The one time Kat did speak was when they passed a tree, and even with the moss and the memory of that night of terror, they both recognized the way its trunk was braided — it was the hollow tree they had crawled in when they first ran from the bear.
From the werebear.
“We’re close,” Kat said.
Sure enough, after a while, the ranger’s cabin came into view, and beyond it the black asphalt river of the road, ordered by a bank of dark green laurel bushes. The cabin looked exactly as it had when they’d first come upon it — garage open, mud-splattered blue truck parked inside, the wooden frame of the screen door fixed back into place. Just as they passed it, the front door opened.
Ranger Pat stepped onto his porch, buttoning a flannel shirt over a hairy bare chest. Even from the bottom of the hill, it was clear he looked awful — like he hadn’t slept in days, a fresh lawn of whiskers on his face, a stupor across his eyes.
“Shall we go ask for his number?” Miranda teased.
Kat laughed. “I think he’s been through enough this weekend.”
Her mother kept walking, but Miranda watched the ranger for another moment before she followed.
What was she looking for, exactly? A lingering detail, an untransformed bit of ear or muzzle or fur? Tendrils of wet hair, still dripping from his plunge into the falls?
Any of these could be easily explained through logic — wet hair could just be from a shower. A patch of fur could be a spot of stubble he missed while shaving. An ear could be a snarl of hair.
But she was searching for something. Something to make her believe.
Something to make it easy.
“Bean?” Kat called, and Miranda ran to catch up with her.
She’d never know for sure, and that was okay.
Along the road they walked, and then there it was, the Critter Mobile. The rundown, rust-covered van was an embarrassment, a thorn in Miranda’s side when it was parked in the school pickup zone, but right now, she was weak with happiness to see it — wagging tongue and all.
“Good,” Kat said. “It’s still standing.” She patted the hood and the driver’s side window slid down an inch, like it always did.
Miranda opened the passenger door. There was her notebook on the seat, filled with schemes, plans, lists for this weekend, which had really boiled down to one giant task: convince her mother there was no Bigfoot.
She flipped through the pages.
Get Mom to quit her monster hunting
Find Mom a new job
Pay the bills
All of these were things that did not belong on her to-do list. Not anymore. Not ever. They were beyond her control, beyond her jurisdiction, and so she let them slip out of her grasp and blow away, leaves in the wind.
Kat squeaked open her door and got into the front seat, which still made a fart sound when she sat. “You ready to get out of here?”
“We’re still out of gas,” Miranda pointed out.
Kat was about to answer when someone knocked on Miranda’s window.
She shrieked.
A tall woman waved, a white baseball cap smashing down her curly blonde hair. “Katerina Cho?” she said through the glass. About seven other people crowded behind her, holding various equipment — a boom stick, a light on a pole, a couple of cameras.
Miranda spotted the silhouette of a lurching monkey-man with dragging knuckles embroidered on the front of the woman’s cap, and her stomach fell off a cliff.
Oh, no.
The tentacle.
Kat opened her door. “I’m Kat Cho.”
“Oh, thank goodness you’re still here! We thought we’d missed you, but then we saw the car, and we knew — this has to be the writer of the famous Bigfoot Files!” The woman extended a hand through the open door and shook Kat’s vigorously. “Anyway, I’m Alison — we spoke on the phone? We’re so excited to have you be part of the show!”
Miranda reached up and pulled out a gold hair — even with all these people here, she yanked one out. She had to. She couldn’t breathe.
“Sorry, what’s happening?” Kat said.
“I’m the one who called you,” Miranda blurted. “I’m her daughter. Mom, I’m so sorry! I —”
Alison passed Kat a manila folder. “A mother/daughter segment. Perfect. I love it. These are your nondisclosure agreements, your safety waivers, and your humiliation clauses —”
“Humiliation clauses?” Miranda repeated.
