“A bear with opposable thumbs?” Tobin says sarcastically. “You need opposable thumbs to throw rocks, you know.”
“It’s okay. That’s a fair question, Lemonade.” Mr. Harold turns to me. “I would ask the same thing if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“How do you know for sure it was a Bigfoot, is what I’m asking, Mr. Harold?”
“It was close. I mean real close. I suppose that’s why he threw the rocks. He got scared seeing me near him like that. Anyway, that thing was closer than I ever want to see it again. And let me tell you, I saw everything. And I know it wasn’t a bear.”
“What about a man in a costume?”
“Lemonade!” Tobin hollers.
“It’s okay, Tobin,” Mr. Harold says. “I think a true scientist has to rule out everything. Those questions are all questions I asked myself.”
“And what did you answer yourself?” I ask.
“It wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t a costume. It was real. Really real. It was a Bigfoot. It was an animal for sure, and none I’ve ever seen before.”
“But what makes you so absolutely sure you saw what you think you saw?” I ask.
“We were eye to eye. I saw his facial features. There was skin and hair and brown eyes. It wasn’t a mask. And when he stood up to throw that rock and then run, I could make out the muscles underneath his coat of fur. Large muscles you could see with every movement.”
“Wow,” Tobin breathes, frantically scribbling on his yellow pad.
“And there was this smell, too…” Mr. Harold stares off in the direction of the pasture again.
“Skunk?” Tobin asks.
“Exactly right. At first I thought there must have been a skunk somewhere near, but it was him. When he ran off, I knew it was him.”
“Were you scared, Mr. Harold?” I ask.
“Yes, I was scared. I’m not going to lie. I was scared because he was scared, and you never know what an animal will do when it’s acting on fear alone.”
“Yes, sir,” I tell him.
“And he was big, too. Bigger than any bear I’ve ever seen.”
“Mr. Harold,” Tobin says. “Can you remember anything else? Anything else you might have left out?”
“His face had a wrinkled nose, kind of like a chimp or gorilla might have, with that same reddish hair on his face and the same color skin. Reddish brown…and there’s one more thing I can say for absolute sure…”
Tobin looks up from his pad.
“Yes?”
Mr. Harold leans in close to us.
“He wasn’t alone.”
“That’s an incredible sighting!” Charlie exclaims from his stool behind the counter when we get to Bigfoot Souvenirs and More. “Did you find any prints or hair evidence?”
“No,” Tobin says. “We searched just past the fence where he said he saw it, but we didn’t find anything. There was more grass than dirt or mud. We didn’t see any prints or hair or scat. But Mr. Harold gave us this.” Tobin holds his hand out toward Charlie.
“A rock?” Charlie asks, taking it.
“Not just any rock. One of the rocks that the Bigfoot threw at him!” Tobin exclaims.
“Amazing,” Charlie breathes, holding the rock tight.
“Here’s the thing, though,” I say. “After he gave us all the details about what he looked like…Mr. Harold said one more very important thing.”
“And what was that?” Charlie asks.
“He said the Bigfoot wasn’t alone.”
“Mmmm,” Charlie says, leaning back on his stool. “Did he elaborate?”
“He said he knew for sure there were others just beyond in the woods…watching.”
Charlie raises his eyebrows.
“A family?” Tobin says.
We stare at each other with wide eyes.
“I think we should plan an expedition at Mr. Harold’s farm tonight!” I point my finger in the air and jump up and down. “Can we, Charlie? Can we?”
Charlie chuckles from deep inside his belly.
“Well, look at you.” He smiles down at me. “Tobin, it looks like we’re going to make Lem a Bigfoot enthusiast after all. Maybe we’ll even convince her to stay.” He winks.
I think about it.
And it’s actually the first time I don’t want to tell them “Fat chance.”
A camp-out in Mr. Harold’s backyard that evening is the closest thing to an expedition that Charlie and Debbie agree to let us do on our own in the dark. Which Tobin grumbles about the whole time they’re setting up the tent.
