Sasquatch, Love, and Other Imaginary Things

by Betsy Aldredge

  When we were done with lunch, we hung out in her room. Halfway through our second made-for-television movie, Sophie fell asleep curled up in a ball. I pulled the covers over her, snuck out of the room, and closed the door behind me.

  I wandered into the now-empty living room and stared out the window. The storm had only gotten worse as the day had turned into afternoon. The wind pummeled the windows and the rain beat down on the roof like an endless drum roll. The mud puddles had become lakes. Even the sturdy trees looked like they could uproot at any moment.

  “You’re not going to be able to leave tonight,” Caroline stated, leaning in the doorframe from the other side of the room. I hadn’t noticed her come in. “Beth called. They’ve moved your family into a nearby hotel, but figured you’d rather stay with Sophie. They’re worried about mudslides.”

  “Oh.” Of all the effing luck. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than spending the night with these guys, other than staying in all that mud. “I hope Sasquatch knows how to swim.”

  Caroline raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me, and handed me back my hoodie. The sleeve was patched and mended so well it was almost like brand new. And she had washed it too.

  “Thank you.”

  “Whatever. You need to take better care of yourself,” she sighed before settling onto the couch with an issue of Scientific American. I turned back to the window, as Caroline started flipping through the magazine.

  “I guess they’ll have to postpone the next challenge, right?” I asked in a monotone voice.

  “I suppose. I hope this shoot doesn’t go over schedule too much, I’m supposed to meet my friends in Aspen. They have a house there.”

  “How nice,” I said, arranging my face into a neutral mask.

  “I’m trying to persuade Kyle to go, too. He loves it there and my friends adore him. I’ve been trying to set him up with my friend Elle. She speaks three languages and is majoring in biochem next year. And she’s gorgeous.”

  Boom. That was it. She wanted me to know that Sophie had competition. Caroline noticed how close Kyle and my sister were getting, and she was clearly trying to sabotage their possible romance. She wanted me to go back to my sister and tell her she didn’t have a chance. Screw that. Sophie may have only finished her freshman year at a state college, but she was kind and smart, and probably a lot more fun to hang out with than Caroline and her friends.

  I didn’t dignify Caroline with a response.

  This freaking storm needed to clear soon, so we could win our money and go home. I was more determined than ever to get my sister feeling better, and the two of us out of here, even if it took all the goddamned tea in the British Isles.

  For now, all I could do was wait. All afternoon, I paced around the house, like a miserable caged animal. Eventually, I settled into an armchair and out came my trusty paperback. But I had a hard time concentrating. Every time I heard a creak or a bump, I would glance up to see if it was Devan. I was curious to know if he had heard from his parents, and, I admitted to myself, to see if he was okay. Sophie wasn’t the only one who cared for wounded animals, even those that bit their handlers.

  I heard a door open in the hall, and my head involuntarily snapped up to see who it was. It was Kyle. He plopped himself down on the sofa next to my chair.

  “Hey Sam, how’s it going? Sophie asleep?”

  “Yeah, poor bunny. You okay? You look tired.” I hoped he wasn’t getting Sophie’s flu.

  “I’m fine.” Kyle straightened up in his seat. “Just been a long day. Devan finally heard back from his parents. They’re fine. Totally safe.”

  I exhaled and realized that I had been on edge all afternoon. “Oh good. I’m so relieved.”

  “Me too.” Kyle nodded. “I thought Dev was gonna lose it there for a while. He won’t admit it, but I think he was pretty scared.”

  “Jeez. Who wouldn’t be?”

  Kyle yawned and stood back up. “I guess I am tired. I’m gonna go to bed early.”

  I sat in the living room for a while longer, wondering if Devan would reappear, but soon my eyelids started to droop. The rhythm of the rain on the roof was mesmerizing and I was exhausted.

