December Park(66)

“You’re a big hump,” Scott said.

“Hey, I’m dead serious,” Michael said.

Beside me, Peter began carving his initials into the stone statue with Scott’s knife. “Remember when they caught that huge shark by the Naval Academy? It was a great white, wasn’t it? Like in Jaws.”

“I think it was a sand shark,” Scott said. “Some fishermen caught it on a line from the academy bridge.”

“Well,” Michael said, “unless the thing’s got legs, it ain’t crawling on land and snatching up kids, jackass.”

“I didn’t say it was, jerk face,” Peter said.

“Douche nozzle!”

“Ass muncher!”

“Gorbachev’s wife!” This had been Michael’s favorite insult for as long as I could remember. When he first started using it, none of us even knew who Gorbachev was, let alone his wife.

Peter ignored him. “Ed the Jew used to tell us stories about a thing called the White Worm, something that his old man used to scare him with. He never described it in much detail, just that it was a worm about the size of a sofa, really fat and bulbous.”

“Bulbous,” Michael echoed, snickering.

“It lives in the bay and attacks watermen who fall asleep on their boats overnight. It climbs into the boats and eats them. Oh, and it has a big mouth on one end filled with a ring of teeth, all jagged and pointy like a shark’s.”

“Awesome,” Scott intoned.

“Whenever you see an old johnboat or Sunfish floating across the bay or down the river with no one on it, that means the White Worm got ’em.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “I’ve seen those boats.”

“That’s a f*ckin’ cool story,” Scott admitted.

“He used to tell it to me when I was just a kid and acting up,” Peter said. His eyes grew distant and he smiled. “He liked to mess with my head.”

“How did it climb onto the boats if it was just a worm?” Michael asked.

Peter shrugged. “Well, it was a giant worm.”

“Worms don’t have hands. Not even giant ones.”

“This one did. It had skinny little arms like you, and it would drag its fat body up onto the boats.”

“Aw, you just made that up,” Michael said, waving him off. “I’m being serious. How can a giant worm climb onto a boat?”

“Dude.” Peter shook his head. “It’s just a story. The whole thing’s made up.”

Adrian got up from his perch and went over to his backpack. He unzipped it and withdrew the Girls’ Holy Cross yearbook and a slimmer volume I recognized as his drawing tablet. Then he returned to his tree and crawled back into the niche. He moved with the litheness and delicateness of a girl. His entire body looked fragile, as if he might break apart into pieces at even the slightest nudge. He opened the yearbook and slowly turned the pages.

“Here,” Peter said, handing me the knife.

I started to engrave my initials beneath his.

“The question I’d like answered is what happened to their bodies,” Scott said. The radio at his feet changed songs, the soft lilt of “In the Still of the Night” crackling from the speaker. “There’s only been one body found, but there are still four kids missing. Where are their bodies? Down here somewhere, too?”

We looked around at the looming, sun-silvered trees and the serenity of the woods that surrounded us. All of a sudden, it seemed like a false quiet, a fa?ade designed to lull us into false security. This place could be a graveyard, a land for the dead and buried. Were any of them beneath our feet—just mere inches under the soil—at this very moment?

But then I remembered what my dad had told me, and I said, “The cops took cadaver dogs down here. They would have found bodies if there were any.”

“Even if they’re buried real deep?” asked Scott.

“I guess.”

“Gah!” Michael shouted, grabbing his throat and struggling on the ground. The army helmet bounded off his stomach and rolled away. “They got me! They got me!”

“Cut it out, f*ck face,” Scott scolded him.

Finished with my carving, I closed the knife and tossed it to Scott. He got up, came over to the statue, and began inscribing his initials into the concrete below mine.

I slid off the statue and onto the ground, the coldness of the earth radiating through my jeans and numbing my buttocks—coolie, I thought, smiling to myself—and popped the tab on my can of Jolt. The soda was warm and too sugary. Perfect.

“Why do you guys make so much fun of each other if you’re friends?” Adrian said.

“We’re just screwing around,” I said. “We don’t mean it.”

“Although Michael is a f*ck face,” Scott said from over his shoulder. “That’s just a fact.”

“We’ve all been friends for years,” Peter said. “It’s just joking, Adrian. No one means anything by it.”

Adrian pursed his lips and nodded slowly, watching us.

We must look like alien creatures to him, I thought, a kid who’s never had any close friends in his life . . .

“Get over here, Sugarland,” Scott called, rising off the ground and holding out the knife. “Your turn.”