“You release us from any psychological damage, real or imagined, that comes as a result of being a guest on our show,” Alison recited carelessly with a bit of an eye roll. “And you give us the right to cut the raw footage as we see necessary — even if this excludes actual events that transpired that would have otherwise portrayed you in a ‘positive’ light.” She made air quotes around the word positive, and suddenly Miranda understood: it was a document that gave them the right to embarrass their guests.
“If you don’t sign, we can’t air your footage,” she finished.
Kat was bewildered. “Footage of what?”
“We’ll have plenty of time to go over the paperwork after we film,” Alison said. “Joe, let’s get them rolling — I want a shot of this car.” She stifled a laugh as she surveyed the Critter Mobile, nudging the tongue on the bumper with her shoe. “This is fantastic — did you get it done just for us? Who’d you get to do this?” She jotted a note on her hand.
“Are you reporters?” Kat asked.
But Alison had nonstop momentum in conversations — honestly, she was worse than Kat. “Are you excited for the big hunt today? Are you feeling lucky?”
Miranda scrunched down in her seat.
“You looking for hair samples? Or footprints? Or wood knocking?” Alison went on. “Last week we interviewed someone who says Bigfoot is shocking people now — with lightning powers, or electromagnetic fields, or something.” She laughed, a twitchy, birdlike sound that disappeared as quickly as it had come on. “Anything at all that you’ve got, we’re ready for it.”
Miranda sank lower and lower with every word Alison said — her neck compressing into her back, her back compressing directly into the seat. What had she done?
Her mother, surprisingly, kept her cool. Her smile looked like the smile Miranda wore for school — a false one, controlled and calm. “Let me just speak with my daughter for one second,” she said, “and then we’ll be out.”
“Guys,” Alison was saying to her crew as Kat shut her door. “Make sure we get plenty of shots of the daughter rolling her eyes — you know, just as she described it: ‘tortured teen dragged along against her will . . .’ ”
Kat stared at the steering wheel. A crisp brown leaf landed on the windshield, its tips frosted.
“Is that who I think it is?”
Miranda took in a breath. “Mom —”
Kat snorted. “You really did think of everything.”
Miranda closed her eyes. “Yes, it’s Bigfoot Bozos. I’m so sorry.”
“How did they find us?” Kat asked.
This was going to be difficult. And painful.
“I e-mailed them,” Miranda confessed, “and pretended to be you. I told them you would be looking for Bigfoot at Fable Falls this weekend.”
Guilt hollowed her out, made her naked and raw, all her mistakes laid bare.
She had no idea she was capable of such cruelty.
“Why would you do that?” Before Miranda could respond, Kat answered herself: “I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I know this is what you think of me.”
Miranda’s old instincts flared up, the instinct to bark, to talk back, to wrestle her way out of this situation with words. Possible justifications came to her — this was a show for people who believe in Bigfoot, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that a perfect description of Kat Cho? Someone who believed in the impossible?
“I just wanted you to see yourself the way the world sees you,” Miranda admitted in a tiny voice. “I wanted you to stop being like this
and start acting normal.”
“Normal,” Kat repeated. “What does that even mean, normal?” She could hear in her voice the weariness of someone who had been combating that word all her life. “Normal, like a mom on television who wears a pastel apron and has pot roast on the table by six?”
“No,” Miranda said. “Of course not.”
“Normal, like one of your friends’ moms? Emma’s mom?”
Miranda’s throat tightened — how did she know?
“What does that even mean, normal?” she went on. “I’m your mom, Bean, but I’m also a person.”
The hurt Miranda had caused her mom this weekend — all of it paraded through her mind, ugly-toothed and sharp-clawed — running away from the campfire, scaring her mother enough to take years off her life. Smashing the footprint near the stream, stomping Kat’s hopes down into the mud.
Tantrum after tantrum. Eye roll after eye roll.
Inviting herself on this trip in the first place, inserting herself in her mother’s business, then manipulating it all to go her own way — how could she ask her mother to be normal when she herself wasn’t even in the neighborhood?
