Yeah! Chapter three! We're getting there! *headbangs* Okay, okay, so we're onto the part where they go to the library and secrets get revealed.
Middlington Library was the second largest building in town; the first being the museum. The library had information you would need and where to find it. To Carla, this was the perfect place. For this though, they would have to look in the archives for any records.
Carla consulted the librarian for anything from fourteen years ago. Specifically old newspapers. The librarian came back with a few boxes of documents. From there, the three girls started their research.
"Say Creepie." Carla said as a conversation starter. "Have you ever wondered whether your real parents might be...?"
"Dead or alive?" Creepie filled in. This finishing-each-other's-sentences routine has got to stop.
"Yeah." Carla ventured. "Have you ever thought about that?"
"Well, I did." Creepie replied. "And I've come up with a bunch of explanations." She cleared her mind. "If my real parents were alive, they would've come back for me already."
"That's true." Carla smiled.
"And if they were dead?" Melanie pried.
"If they were dead..." Creepie didn't want to say it but she had to anyways. "Then they must've had a good reason for leaving me at Dweezwold Mansion." She looked away, eyes gazing at the carpet floor.
As Carla paged through a box of old documents she got ready to ask another question. "So...how's life with the bugs? They don't crawl on you or anything when you sleep, right?"
"My mom forbade them from crawling around me." Creepie answered automatically. Quick and straight to the point.
"And what are the upsides of being raised by bugs?" Melanie asked, careful to not raise her voice.
"Well, you get to learn something new everyday." said Creepie, swinging her foot back and forth. "It's kind of different than the norm. I mean, everybody's in it together."
"And the downsides?" Carla interjected.
That was the hard part. The question that left Creepie with a thousand answers.
"Well, I can't eat the same food they eat." she said. "When I was little I thought I could climb the walls like my cockroach friends." She smiled kind of sheepishly, remembering that moment. "Being the biggest means I can't crawl throughout small spaces that most can squeeze through."
Melanie pulled out a piece of paper and looked it over. "No." She put it back in the box after noticing it wasn't what she was looking for. "How long are we gonna stay here? There's a sale at the shoe store, and I have my eyes set on these cute pink pumps with bows."
"We'll stay here as long as it takes." Carla replied. "This is the time when research is more important than shopping."
"More important than the pumps?" Melanie asked innocently.
"More important."
Melanie slumped in her seat.
"I'm kind of impressed." said Creepie, looking at Melanie and Carla. "I never though you'd help me out with something like this. I'd expect this from Budge or Chris-Alice."
"This is just my way of paying you back for helping me beat Regina." said Carla. "Speaking of which, what happened to her?"
"Oh," said Creepie. "Funny you should ask. I kind of cornered her in the hall and threatened to spray her with your hairspray—that I disguised as a can of bug spray."
"So what happened?" Carla asked, intrigued.
"I didn't spray her." the goth girl said. "I only threatened. What happened was she was actually a human bee hybrid. 'Regina' was just a disguise."
"Whoa. That's intense," commented Carla.
"I kind of miss Regina." said Melanie. "She was really fashionable and chic."
"And you miss her making all your decisions for you?" Creepie jumped in. "Having you betray your best friend and lose sight of what's important?"
Melanie's face fell. "Yeah, I don't miss that." She smiled awkwardly. Creepie smirked.
Another moment of silence swept over them.
"Hey, Creepie, I've been wondering," asked Carla suddenly. "What are you gonna do when you go off to college? Have you thought of a plan?"
"I want to study entomology." Creepie answered with no thought at all. "And I know it would involve traveling to other places to discover new breeds of bugs. If you're wondering what would become of my house and my family... Well, I don't want to think about that. It always gets too conflictive."
Carla kind of half-heartedly expected that. But she couldn't imagine going through all the trouble of having to protect her bug family from exterminators.
"I have another question." Carla said. "What would happen if your bug family was fumigated? Where would you go?"
"Well, I know that child services won't hesitate to take me away." Creepie said. "If that ever happens, I'll get out of there before child services finds me."
"Wow." Carla uttered.
"Are you going to tell Chris-Alice?" Melanie inquired. "I mean, if you told her once and she thought you were crazy, then if you tell her again when she's calmed down then—"
"I'm not going to tell her." Creepie responded. "I'm not going to put her through that again, I mean, you should've seen how she was when she saw me talking to the woodworms." She ran a hand through her multicolored hair. "I...I thought she would understand." She closed her eyes in resolve. "But I was wrong."
"Jeez." Carla said.
"Well, I do kind of think Chris-Alice is hard to talk to." Melanie said.
"Yeah, and trying to get her to sit still." Carla commented. "That's the hard part."
"I know, right?" Creepie jeered. "I mean, is she trying to annoy us on purpose?"
"Yeah."
The three shared a laugh when a librarian walked past them and shushed them.
"Sorry," said Carla, smiling uncomfortably.
The librarian gave them another glance before drifting off to continue her book sorting.
"Okay, enough chitchat, let's keep searching." Carla said, matter-of-factly.
"Hey, I think I found something." Melanie said, pulling out of sheet of newspaper.
"Let me see." Carla said. Melanie handed Carla the newspaper and looked it over. "Hmm."
"What's it say?" Creepie whispered.
"The headline says, 'COUPLE RAN OVER, DIED ON SCENE'." Carla flipped the paper over, skimming a few passages.
"Well, read it." Melanie urged.
"It says that the driver claimed he didn't see them," said Carla, reading off the page. "You'd think he'd be stupid enough not to see them. I mean, how does that even happen?"
"Carla." Melanie and Creepie said at the same time.
"Right, sorry." Carla chuckled. She looked back at the newspaper clipping and continues, her eyes darting from left to right, fast. She skipped the dull part and got to the interesting stuff.
"Well, it says that they took to the bodies to the morgue," said Carla. "And upon further examining, the pathologist confirmed that the woman looked like she had just had a baby."
Creepie eyes bulged. Melanie's jaw wanted to drop but it was like her face was frozen.
"A...baby?" Creepie croaked.
"Yeah," said Carla, skimming the paper. "It says that they never found the baby she had, but they must believe it's with another family."
"Did it say where they were buried?" Creepie asked. "Is there a name; did they mentioned the couples' names?"
"Hold on, I'm getting to that." Carla skimmed through the page to the important part. "Ah! Here it is."
"What's it say?" Creepie said with bated breath.
"It says here that the name of the couple was..."
"Yeah?"
Melanie leaned closer in eagerness.
"Their names were Edward and Lilith Timsin."
Okay, so, remember on "Home is Where The Haunt Is"? Well, all will be explained in the next chapter, so don't go away. ;)