Lani Garver (39 page)

The Body of Christopher Creed

Some mysteries aren't meant to be solved.

Chris Creed grew up as the class freak—the bullies' punching bag. After he vanished, the weirdness that had once surrounded him began spreading. It was as if a darkness reached out of his void to grab at the most normal, happy people—like some twisted joke or demented form of justice. It tore the town apart.

Sixteen-year-old Torey Adams's search for answers opens his eyes to the lies, the pain, and the need to blame when tragedy strikes, and his once-safe world comes crashing down around him.

A M
ICHAEL
L. P
RINTZ
A
WARD
H
ONOR
B
OOK

A
N
ALA B
EST
B
OOK FOR
Y
OUNG
A
DULTS

A
N
IRA C
HILDREN'S
C
HOICE

★"Plum-Ucci knows her audience and provides her readers with enough twists, turns, and suspense to keep them absorbed."

—School Library Journal
(starred review)

Turn the page to meet Christopher Creed...

Dear Mr. Ames,

I have a problem getting along with people. I know that people wish I were dead, and at this moment in time I see no alternative but to accommodate them in this wish. I have a wish. Not that anybody cares, but if anybody cared over the years, it was you. Here is my wish. I wish that I had been born somebody else—Mike Healy, José DeSantos, Tommy Ide, Evan Lucenti, Torey Adams, Alex Arrington...

I don't understand why I get nothing and these boys get everything—athletic ability, good personalities, beautiful girlfriends. I'm sure their parents will be buying them cars next year, while I will still be riding my bicycle until my parents decide I'm old enough. Quite possibly, I'll be twenty-five. I wish to understand life and luck and liberty. But I will never do that confined to this life, the personality defects I've been cursed with, the lack of abilities, the strain. I wish no malice on anyone. I only wish to be gone. Therefore, I AM.

Yours respectfully,
Christopher Creed

Eight years ago, on a rainy night in November, Evan Barrett's parents were lost at sea as a panicked Evan listened to their frantic Mayday calls on a ship-to-shore radio. There was no way to save them, no way to explain the deafening shrieks behind his mother's cries for mercy. Now, Evan has returned to his home in west Hook to search for answers to his parents' disappearance. were they swallowed up by The She, the angry she-devil of legend that devours ships off the New Jersey coast? Or was it something else? Something more tangible but equally unthinkable?

Turn the page to hear the Barretts' last transmission...

All of a sudden, I hear the shrieking of The She.

I drop the shoe box so I can put my fingers in my ears, but I'm stepping all over my toy navy men and I'm heavy and my heavy arms won't reach my head. I know The She and it takes me a minute to realize this time it sounds different. It's definitely her. But she's shut up in a box or a tomb. The sound is buried, not loud and free from over the ocean. She's ... behind me. I spin.

Looking past the dark kitchen, I suddenly don't care that it's darker back there or that I'm rushing toward her voice. The closer I get to Dad's office, the louder her shrieking gets.

I stare at my dad's empty desk chair, then the ship-to-shore radio, hearing what my intuition tells me is a dream, but I'm wide awake.

"Coast Guard, this is the vessel
Goliath.
We are approximately eighty-four miles southeast of Atlantic City. we just lost power and a valve below the waterline. We have a list. We are caught in something, a very heavy current pulling us northeast. We are being ... sucked—Mayday, Mayday. Coast Guard, this is the vessel
Goliath—
"

I grab for the handset and push down the button, which stops the shrieking, at least while I speak. "Mom? What's wrong? Over!"

The shrieking mixes with her voice while she's talking to me, to Dad next to her, it's all mixed together. "oh, shit, we got the baby! Evan! Tell your brother to ... Wade! What the hell is that? over the port stern! Look with your eyes! Mother of God!"

I want to jump through the radio to get to my mom's screaming Maydays, and I want to bolt upstairs to get my brother, Emmett. I end up backing out slowly, hearing The She until she has almost overpowered my mother's voice, which is screaming. The sound is all through me then, coming from the sky, the beach, the radio.

I'm up the stairs, throwing open the door, but Emmett isn't there. I tear down the hall to the big wooden door and the stairway that leads up and around to the widow's walk. I pass my mom's padlock, hanging open, and try the stairs that go up and up and round and round. But I'm still a thousand pounds and I can feel myself being sucked down ... into black, deep, dizzy, swirling black. I croak, "Emmett...," but I'm falling backward ... forever and ever falling.