Rhett McLaughlin - The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

Leif sighed. If they’d gone to the Short Stop, they would have already eaten by now. He would’ve gotten his usual bag of pizza-flavored Combos and a blackberry Clearly Canadian, and they would’ve tasted amazing. Instead, he was waiting for a sandwich that wasn’t even what he ordered because he was being tested. As if he hadn’t already gone through enough in the past day.

“Act natural,” Rex whispered.

“Huh?”

“Big Gary is watching us. He’s with some woman.”

“What?” Leif said, going totally still as if he’d just been told there was a bee on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Rex said. “Some woman I’ve never seen before. She looks kind of cool. Like, her jeans are ripped. And she’s wearing a hoodie.”

“Can I turn around and look?” Leif asked, only moving his mouth.

“Not yet. They’re still looking. Oh, shoot, she’s walking this way.”

“Who? The woman?”

“Yes,” Rex said, smiling and nodding at Leif as if they were deep in a conversation different from this one.

“Are we getting thrown out?”

“I don’t know,” Rex said. “She’s holding a camera.” And then the woman was standing right next to them.

“Hey, guys,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt whatever fun-fest you might be having, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

Leif swallowed extra hard.

—

THESE BOYS DID not look like troublemakers.

At least the one with glasses didn’t. He just looked terrified, as if Janine were about to pull out handcuffs. The other one, who had the same side-part haircut as nearly every other male in this town, was trying to play it cool, but Janine saw through it. “What kinds of questions?” he asked. Something about him reminded Janine of Dennis, which was simultaneously endearing and irritating.

“Really deep and soul-searching ones,” Janine said, catching a gratifying glimpse in her peripheral vision of an aggravated Big Gary, whom she’d told to hang back so as not to intimidate her interview subjects. “My name is Janine Blitstein. I’m a filmmaker, like you guys.” She tagged that last part on so she could blow their minds a little bit. It worked. Both of their mouths dropped slightly open. “I heard about what happened yesterday. Sorry about your friend.”

“Thanks,” Side Part said. “I’m Rex, and this is Leif.”

“Have you made actual movies?” Leif asked.

“Yep,” Janine said. “Nothing you would have seen, though. I just graduated from NYU film school.”

“Whoa,” Rex said. “Seriously?”

“No, I made that up to impress you.”

“Oh.”

“Of course seriously! Why would I go around to teenagers I don’t know pretending that I went to NYU?”

The boys looked at each other, grinning in amazement at the sarcasm coming from this random woman they’d just met. If Janine knew anything in this world, it was that irreverence was the fastest way into an adolescent heart.

“But…why are you in Bleak Creek?” Leif asked.

“Well, Leif,” Janine said. “I’m sorta trying to figure that out.”

Leif and Rex laughed.

“Truth be told, I came here to make a documentary about the town. Would you be down to answer some questions about yesterday? And I can film you?”

Rex and Leif wordlessly checked in with each other before Rex said, “Sure.”

Janine directed the boys to sit on the same side of the table, then plopped down across from them, gleefully noting that Big Gary was still by the door to the kitchen, practically hopping with anger. She hefted the camcorder up to her shoulder, looked through the lens, and pressed record. “So, okay, I heard that you were making a movie—”

“PolterDog,” Leif interrupted.

“ PolterDog . Like Poltergeist with a dog?”

“Yeah,” Leif said, seeming a little shocked that she’d gotten it right.

“Wonderful. Sounds amazing. And you were shooting at this fundraiser so that you’d have a full crowd reacting to what’s happening?”

“Exactly,” Rex said, similarly astounded at Janine’s level of astuteness, which, from her perspective, seemed more like common sense.

The boys walked Janine through their version of the whole story, how Tucker had gone rogue, how Alicia had bashed into Whitewood, how Alicia’s parents had called the Whitewood School, how Rex and Leif had witnessed her abduction.

“Oh my god,” Janine said, realizing that somewhere during her fake interview, she’d become genuinely intrigued by what they were saying. “Did you get footage of her being taken?”

Rex closed his eyes as if he’d just been pied in the face. “No. We should have.”

“Uh, don’t be so hard on yourself. It sounds like you were a little busy trying to rescue your friend. But this Whitewood School sounds pretty terrible.”

“I mean,” Rex said, “it has a good reputation.”

“You bet it does!” Big Gary said, startling Janine, who hadn’t heard him walk over. “Now I think it’s time to conclude this interview, as I don’t think it’s right for the movie anyway, and I’ve still got a whole lot more to say about these puppies.” He banged his jar down onto the table between Rex and Leif, who both flinched.

Janine spun the camera toward Big Gary. “So you’re saying the school has a good reputation, even though it sends men to abduct kids in the night?”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Big Gary said in a quiet voice, looking around nervously. “Don’t go ruinin’ the school secrets like that. It’s part of the process.”

“Sounds like a pretty messed-up process if you ask me,” Janine said. This was a side of Big Gary that she was delighted to film. She hoped Donna was watching.

“I don’t care about the process, I care about the results,” Big Gary said, an edge of threat now in his voice. “Why do you think every person who works here has gone to that school? Because it shapes young people into responsible human beings!”

Janine’s brain went blank for a second.

“What’d you say?” she asked.

“I said I’ll only hire kids who’ve gone to that school. Now turn that damn camera off before I do it myself.”

Janine took the camera off her shoulder and stared at Big Gary.

“But…Donna…”

The room started to spin. Janine put a hand down on the table to get her balance, accidentally brushing into Big Gary’s jar and knocking it off the edge. It shattered as it hit the floor, kidney stones fanning out across the linoleum.

7

REX BARRELED DOWN the blacktop of Johnson Pond Road, his scooter leg bouncing off the pavement, propelling him at a fraction of the speed of a bicycle.

The filmmaker woman’s strange, shocked reaction to learning that her friend (her cousin, as he’d later learned) had gone to the Whitewood School had left Rex shaken, convincing him that any additional information that wild boy might have about the school was worth seeking out. Most of the items on Ben’s list were pretty straightforward to acquire—except for the fire extinguisher.

Luckily, Rex had a connection.

As he passed the tilled-under tobacco fields that flanked the country road on the way to his destination, he couldn’t stop thinking about how different freshman year would be without Alicia. In the Triumvirate, she’d always been the one who knew how to navigate the weird social pitfalls of school. Now, he and Leif would have to face their most daunting challenge yet—becoming high-schoolers—on their own. And, thanks to him opening his big stupid mouth about his feelings for her, he’d made everything even worse than it already was.

Sure, Leif had given his blessing in the moment, but things had been slightly off between them ever since. Rex should’ve known that liking Alicia would be a threat to Leif; the same thing had happened the summer between sixth and seventh grades with Julie Adams. Rex had fallen fast and hard, spending nearly all his time with her. They’d even started calling each other “babe.” Because Alicia had spent a good portion of the summer in Virginia with her sick grandmother, Leif had been alone a lot, taking up a series of sad hobbies including metal detecting and soap carving. Rex pictured Leif, alone in his bedroom holding a duck made from a bar of Irish Spring, and felt like a jerk.