  In my sister’s room, someone—probably Devan, our perfect host—had left a pillow and blanket on the chair for me. Seriously, the guy could have opened a bed and breakfast. He thought of everything down to the extra toothbrush in the bathroom. I sat on the floor next to my sister’s bed and pulled the blanket over me. The floor was hard, but at least the cabin was dry and warm.

  Sophie stirred. “Sam, is that you?”

  “It better be, unless you’re sneaking boys in here,” I teased her.

  Sophie lifted a corner of the blanket. “Don’t sleep on the floor, come share the bed with me, like we used to at Grandma’s house.”

  I sighed, but climbed in, warmer and happier than I had been in days.

  Chapter 17

  “Every single state except for Hawaii has had sightings of Sasquatch. If we look at it logically, how can all those people be imagining it?”

  —Beth Randall, assistant producer, “Myth Gnomers”

  As cozy as Sophie’s bed was compared to the hard ground I had been sleeping on for days, I was restless. I was positive Caroline was up to no good, and determined to find out what it was. There was no way that gorgeous, snooty Caroline would ever make out with a creep like Jake unless she wanted something badly. I just needed proof.

  Finally, when the house was silent, I got up and pulled my newly mended black sweatshirt on, partly because I was cold and partly because it felt appropriate to wear black when conducting an illegal search.

  I tiptoed down the hall into the living room, ears perked for any noises. The lab seemed like the most logical place to keep evidence of illicit activities. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but I’d kick myself if I let this prime snooping opportunity pass. As I rifled through the stacks of papers and notebooks filled with numbers and formulas, I began to better understand how serious these guys were about their research. Everything was meticulously recorded. I had no idea what all the statistics indicated, or why there was an entire notebook full of phonetic notations, but it was fascinating and nerve-racking. We’d have to get equally hardcore to beat them.

  I would have kept looking if it weren’t for the loud, sudden howl, which jolted me out of my reading, making me stub my toe on the desk and hop away silently swearing.

  “What the hell was that?” I raced to the window but couldn’t see anything in the absolute darkness outside.

  The desperate howling erupted again, and by the sound of it, the beast was close by.

  Caroline rushed into the living room and moved to the window next to mine.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked. “A coyote?”

  She shook her head. “No, coyotes don’t howl like that,” she replied. “I’ve been analyzing audio recordings of animals as research for this project, and I’ve never heard any animal sound similar to this one.”

  It took me a second to realize that something was very different about Caroline, besides the fact that she wasn’t insulting me. She was wearing a fleece nightgown and sporting a retainer and ugly square glasses.

  My eyes widened in surprise. Caroline was a secret geek, trapped in a hot girl’s body. That explained a lot, really. Maybe she was just insecure.

  She caught me staring at her. “What the hell are you looking at? Yes, I wear glasses. Big freaking deal. We need to get a recording now.” She snapped her fingers in my face. “Pay attention.”

  She dashed into the dining room and started searching through equipment boxes.

  “Are you really thinking of going out there?” I asked.

  Caroline returned with a clunky piece of equipment that looked like something out of an older episode of Doctor Who. “Sure. We’ll just go out on the porch and set up the high-powered parabolic mic to record for the rest of the night.”

  The strange howling continued. “W
e? Are you kidding? I’m not going out there,” I blurted.

  “What? You’re scared?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was daring me or if she was surprised at my reaction. Either way, I was mostly just trying not to laugh at the way she said “scared” while wearing her retainer.

  I always considered myself fairly brave, but if there was a nice thick wall and a locked door between me and a hungry, hungry carnivore, I knew which side of the door I preferred.

  “No, just practical,” I said.

  Caroline held the recorder tight in her hand. “You don’t have to come,” she said. “But if you weren’t such a chicken, I’d ask you to keep lookout while I set this up. I’ll get one of the boys.”

  The superior sneer on her face was enough to make me want to let whatever was out there eat her and her parabolic mic. I knew I shouldn’t help the rival team, but I also thought Caroline was taking a big, unnecessary risk. And if tonight was the night Sasquatch decided to prove he was real, I wanted to be the first to see him.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “For the record, this is a goddamn awful idea, but I’m not in the mood to see you mauled by a mountain lion.”