“I’m sorry, Tobin,” Debbie says, pounding in a stake. “It’s just not safe to be in the woods alone all night.”
“I won’t be alone. I have Lemonade.”
“Yes, you do!” Charlie smiles, tying a cord to a stake already in the ground. “Yes, you do!”
“Mr. Harold, is it okay if we use your bathroom instead of the woods tonight?” I ask.
“Of course. The door will be open, so you just help yourself to whatever you need. There are extra blankets if you get cold, and of course if it rains, you two just come right on inside.”
“Now, is there anything else I can do before I leave?” Charlie asks, double-tying the final cord to the ground.
“Nope,” Tobin says.
“Okay, well, I packed granola bars and juice for you both, and some extra Twinkies for Lem.” He hands me a brown paper bag.
“Thank you, Charlie.” Debbie smiles at him and puts a hand on his arm.
“Who has time to eat when cryptozoological discovery is about to be made? All we really need is this.” Tobin holds up his movie camera. “I think tonight is the night. I can feel it! Lemonade, tonight we make history!”
“Good luck, kids. I’ll be back to pick you up in the morning.”
We wave good-bye to Jake as Charlie and Debbie drive down the long dirt drive into the setting sun. The sky is a brilliant orange with a few gray clouds in the distance. But no matter how dark those few clouds are, they can’t block out the bright pinks and warm reds and fiery oranges that stretch across the sky as the sun finds its way behind the pines. A cooling breeze blows, moving my hair off my shoulders and making chicken skin sprout up on my arms.
I look at the clouds way off in the distance one more time, hoping they stay right where they are.
“I’ll be in the house,” Mr. Harold says. “The windows are open, so if you need me, you just holler. And again, if it starts to rain, you just come on inside. It looks like something might be coming.”
“Yes, sir,” Tobin says.
“Good night, then,” Mr. Harold says.
“Night,” we say together.
Tobin and I head to the tent and crawl inside. I find my wool jacket and sweatpants in my duffel bag and pull them on over my shorts and T-shirt.
“I’m staying up all night,” Tobin informs me, sitting cross-legged on top of his sleeping bag. “Here, you’re assigned to the still pictures on this mission.”
He hands me the Polaroid camera. I sit down cross-legged on my sleeping bag facing him and slip the strap around my neck. We sit there staring at each other.
No one says anything.
“What do we do now?” I ask him.
“Wait,” he says.
“For what?”
He leans forward and whispers then. “You’ll know when you hear it.”
“Oh,” I say.
We wait.
There’s a low, far-off rumble in the sky, and I take a deep breath. I hope Mr. Harold is wrong about something heading in this direction.
“Want to play Twenty Questions?” I ask.
“What’s that?”
“You think of something, and you tell me if it’s a person, place, or thing, and I have to guess it in twenty questions, and all you can answer is yes or no.”
He shrugs. “Okay.”
“You go first,” I say.
Tobin smiles. “Ummm, okay, got something.”
“You’re thinkin
g of something?”
“Yep,” he says.
“You have to tell me if it’s a person, place, or thing,” I tell him.
“What if it’s none of those?”
“What do you mean? It has to be one of those.”
“Well, it’s not.”
I look at him and cock my head to one side.
“It’s Bigfoot, isn’t it?”
Tobin smiles even wider.
“You’re so predictable,” I tell him.
“Lem!”
“What? What is it?” I pop my head up.
Tobin rubs his eyes. “You fell asleep.”
“You fell asleep first,” I say.
“No…No…I wasn’t sleeping, I was…I was…wait, what time is it?” He checks his Bigfoot watch. “Oh three hundred hours.”
That’s really three in the morning. Tiny taps of rain are hitting the top of the tent.
“It’ll be light in a few hours,” I say.
He nods.
I yawn. “I guess we’re not going to get anything this time either.”
