“It’s going really well,” she answered, playing with a lock of hair and batting her eyelashes at him.
He leaned closer to her. “Not surprising. You’re a natural. You have a beautiful face for TV,” Jake said, although it wasn’t her face he was actually eyeballing, it was her ample chest again. “I’d be happy to show you some acting techniques, sometime.”
At that point, I had to step in. My sister was used to having guys throw themselves at her, but she was playing with fire this time. Jake was an overprivileged teen heartthrob who was used to getting everything he wanted, and I didn’t trust him, especially with her.
“Yeah, Jake, it’s great of you to offer to teach my much younger sister,” I said. “You do know Lyssa’s only fifteen, right?”
Lyssa flashed me a death-ray glare, which I ignored. “I’ll be sixteen in October, and Jake turned seventeen last March—I saw the feature about your birthday party on Celebrity Shindigs,” she said to Jake. “So awesome!”
She crossed her arms and turned back to me. “So Jake and I are only nineteen months apart. That’s not even two years, Sam.”
“Yeah, I can count, Lyssa.” I returned her glare and then said to Jake, “I just think Lyssa really needs to focus on helping her family win this competition.”
“No worries. Just being friendly.” Jake’s lips turned down slightly like I’d hurt his feelings. “But, if you need a break, let me know. You can come along, too, Sam, although, you don’t have the right kind of personality for TV, the way your sister does.”
“I think I will,” I said at the same time Lyssa said, “No! I don’t need a babysitter.”
Lyssa scowled at me. “God, Sam, you don’t even watch TV.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Yeah, boring sci-fi stuff from England and other crap. That’s not television,” she said.
I snorted in response. At this point, I knew I wasn’t going to convince Lyssa to step away from the loser. I decided to talk some sense into my mom later. Or maybe Sophie could help me put an end to Lyssa’s interest once and for all.
I glanced around for Sophie so we could coordinate our efforts, but she was busy talking and laughing with Kyle. Then I saw Devan crossing the lawn toward them. Oh, hell no. No way was I going to let him be rude to my sister.
Again, I found myself running interference for a sister. I jumped directly into Devan’s path. He skidded to a halt and stared down at me.
“Thanks,” I said with a grin.
“For what?” he asked. His eyebrows rose all the way up to his hairline.
“You were going to say congratulations, right?” Okay, so maybe Jake had a point about my personality.
Devan shook his head. “You win. Congratulations. I hope you enjoy your one victory because it’s not going to happen again.” He smiled, but it was a tight smile that didn’t make it past his curled lips. “And really, it shouldn’t have happened this time, either.”
What an ass. A delusional, arrogant ass.
“You’ve got to be kidding. We won. Easily.”
“Hardly,” he said, his smile growing, looking less nervous than on camera. “Even at crime scenes footprints are never the strongest evidence. What you found is purely B-level proof.”
Was he joking around? Was he gloating? I couldn’t read that smile, so I just waited for him to say more.
After a moment, his grin disappeared and he added, “But why would you know about forensic methods and scientific inquiry? Cryptozoology isn’t a real science.”
It’s one thing for me to make fun of cryptos, like my dad and his friends. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Devan trash-talk them. I opened my mouth to make a rebuttal, and a good one was forming in my brain, too, when Caroline came along and threw an arm around his shoulder. She barely gave me a passing glance.
“Dev, I need you to take a look at some DNA data with us. Unless, I’m interrupting something,” she said with a sickly-sweet tone. Her voice sounded honey-covered, but her cold grey eyes were like a swarm of bees ready to attack.
Devan hesitated like he was going to say something, but then thought against it. “I’m done here. Let’s go.”
Caroline’s calculating eyes shot me one more look over her shoulder before they turned and walked away, arm-in-arm.
Crap! Of course he would walk off before I came up with a response. My tongue was heavy and numb with words I should have said. I didn’t know why Devan was getting under my skin so much, but it had to stop. I needed to concentrate on the game; I couldn’t get distracted from my goal, no matter what.