  Caroline gave me a triumphant metallic smile, probably the first real smile I had seen from her since the contest started, but it promptly disappeared when the growls outside grew louder.

  I gazed at Kyle and Devan’s doors, wondering if they were too scared to come out of their rooms. Caroline followed my eyes.

  “They’re probably sleeping through the whole thing,” she sighed.

  “It’s getting closer,” I said, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “Do you have a tranq gun or any kind of weapon?”

  Caroline put the recording device on the table and backed up, all traces of confidence gone. “You really think we need a gun?” she asked.

  Duh. “That’s generally what ‘I’ll cover you’ means. How else would we fight off an attack?”

  “Well, maybe we should have the boys do this,” Caroline said. She removed the retainer and shoved it in her pocket.

  “Now who’s chicken?” I raised an eyebrow. “And seriously, of all the people in this cabin, who do you think has more experience with firearms? The boys may have taken fencing at Netherfield, but I doubt they brought their dainty swords with them.”

  Caroline and I shared a quick giggle. I could just imagine Devan and Kyle trying to fence with Bigfoot.

  “Point taken,” Caroline said. “We don’t have any sort of gun, but I can give you a baseball bat.”

  “You have thousands of dollars worth of fancy electronic equipment and not even a freaking BB gun? Okay,” I said, grabbing the bat. “Let’s do this quickly. Don’t close the door in case we need to rush back in.”

  I opened the front door and flicked on the porch light. Bat in hand, I took a few steps off the porch and scanned the surroundings. The rain had let up but the growling was closer than ever.

  Peering through the darkness, I squinted at the area surrounding the house to get my bearings. The underbrush at the edge of the clearing rustled, accompanied by the loudest howl yet. I glanced back at Caroline in the doorway and she too was staring at the spot in the bushes. She crept out on the porch to set up the mic. Hands shaking, she fumbled for a couple of moments, then mouthed “almost done” and got back to work on her task. I held my breath and planted my feet, ready to stand my ground.

  There was something giant and yellow out there. What the hell? I took a step closer not sure of what I was seeing. A human silhouette pushed through the trees, only twenty feet from where I was standing then turned in my direction. And waved.

  “Hey, Samantha!” it said in a singsong voice.

  It knew my name. I walked towards the figure and saw that the huge, yellow beast was actually Hal, the camera guy, in a really bright poncho, and with him was a big German shepherd.

  “We thought you were a bear!” I said to him, clutching my chest and breathing normally once again.

  “Is it the yellow poncho? Is it too Winnie-the-Pooh?” Hal asked as I climbed down the stairs to see him.

  I reached over and punched Hal on his beefy shoulder. “Not that kind of bear. We heard strange growling.”

  “Oh, that was Chewbacca.” He pointed at his dog, whose ears perked up when it heard its name. “Chewie hates going out in the rain and mud. Don’t ya, girl? She’s very vocal about it.”

  “Chewie’s a girl?”

  “Yup. I named her that because Star Wars rocks, of course, and also because of the noises she made as a puppy when you gave her a bone.” He noticed the baseball bat. “It’s a little muddy for baseball.”

  I blushed, “Oh, that was for the bear.”

  “Bears play baseball? Evolution moves fast around here,” he laughed.

  “No, it was more of a preventative measure. Never mind. What are you guys doing out so late at night?” I asked.

  “She’s an active dog but won’t go out in the rain, so I had to take her out the minute it let up a bit.”

  I laughed a little hysterically, relieved at the outcome of this odd night.

  Caroline let out a deep breath behind me. Clearly she was more nervous than she had let on.

  The dog sat at attention, but her wide, sad eyes begged for some affection. I reached down to pet her. “I can’t believe we thought you were a bear,” I said, and she wagged her tail, as steady and fast as an up-tempo metronome.