“You know,” Kat said, “when I was a kid, I used to think the same thing about my mom. ‘Why can’t she be normal?’ And now look at us. My mom and I don’t even talk anymore. Not really.”
“Please,” Miranda whispered. “Tell me how to make this right.”
“I’m sorry, Bean. I can’t give it to you. I’ll never be able to give you normal.” Her star-eyes glittered, her face shining. “But I can give you something else.”
Without warning, she opened her door and climbed out of the Critter Mobile. “All right! It’s showtime!”
“What are you doing?” Miranda scrambled out behind her.
“Who’s ready to find Bigfoot?” Kat called. “Today’s the day. I can feel it!”
“Camera!” Alison motioned to her crew to move in, putting her headset into place.
“Let’s go find him!” And before Miranda could undo the terrible mess she’d orchestrated for her mother, Kat led the crew away from the road and back into the forest — back toward the reservoir, the waterfall, and the odd nest in the cave.
Off to share her biggest, most important secret with people paid to destroy it.
As soon as the cameras rolled, Alison stopped her rapid-fire blabbing. She scribbled notes on her hand, and occasionally ordered one of her cameramen to film Kat at a certain angle, or change their focus, or capture a spiraling shot of the canopy above as famed Bigfoot finder Katerina Cho led the group through the thicket.
The three cameramen did a strange dance as they walked, twisting around to get Kat at different angles: up close, from a distance, from the side. They never spoke, their choreography already solidified into habit — but then Miranda had seen the show enough times to know these men were pros at getting what they needed from people like her mother. They knew exactly how to make her look million-dollar ridiculous.
Now that the curtain had been stripped away, Miranda no longer thought the show was entertaining, harmless fun. Alison was now a vulture who preyed on people like her mom — regular people who chose to see the little bits of magic that the rest of the world ignored.
How could Miranda have ever thought Bigfoot Bozos would be her savior?
“Bigfoot is usually nocturnal,” Kat explained to the cameras, “but recent evidence has led scientists to believe he could be evolving to a daylight routine . . .”
Alison listened intently as Kat talked on and on, and for a moment Miranda’s heart held itself still for joy — Kat was definitely better-spoken and more engaging than most of the people usually featured on the show. Was Alison actually finding herself interested? Convinced?
Then she spotted the glance shared between Alison and the guy holding the boom stick. Pure mockery in their smiles, cold laughs ready to tumble out. How many times had she had that same look in her eye? Miranda considered this with a cringe, and her heart released the hope that this could turn out okay, and away it flapped.
Whether or not Kat was converting anyone, she was nevertheless engaging. Miranda found herself mesmerized as Kat spoke, even though she’d heard all of it before — Kat was really good in front of the camera. Really, really good. A lifetime of nonstop talking, countless public speaking engagements, and years of crafting enchanting bedtime stories for her daughter had trained her so well for this type of thing.
What if Mom looked for a job incorporating this skill?
What if she could narrate movies, or commercials, or audiobooks?
The idea hit Miranda’s mind like lightning —
What if she could teach?
Not just an odd class here or there at cryptozoology conventions —
What if she could be a professor?
She always loved teaching at her conferences — people sitting through her lectures and then still asking questions, still wanting to know more — and maybe teaching could give her the validation she craved so badly. The things Miranda had never been able to give in the way she needed them.
It wasn’t a fix to their immediate problems. It would take years to fix those, especially if Kat kept creature hunting on the side. Kat would have to figure it out — and Miranda would have to let her — but if Kat was interested, Miranda could help her look at college applications when they got home. It was an option. A possible career — one that could incorporate all of Kat’s passions and skills: public speaking, education, biology, cryptozoology.
“And of course, we can test this theory by making our own knocking sound.” Kat banged two sticks together. “An intermittent rhythm is best to mimic —” She cut herself off and lunged for the base of the closest pine. “Look at this!” she cried. “Do you know what this is?”