“Not stuck in this tent, we won’t,” he says. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless we make something happen.”
“We aren’t supposed to do that,” I say. “Charlie and Debbie said to stay in the yard.”
“We will, but there’s no harm in exploring closer to the fence post out in the west end of the pasture.”
“The pasture’s not the yard. They said to stay in the yard. Plus, it’s storming out,” I say.
He holds one palm outside the tent flap. “It’s barely a drizzle,” he says. “Anyway, pasture, yard…what’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference,” I tell him. “That’s why they said to stay in the yard.”
“If you’re too chicken, I can go by myself.”
“I’m not chicken,” I insist.
“Sounds fowl to me.”
“Okay,” I agree. “But if it starts storming, I’m going inside.”
“Fine,” Tobin says. “Let’s synchronize.”
“You know I don’t have a watch.”
“The cameras,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Cameras ready?” he asks.
“Check,” I say.
“Check,” he says.
“This might be our night, Lemonade Liberty Witt.”
“Is it coming down harder?” I ask.
“Quit being a chicken, it’s just a little—”
And it’s just then that we hear this horrible sound. A long, high-pitched howl from the woods.
“Whoooooooooooo!”
I grab his arm. “What’s that?”
My heart pounds hard in my chest, and the wool jacket and sweatpants suddenly make me feel like I’m wearing a snowsuit in a sauna.
“I knew it!” Tobin exclaims. “It’s them! They’re here! They’re here! Let’s go!”
Mr. Harold’s pasture starts just past the barn. It goes on forever and is filled with steers, trees, and grass for grazing. There’s a wooden fence keeping everything from getting out.
Except for a free-roaming Tobin.
“Wait for me!” I call after him.
I can barely make him out in the dark as he runs ahead of me straight for the west end of the pasture.
“Hurry up!” he whispers back at me. “And would you be quiet?”
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
It’s hard to run with a Polaroid camera around your neck and sweatpants over your shorts. It’s even harder to do those things while dodging disgusting, smelly cow pies.
Or maybe they’re called steer pies.
The mini stinky land mines are all over the pasture. And since it’s rainy, they’re slippery stinky land mines. In the dark, dodging them is practically impossible. Each time my tennis shoe hits one, I feel it splat back up on my ankle, and I lose my balance a little.
Black steers stand in groups under the pouring rain, staring at us as we run by them.
Still chewing. Probably laughing at us slipping and sliding through their poo.
Tobin is getting farther and farther away from me, and the rain is coming down harder.
“Wait up!” I demand.
“Shhh!” he hisses back at me. “Mr. Harold is going to hear you!”
I stop to catch my breath. Squinting through the drops, I see something catapulting over the wooden fence at the end of the pasture.
“You’re not supposed to go past the fence!” I holler at him through cupped hands, not caring if Mr. Harold hears me or not.
“Tobin!” I scream with all that’s in me. “Tobin!”
He’s gone.
And that’s when it happens again. A long, high-pitched howl from the woods.
“Whoooooooooooo!”
My heart jumps and I start to run again. Harder. Pushing through the downpour to get to him. Rain and tears make rivers down my cheeks until I get to the fence.
“Tobin! Where are you?”
Nothing.
“Tobin!”
“Here! Over here!” His voice finds me from inside the forest past the fence.
The raindrops are so thick now, and sloppy, too. More like freezing buckets of water instead of tiny drips. They hit me on my forehead and my cheeks, sometimes plopping right into my eyes, making it hard to see anything at all. I push the hair out of my face and wipe at my eyes with my wet jacket sleeve, which now feels like a sopping sponge.
There’s a flash of light and then a low roll of thunder. I don’t even have time to count to see how far away it is—the storm is right on top of us. I want to run back to the tent and hide in the thick, warm sleeping bag. I want to run inside, where I know Mr. Harold has warm blankets somewhere and maybe even a cozy pullout couch.