We had won this time, but that didn’t mean I could relax.
Plus, I didn’t want to play nice anymore. It was no longer just about winning the money for college; I wanted to destroy them.
And I knew the best way to win was to throw them off the Bigfoot trail.
Chapter 9
“Trust me, you don’t want to be anywhere near an agitated Sasquatch. They have huge claws, and a great deal of strength. So I’ve been told.”
—Jake Stone, on his blog, “My Big Fat Bigfoot Adventure”
I made my way back to camp on autopilot. Visions of revenge danced in my head. But none of my ideas seemed practical or vengeful enough. Sure, it would be satisfying to give Devan a Bigfoot-sized kick in the ass, but I needed to get him where it would really hurt—his pride.
A plan began to take shape in my mind, but I realized I was out of my depth. I wasn’t devious enough. I had to enlist an expert.
Lyssa was lounging in her skimpy shorts on a beach towel by the water when I found her.
“You do realize it’s overcast, right?” I asked. “And you’re under a blanket of trees? And that tanning not only leads to skin cancer, but gives you premature wrinkles?”
She peered at me over her sunglasses and blew out a sigh. “I know. I was super bored. I miss reality television. And just plain reality, too.”
“If you’re that bored, you could always read a book.” I sat next to my sister, forcing her to make room on the towel for me. “Dad has some stuff on Sasquatch legends, or I could hook you up with this epic fantasy about trolls and goblins competing for land in Medieval Norway.” Lyssa rolled her eyes, and lifted her face to absorb the few pathetic rays.
I glanced at her sideways and dropped the bait. “Or . . . you could help me get back at the other team for being jerkwads.”
Lyssa sat up and took off her sunglasses. “What did you have in mind?”
I was glad she didn’t ask what sort of jerkwadery they had committed, because despite her crunchy chocolate exterior, Lyssa had a soft center and could be very sensitive. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her what Caroline and Devan had said about us. I was the only one allowed to say snarky things about my family, damn it.
I leaned closer to her. “I want to make them fall for fake clues, and send them on a wild goose chase. It will involve some creativity and some sneaking around. Do you think you can help me?”
“Oh, puh-leeease,” Lyssa cackled. “I was skipping gym by ten years old, unwrapping and rewrapping Hanukkah presents by eleven, and sneaking out of the house by thirteen. You’ve come to the right girl. I may not care about Sasquatch one way or the other, but sneaking around is my jam.” Lyssa beamed.
I should have known she would be excited about causing some mischief.
She chewed the bottom of her lip as she thought. “So, what’s the plan?” Lyssa asked. “Too bad Dad didn’t bring the Bigfoot costume that he wears every Halloween.”
Scratching the back of my neck, I pondered the possibilities. “I think I’d like to start with something subtler. They’re academic types, so we need to be smart about our strategy.”
We both sat in silence for a couple of minutes, trying to devise the right plan to trick them. Finally, we came up with an idea plausible enough that it could work.
“How about claw marks in the trees?” Lyssa suggested. “They’ll be looking for something like that, ri
ght? We just need a hammer and some nails to design a claw.”
“Ooh that’s good.” I jumped off the blanket and paced. “And maybe some really fake tracks. Devan was so dismissive of our footprint casting, but I don’t think he’d be able to tell a real animal track from a sneaker tread. I would love to see him present some super fake, bogus prints and have the judges put him in his place.”
“Works for me.” Lyssa shrugged. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
Wow, that was easy.
I spoke too soon.
Lyssa scrunched up her nose. “Um, I hate to ask this, but won’t we get disqualified?”
I stopped pacing and ran my fingers through my hair, forming a messy bun. “Not if we don’t get caught. If we do, we can just call it a practical joke. There’s nothing in the rule book against that.” Besides, we weren’t the only ones bending the rules of this game. Whatever it was Caroline was doing had to be just as bad.
Lyssa grinned and stood, too, brushing the pine needles off her legs. “So when do we start?”