She reached down with her sticks, crossing them to scoop up her exciting find — poop.
“Mammal scat,” she said to the camera. “See the ridges? That’s from the intestines of a large biped. An omnivore, by the look of the undigested grass.” Her face glowed as she leaned forward and — Miranda grimaced — sniffed the small pile. “Yes. This is it. Bigfoot scat.” She grinned right into the camera, radiating energy.
Alison and the cameramen, too, beamed excitement in waves. It was ratings gold and they were lapping it up like ravenous cats.
Miranda winced as she anticipated the memory — Emma’s face when Kat held up the white paper sack of poop, the sound of the front door shutting behind her —
But the forest didn’t dip down into Miranda’s mind and pull out this memory for her to relive; it let her be. It kept it for itself.
Kat set down the sticks and the scat, and as she tucked her hair behind her ear, she winked at her daughter.
Then Miranda understood.
Kat was overdoing it on purpose. Hamming it up for the camera.
Giving Alison exactly what she wanted.
But why?
Why was she acting like such a . . . for lack of a better term . . . a Bigfoot bozo?
“That scat was fresh — we must be getting close.” Kat led the crew through the trees. In a few hours, they’d hear the faint rush of the falls, the chittering of the goldfinches.
Kat would lead them to the rocky cavern behind the waterfall, and the cameras would devour it all — the cavern, the nest of sticks, the rodent skeletons . . .
And if there was an appearance from the big hairy ape man himself . . . well, maybe Kat would get her validation as a cryptozoologist after all. Every wildlife explorer in the world would be begging her to be their guide.
But Kat changed direction, pivoting away from the falls and the reservoir, so they were parallel to the road again.
Where was she going? Why wasn’t she leading them back to Bigfoot?
This was her big chance, her moment to show everyone that he was real, that she had accomplished the impossible, and everyone who had ever laughed at her was wrong.
If it were Miranda, she would ha
ve done anything to prove she was right.
Kat stopped. “Do you hear it?” she whispered. “There.” She pointed at a hawthorn bush, flanked by two ancient pine giants, and the leaves shook.
Miranda’s pulse jumped.
“This is it,” Kat said. “He’s right . . . in . . . there . . .”
“Slow down — we’re in black bear territory . . .” Alison kept her eyes on the hawthorn bush, her smile gone.
Was Kat really about to make two Bigfoot sightings in one day? Miranda wanted to puff up in pride for her mother, but instead she crumbled — how could she have ever doubted her?
The bushes trembled again, and Kat yelped, grabbing her thigh like something had bit her. “Ouch!”
Alison yelped, too. “What, Cho? What is it?”
“I don’t . . .” Kat inched closer to the bush, then cried out again. “He zapped me!”
Any fear Miranda had melted away.
Zapping was a Bigfoot theory that had floated around in the last few years — the idea that Bigfoot manipulates his electromagnetic fields to disorient prowlers — and Kat hated it. She thought it was one of the most absurd things she’d ever heard. “This is supposed to be science!” she always said. “How would Bigfoot have any kind of thermal regulator? These people are drinking beer too close to their bug zappers.”
Something had to be pretty absurd if even Kat found it far-fetched.
“Ow! Ow!” Kat slapped the back of her neck, dancing around as if invisible hornets swarmed.
The cameras captured it all — a fine performance, if a bit dramatic. But then again, this was exactly the kind of over-the-top nonsense this show’s viewers craved.
But it was not at all representative of the real work required for this job. Miranda could acknowledge that now. Cryptozoology required fortitude. Resilience. The strength to keep going even when no one believed a word you said, when the world told you that you were ridiculous.
To keep going even when your own daughter called you ridiculous.
The bushes rustled again. Kat stood back, bracing for the big reveal.
“Everyone stay calm,” she warned. “Large animals can smell your fear.”
The Bigfoot Files Page 23