  “Chewie’s a total sweetheart, but definitely noisy. Aren’t you, sweetie?” Hal said to the dog in one of those cutesy voices reserved for pets and babies. She jumped up, covering him in mud with her filthy paws.

  “Oh, I should warn you,” Hal added. “Colin wants behind-the-scenes footage of you guys in the cabin waiting around, and of Sophie recovering and stuff. We’ll stop by in the morning and take some posed shots, if the storm lets us. I just wanted to give you the heads up. We’ll try to be as quick as possible. Unless you have steamy romantic stuff going on?”

  I scratched the dog’s ears. “I don’t think you’ll get anything more exciting than footage of the boys wrestling over the video game controllers.”

  Hal held up his hand in a Spock-like Vulcan salute. “Sorry to have scared you guys.” He looked at the dog. “Keep it down, Chewie.”

  Chewie let out one last bark. I swung the baseball bat onto my shoulder and walked back toward the cabin.

  “So I set all this up for some ridiculous dog?” Caroline asked when I got closer. She leaned on the doorway, her arms crossed. “Granted, that dog does have a very strange bark. I wonder . . .” Caroline froze midsentence.

  Sophie had come up behind her and stood with her mouth and eyes open wide in fear. She pointed behind me and not in a gentle “oh, hey, look here’s a pair of shoes you would like” way. It was more of a “oh my god, there’s a scary monster behind you” sort of gesture.

  I slowly turned around and two bright eyes in the darkness at the edge of the clearing were looking directly at me. This time I knew it wasn’t Hal and Chewbacca, who could be seen in the distance going in the opposite direction. Based on its height and bulk, I assumed it was a wolf.

  I backed away slowly, one foot at a time until the first porch step hit my ankle. I crept up the stairs, holding onto the railing with one hand, while keeping my eyes focused on the wolf. I was just two steps away from the safety of the house. Two steps until someone could hand me a huge cup of tea, and I would happily take it. I took one step, then felt a well-manicured hand pull me inside the cabin, then slam and lock the door.

  “Ouch!” I said, rubbing my arm. “Is that a French manicure or a claw?” I glared at my rescuer.

  “You’re welcome,” Caroline said, inspecting her nails. “You’re lucky I didn’t chip one.”

  I strained my neck to peer out the window, and imagined the wolf was laughing at us. Silly humans.

  “Thanks for your help tonight,” Caroline said, as she packed her microphone away. She looked me in the eyes, as if she were reco
nsidering her original assessment of me.

  “Any time,” I replied with a hollow laugh. “It was actually kind of fun, in a twisted way. Not that I would recommend wrestling with any other wild animals.” She shook her head and sauntered off to her room while I grabbed the walkie-talkie on the table and made sure Hal and Chewie were okay.

  Two seconds later, Sophie came into the room, gave me a hug, and sank into a kitchen chair.

  “You were supposed to stay in bed, Sophie,” I said.

  “You’re kidding, right? You almost got eaten by a wolf, and you’re worried about me getting out of bed?”

  “When you put it that way . . .” I laughed. “Can I get you anything?”

  “I fell asleep before I could take my medication, so maybe some orange juice and my pills from the bathroom?”

  “Sure thing. Just stay there. Don’t try to fight off any wild animals,” I said.

  Sophie attempted a thin-lipped smile, but it didn’t quite make its way to the rest of her sleepy face. Even her nose looked tired.

  I ran into Kyle on my way to the bathroom and started to laugh. His hair was going twelve different ways, none of them the right one. And I was giddy with adrenaline.

  He yawned. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Not unless you count finding Bigfoot, who ended up being a bear who actually was a German shepherd. Oh, and then, escaping from a hungry wolf. You know, average day.”

  “For who? Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood?”

  Kyle followed me back to the kitchen and sat next to Sophie while she took her pills. She leaned on him to stand, and he supported her by putting his arm around her waist.

  “Okay, back to bed with you,” I said, waving her off toward her bedroom.

  “Is she always this bossy?” Devan’s amused voice drawled behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t heard him come in.