The wood of the fence is wet and slippery, and so is the tall grass. When I pull myself over the fence, I slip and fall onto the other side.
“Tobin!” I yell again, pushing myself up from the mud.
I don’t hear anything this time. Nothing but the rain cutting through the leaves and grass. It’s coming down fast and hard now, with crashing thunder and bright flashes across the sky.
“Tobin!” I cry. “Where are you?”
I crouch down under a tall pine and crawl underneath the lowest branch. I wait, wiping at my eyes again with my soaked jacket.
“Mama,” I whisper. “I’m so scared, Mama.”
A crash right overhead shakes the needles on the branches above me. I cover my ears with my hands.
Elizabeth Lilly Witt.
More thunder, and then a blinding flash lights the forest for a count of two seconds.
I know I’m going to be lost in these woods. I’ll drown in the drops and they’ll find my frozen body at daybreak. Or I’ll be electrocuted by lightning. Or the wind will blow this pine down on top of me and I’ll be squished to death.
“What a shame,” Mrs. Dickerson will say. “She was so young. And just the spitting image of her mother, too.”
I shiver and my teeth chatter. I wipe at my eyes again with my wet jacket.
To the left, I hear a rustling in the brush that’s too big to be the wind.
Then heavy footsteps pounding the damp ground.
Please be Tobin.
Please be Tobin.
Please be Tobin.
I squeeze my eyes closed, praying inside my head.
Closer.
The footsteps are too heavy to be his. I know it. I can feel them vibrate underneath me as they pound the mud. I duck my head even lower under the pine branch.
Closer.
Pound.
Pound.
Pound.
They hit the earth, sloshing soggy grass and sticks underneath them.
Closer.
It’s what nine feet tall sounds like, I know it. And then the branch I’m hiding under moves, and I scream.
“Lemonade!”
I open my eyes to see Mr. Harold standing above
me in a shiny black rain slicker and big black rubber boots.
“What are you doing out here? Where’s Tobin?”
I start to sob.
“I—I don’t know.”
We’re in big trouble.
I mean trouble.
Like trouble with a capital T and an exclamation point at the end.
“What were you thinking?”
That’s from Debbie, once the sun comes up that morning. She’s still wearing her pajamas and a matching robe with little yellow flowers on it. Her hair is all messed up, she has black mascara smudged under her eyes, and there’s more red around the rims than normal. Tobin and Charlie and I are all sitting around Charlie’s kitchen table, while Debbie paces the floor.
Back and forth.
“Mom,” Tobin protests. “You don’t understand. They were howling! I’m a scientist. What choice did I have, really?”
“I don’t care if they were performing the two-step to ‘When the Saints Come Marching In,’ ” she tells him with her hands on her hips.
Tobin looks at me, confused.
“Two-step? Mom, the Bigfoot have opposable thumbs, but I’m fairly sure they can’t dance the—”
“Tobin!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, looking at his shoes.
“We care about you,” she goes on. “About Lemonade. We care about your safety. That’s why we set rules.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says again.
Charlie is stroking his beard and looking out the window while he silently sips his coffee.
“There were rules,” Tobin’s mom goes on. “Rules for a reason, and you didn’t follow them.”
“I’m sorry, Debbie,” I say.
“Me too,” Tobin says. “We promise we won’t go past the fence next time.”
“Next time?” Tobin’s mom says with a snort that sounds like a laugh but really isn’t one. “There won’t be a next time, young man. You’re grounded. And no going to the Bigfoot Headquarters for one week.”
“A whole week!” Tobin shouts desperately, standing straight up. “What about the neighbors? The sightings? Mrs. Dickerson? They need us.”
“They’ll have to find a way to get along without you. Right, Charlie?”
Charlie looks at Debbie, nods slowly, and then takes another long drink from his mug.
“I could use some help at the store this week,” he says quietly. “I have some shipments coming in. You can both spend the week there.”
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