“I don’t want Mom and Dad, or Sophie to be implicated in this,” I said. “They probably wouldn’t think it was funny, or, you know, ethical to punk the other team like this. We’ll just sneak out the materials, and do it tonight. How does that sound?”
My sister pulled me toward her for a huge hug. “I’ve never been so proud of you.”
“For standing up for our family?” I asked.
“I meant for coming up with such an awesome plan, but yeah, for standing up for our family, too,” Lyssa said. “Mom and Dad are total weirdoes, but they’re our weirdoes and no one messes with them and gets away with it. Right?”
For once I couldn’t have agreed with my sister more.
The afternoon went off perfectly. Our parents were making lovey-dovey eyes over their map of the property and barely noticed when we snuck off with a backpack full of supplies and a sorry-ass excuse about getting familiar with the terrain to prepare for the next challenge.
We found some thick branches and took turns hammering the nails in at different angles to approximate claws. Then I cut two footprints out of thick cardboard, one left, one right, and zip tied them to the bottoms of a pair of flip flops.
“Wow, those look wild,” Lyssa said. “Think they’ll work?”
I stomped around in the shoes. “No one with any kind of tracking skills would believe they were real,” I said, “But if the jackasses fall for it, it’ll be the most epic prank ever.”
“What do we do now?” Lyssa asked.
I grabbed my Swiss Army knife and swung the tool open to the tweezers. “We just wait until everyone’s sleeping,” I said. “Then your part comes in. The sneaky part.”
The next several hours dragged. Eventually the sun began to set, and the bats started fluttering from tree to tree. Marshmallows were roasted and the food hung back up high, away from the bears. Mom and Dad said goodnight and turned in, but Lyssa and I pretended we were really excited about staying up late and telling each other ghost stories. We had purposefully chosen something Sophie wouldn’t be into.
Right on cue, Sophie yawned and said, “I think I’ll go to bed too. We have to be up so early tomorrow.” She crawled into the tent, leaving Lyssa and me to go over the rest of our plan in hushed voices. About an hour later, snores shook my parents’ tent. I stuck my head into our tent to make sure Sophie, too, was out cold. We were in the clear.
Lyssa and I had both dressed in dark jeans earlier that evening, so all we had to do was grab our black hoodies and our sabotage gear and sneak away without waking anyone up.
Once the fire was out, the sky was darker than I had thought it would be. The cloud cover was thick and wouldn’t let any of the stars twinkle through. I had no idea what phase the moon was in, but even if it had been full, we’d never know.
We couldn’t turn on our flashlights until we were far enough away that we wouldn’t be seen, so we tiptoed carefully past our parents’ tent and deeper into the woods. We had just about made it to the tree line when Lyssa stepped on a twig, breaking it with a loud snap. We both jumped.
“Ouch! Sorry.” she whispered.
“It’s okay. I think we’re good,” I said in a more normal voice. “Turn on the flashlight.”
“Got it.” Lyssa held the flashlight under her chin. It made her look like an especially evil Jack O’Lantern, but at least I could see her.
“That twig you stepped on gave me a great idea,” I said. “Why don’t we break some big sticks near the claw prints, to make them think the Squatch did it?”
The wicked grin on Lyssa’s face almost made me reconsider completing our mission. Lyssa’s morals didn’t always mirror mine. And Devan had promised to play fair.
But then I remembered the hurtful things they’d said about the people I loved. And Caroline’s cheating. My sense of righteousness came back full force. I shook the doubt away, and we crept toward the spot we’d designated for our trap. It was close enough to the cabin that the brainiacs would find it, and far enough away that they couldn’t hear or see us setting up the scene.
“Okay, we’re here,” I dropped my backpack.
I took out the thermal scanner and did a quick survey of the area. We wouldn’t want to be surprised by a big mammal . . . or the other team. I didn’t know which would be worse. If I had thought to borrow my dad’s tranquilizer gun, I could shoot a ferocious beast if absolutely necessary, but I didn’t feel right about shooting Devan, as much as I’d have liked to. A tranq dart to the ass might have been exactly what he needed.
