Rhett McLaughlin - The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

“Though,” he said, turning back, “my answering machine broke, so. If it keeps ringin’, that means I’m out. In which case, call my beeper. My second beeper. First beeper’s for business only. Y’all got that number, right?”

“Yep,” Leif said. “Thanks, Travis.”

Travis gave them a thumbs-up and waded away.

Rex held out a hand toward Leif. “Can I…?”

“Oh, sure.” Leif didn’t actually want to part with the button, but he was touched by Rex’s sincerity. He passed it over, continuing to stare at it even after it was in Rex’s hand.

Rex didn’t know what to make of it. It felt good to hold, though. His gut still told him that even if this had been a fire, it certainly hadn’t been Alicia’s fault. None of it was. In fact, she wouldn’t have even been at that school if it weren’t for him and Leif and PolterDog.

So it was their fault.

Their best friend was gone, and it was all their fault.

16

JANINE LOOKED INTO the side-view mirror for the seventh time in the past minute.

She was sitting in the passenger seat of GamGam’s Grand Marquis as her grandmother steered them toward the airport, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being followed. Or that GamGam’s brakes were going to suddenly give out. Or that something else horrible would happen.

The paranoia had been with her for days, ever since her visit to Aunt Roberta’s. Learning that her uncle’s fatal car accident had likely been a murder—that there were people in town (including the sheriff, for God’s sake) so desperate to hide whatever was happening inside that school that they would kill another human being—had been jarring, to say the least. It was a level of cruelty she hadn’t anticipated, and she was ready to heed the message so gracelessly scrawled on the side of the vehicle she was currently in.

So that’s what Janine was doing.

She was leaving Bleak Creek.

It hadn’t been a snap decision. As rattled as she’d been after talking with her aunt, she’d been incredibly angry, too. At first she’d let that fuel her, imagining her documentary could uncover the truth, not only about what had happened to Donna but also about her uncle’s death. It quickly became clear, though, that word had spread about Janine. Most people she approached, from parents to teachers to other students, wouldn’t even entertain the idea of speaking with her.

The only interviews she’d successfully conducted were with a couple of Donna’s other coworkers from Li’l Dino’s, twenty-one-year-old server Gabriel Rodriguez and sixteen-year-old hostess Sandy Dillon. Both of them had provided variations on the responses she’d gotten from Tommy Dowd: that the Whitewood School had really helped them out, that they’d deserved to be sent there and were glad it happened, that it had put them on a path to living a successful life. As soon as Janine’s questions got even slightly probing, they’d shut down. (Once their interview was done, Gabriel had revealed his true motivation for being there, awkwardly asking Janine out for coffee. Sandy, meanwhile, had asked Janine to sign a form indicating that the interview would count as an hour of community service for Key Club.)

After unsuccessfully attempting to talk to both Donna and Aunt Roberta once more about the school and what had happened to Uncle Jim, Janine had reacquainted herself with an old friend: self-doubt. She was putting her life—and possibly her aunt’s and cousin’s and grandmother’s, too—in serious jeopardy, and for what? She couldn’t even get any good interviews. If she was killed, people would find her footage and think, Why was she even down here? To film boring conversations with her grandmother and some teenagers and a fat man bragging about his kidney stones? Janine had no business making a documentary, and she wasn’t quite sure why she’d ever thought she could.

But all that didn’t explain why she’d finally decided to leave, not entirely.

No, there was one more thing.

Dennis.

The night before, after Janine had come home from her scintillating interview with Sandy, she and GamGam had been sitting on the couch eating cold fried chicken and watching Wheel of Fortune when the phone rang. GamGam had toddled off to get it while Janine tried to decide if Vanna White had the best job in the world or the worst. Moments later, with a You’re never gonna believe this tone in her voice, GamGam called out, “It’s for you, Neenie.”

Janine had trudged toward the phone, fully expecting it to be Gabriel Rodriguez asking her out again, and she was actually considering saying yes, thinking maybe his persistence was the universe’s way of helping her officially hit rock bottom. But all thoughts of Gabriel had disappeared once she heard the voice on the other line.

“Hey,” Dennis said.

Janine froze, thinking Bleak Creek had officially caused her to lose a grip on reality.

“Janine? You still there?”

It was really him. His voice conjured up a million feelings at once, as if she wanted to shriek and swoon at the same time. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Good.”

“How did you find me?” Out of all her questions, this was arguably the least important, but it was the easiest to ask.

“It wasn’t that hard,” Dennis said, obviously grinning. He hadn’t actually answered her question. “I miss us.”

Though it was wonderful to hear him say those words, it was also infuriating. “Oh, really?” Janine said. “Does Lola know that?”

“She and I are done. She’s not a very…creative person. Compared to you, anyway.”

Janine smiled. It was a very satisfying answer. She couldn’t let him off the hook yet, though. “Aren’t you still living in L.A.?”

“Nah. L.A. sucks, man. They wouldn’t know good filmmaking if it bit ’em in the ass.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Yeah. This one executive said The Boy Who Became a Man was just a rip-off of Big, which is so insulting I don’t even know where to begin.”

Janine couldn’t help but smile again, mainly because she’d thought the same thing more than once as they’d worked on it—that Dennis had made an artsy version of Big except without the funny parts.

“What a dick, right?” Dennis said. The rhythms of their relationship came back to her, and she knew what her line was supposed to be: Yeah, such an asshole. What he said isn’t true at all.

“Well, it’s just one executive, isn’t it?” she said instead.

“Yeah, I guess. But then everyone else stopped returning my calls too. And now I have writer’s block. I’m telling you, those people suck. NYC is where it’s at. We need to start Dennine. For real this time.”

Janine had imagined this scenario so many times she’d lost count, and now it was actually happening . Dennis had tracked her down all the way in Bleak Creek. For a guy who hated doing any kind of tedious legwork, anything he didn’t deem “creatively stimulating,” it wasn’t nothing.

“And,” Dennis continued, “I, you know…I’m sorry about the way I acted. I was an idiot. You’re, like, the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t know why I couldn’t recognize that.”

Janine knew what was happening here—Dennis’s charms were once again dismantling her defenses—but she was on the verge of joyful hyperventilation anyway. “Thank you for that,” she said, wishing he was in the room so she could kiss him. She annoyed herself with how easily she was falling for him again. But he really seemed sorry.

“When are you coming back?” Dennis asked. “I need you, babe.”

Maybe, Janine thought, this is a nudge from the universe after all . She’d tried to go it alone, and it hadn’t worked out. She had barely any usable footage, and rather than making the world a better place with her art, she’d succeeded only in becoming a magnet for death stares and Leave Bitch warnings, in making life worse for her Bleak Creek family members.