I caught sight of something huge on the thermal, and for a moment my heart was in my throat. I grabbed Lyssa’s arm and she tensed, too. We held our breath as we watched the orange blob that indicated body heat move on the display. Then, the creature turned to the side and the silhouette became clearer. Phew. Just a deer.
Once our heart rates returned to normal, we jumped up and down together on a big branch we found on the ground nearby. It made a surprisingly loud crack. We froze, and waited to make sure no one was around to hear. I scanned with the thermal again.
“We’re good. Let’s do a few smaller twigs,” I said. Lyssa broke up some more branches, while I put on the footprint flip-flops and stomped around in the dirt. I leapt from one foot to the other, trying to mimic the long strides of a Sasquatch. Then, to approximate where a six or seven foot beast would claw a tree, we scraped the nails of our homemade claw across the trunks of two trees. We took a step back to admire our work.
“Should we do more?” I asked, a little out of breath.
“No. We don’t want to be too obvious,” Lyssa replied. “We need them to feel proud, like they really found something. It’ll be more fun to watch the judges deflate them.”
Apparently, my baby sister could be really analytical when it came to crime sprees. If only she put that kind of thought process into real science.
“Good point,” I nodded, taking a sip of water from my canteen.
Then, as Lyssa was putting the claw back in the bag, she cut her finger. “Ow! Ow!” She was trying not to yelp, but her blood glittered in the dark.
“Good thing we’re not hunting vampires, huh?” I gently took her hand in mine and turned it over and back, examining the cut. One thing we didn’t bring was the first aid kit, but the wound didn’t look bad enough that it couldn’t wait until we got back to camp. And bonus: we were wearing black, so the blood wouldn’t stain.
“I’m going to get tetanus and die,” she whined.
I took a bandana from my back pocket and wrapped it around her finger, elevating her hand. “No you’re not—that’s why we had to get those shots before we came here.”
Suddenly, she stopped whining and started grinning. “What do you say about adding some Bigfoot DNA to the mix?” Lyssa asked, wiggling her bloody finger.
I had to hold my hand in front of my face to keep from laughing loudly. “That’s both disgusting and brilliant. You heard Caroline. Their equ
ipment here is sub-par. Without their fancy labs, they won’t be able to tell it’s your blood for days.” If beauty pageants included a Faking Crime Scenes competition, my sister would have been crowned by now.
“Don’t overdo it,” I said. “Drop a few spots of blood on the ground, on a leaf, so they can see it and take it with them, then another couple on the tree with the claw marks.”
Lyssa followed directions like a champ, then wrapped the bandana around her finger again until the bleeding stopped.
“Ah, quality family time.” I smiled. “Other families go bowling or play board games, but we’ll always have subterfuge and searching for mythical animals.” And despite my grumbling, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Chapter 10
“I’m a little biased, but I’d like to think Sasquatch could take the Yeti in a fight. Unless they were fighting in cold weather, in which case I guess the Yeti would have the advantage.”
—Lyssa Berger, contestant, “Myth Gnomers”
Despite the enticing aroma of coffee wafting into our tents, neither one of us had any desire to get up the next morning. The nefarious events of the evening before had taken their toll.
“Do you think this is how Peter Parker felt?” I whispered to Lyssa as we groggily tromped down the trail to base camp for our 7:30 a.m. call. “He’d be out all night fighting crime, and then have to wake up in the morning and go to school.”
“My Spidey sense says he’d feel better after he had his coffee.” Lyssa yawned loudly.
“You actually made a comic book reference. Aw, you do listen to me.”
“No, I made a cute boy reference. Hey, isn’t the new Spider-Man actor British, too?”
“Yeah, I guess. Why?”
“I saw how you and Devan were talking yesterday. And eyeing each other across the set.” Lyssa grinned.
“You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t stand him. At all. He has so little personality, and what he does have is bad.” My voice rose in defense, which wasn’t helping my case. “Why else would I run around in the dead of night?” I lifted my eyebrows to show her that I meant what I was saying. Really, I did.
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