“Hey,” Fletcher says, eyes up in the rearview mirror. “I hear plotting. I thought we agreed you are not allowed to drive my dad’s car. You ran straight through a red light last time.”
“Maybe the red light ran straight through me,” Sani snipes, digging out his headphones. He shuts his eyes. “Wake me up when we get there, or the world decides it’s time to eat the rich. I’m not picky.”
Yuki turns around. “You holding up back there?”
“Seems that way,” Grace says. “I still can’t believe we’re going to look for a monster. What kind is it anyway? Loch Ness?”
Yuki makes a face. “Hey, Genius Girl,” she says. “That thing is supposedly in Scotland. We’re going to the border of New York and Vermont. Wanna see?” She holds out a map with circled areas of interest. “These are all the places where the thing, they call it Champ, has been spotted. We’re going to hit up the spots closest to this side of the state border.”
“Why not go into Vermont?” Grace asks, staring at the meticulously marked map.
“Too many white people,” Yuki and Sani say together, though Sani keeps his eyes stubbornly closed. “I’m not here, carry on with the monster mash.”
“Seriously?” Fletcher says incredulously. “You know the ‘Monster Mash’ from American fucking Bandstand but not Egyptian Rat Screw?”
“I’m asleep,” is the only reply he gets.
Yuki rolls her eyes and shoves the map toward Grace again. “We’re gonna split up around here, I think. Me and you, then Fletch, Sani and Dhorian if he ever decides to wake the fuck up. Why is he so tired?”
“Twelve-hour shift in the ED, then he took an Ambien,” Fletcher says. “I don’t think he factored lake monsters into his plan for today, so he might just stay in the car and get eaten.”
“If anyone’s getting eaten by a lake monster,” Yuki says, “it’s going to be me. Are we there yet?”
They are there according to the signs as they near the lake area. The trees are thick and green and lush, and the ground is sprouting with weeds and flowers. Fletcher parks his dad’s car a little way back, and they sit, staring out the windows.
“There is nothing here but undiscovered bodies and maybe, like, some water pollution,” Fletcher says doubtfully. “What will your radio listeners think about the scariest monster of them all—humans contributing to climate change?”
Yuki elbows him sharply and gets out of the car. Grace follows, eyes immediately tracing the long line of trees up and up and up, reminding her of being a kid and looking up at orange grove trees.
“There you go,” Yuki says quietly. Grace has heard her voice often enough to know when there’s fondness in it. “You’re always up in the clouds, Grace Porter.” She tilts her head back, too, hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “What do you see up there?”
Grace squints. “They remind me of home, I guess,” she says. She inhales, and the air smells like lake water and grass and sand and wood.
Behind them, Sani is trying to wake Dhorian up, keeping his voice low as he apologizes for the early hour. “It’s the boss’s fault,” he says. “She wanted a lake monster, so we gotta see a lake monster, babe.”
Dhorian groans, loud enough that the sound carries. “Do you think the lake monster will let me nap? Do you think it will take pity on me?”
Yuki snorts. She bumps her shoulder against Grace’s. “These trees must have nothing on the ones you have back home,” she says. “Those big Oregon redwoods—”
“Not those,” Grace says thoughtfully. “I grew up in Florida,” she explains, “in a little hippie town called Southbury. My mom’s family owns an orange grove there.”
She feels Yuki’s eyes on her, but she is looking up again. She’s been looking up her whole life, it seems, at one thing or another. “I used to climb the trees,” she says, like recounting a dream on the verge of being lost to morning. “You weren’t supposed to, and Colonel had my hide every time I got caught. But the best oranges were the ones at the top.” If she closes her eyes, she can feel branches scraping at her palms and arms, wounds to deal with later. But they were worth it, to find that perfect fruit, to hide in the trees that were big and strong enough to hold her.
She opens her eyes and clears her throat, swallowing down her most vulnerable memories. “Are we ready to monster hunt?”
“Born ready,” Sani says. They turn around, and Dhorian has pulled himself up, and with sleepy eyes and languid hands is braiding Sani’s hair into a high bun.
Fletcher tosses Sani items from the truck. “Three waters, Fletch.”
He wrinkles his nose. “You know the amount of plastic—”
“Normally,” Sani cuts in, “I would let you do this. I promise I would. But it’s 7 a.m., and if you want me to stay awake to Scooby-Doo this shit, I need to be hydrated. Dhorian, do you agree?” He turns his head a little, and Dhorian makes a little annoyed noise.
“Fletch, I get it. Climate change, polar caps melting, plastic in the oceans.” He yawns, hiding it in Sani’s neck. “But I’m very thirsty. I promise to recycle it. Or compost it. Or whatever it is you hipster Brooklyn yuppies do.”
“I’m from Queens,” Fletcher says, but he does throw three water bottles at Dhorian’s head.
“I really worry about them,” Yuki says absently. “They’re so weird.”
“What does that say about you, then, ringleader?” Sani asks sulkily. “Give me the map so I know where we’re going. God knows these two can’t read it.”
“I can read a map,” Fletcher says, but shrinks under the gaze. “On my phone. To be fair, you didn’t specify.”
Sani turns away from them. “I am filled with regret.”
“You,” Fletcher argues, “do not get to be filled with regret.” He bends down and nods toward Dhorian. “Get on before I change my mind,” he says, and Dhorian climbs onto his back, happily burying his face in that long hair.
Yuki hands one of the maps to Sani, who looks it over with a keen eye. “You want us to hunker down on the other side of the lake?” he asks. “The green circle?”
Yuki reaches up and tucks an errant strand behind his ear. He glares at her, but allows it. He reminds Grace so much of Agnes, it hurts. “Yes, please,” Yuki says. She turns to Fletcher and Dhorian and kisses the side of their heads. A soft, little thing that passes between them like a thank-you. “Sorry you’re tired,” she says, “but you know. Lake monsters.”
Dhorian gives a sleepy little cheer before they follow Sani along a diverging path. “Lake monsters! Fuck—Fletch, don’t run me into goddamn branches.”
Grace watches them, Yuki’s own little orbiting universe. “How long do you think Fletcher will carry him?”
Yuki pulls a ball cap out of her backpack and slips it on. “Whole time,” she says. “We’re codependent like that. You need a hat? I have Yankees and my college alma mater.” She holds out a white-and-blue hat with BARNARD printed along the front. “That’s, like, letterman jacket material right there,” she tells Grace.
“Oh, well, if it’s that serious.” Grace slips it on and strikes a pose. “Do I look ready to face the supernatural?”
Yuki holds out her hand, and Grace grabs it. “Born ready. Now, c’mon, I wanna see how murky the water is from the docks.”
It smells out here, like nature, like earth. Their shoes leave imprints in the ground as they make their way to the water.
“How did you find out about this monster?” she asks.
Yuki looks away from her map. She leads them down a rocky, gravelly path, getting closer to one side of the lake. “Sometimes listeners will write in,” she says. “Like, if they’ve heard of something local or have seen something themselves and want me to check it out.”
“And you do?” Grace asks, fingers firmly intertwined with Yuki’s as they stumble over rocks and fallen branches. “What if it’s a hoax
? What if it’s dangerous?”
They break through the trees. There’s more sand than dirt here, like a little beach with sprouting, grassy weeds. She can feel the grit start to sift into her shoes as they make their way to one rickety dock out of many.
Yuki takes her shoes off and nods for Grace to do the same. The wood is summer-warm under the soles of her feet. They settle at the end, legs dangling over dark blue-green water.
“Grace Porter,” Yuki says, as if minutes haven’t passed since they last spoke a word. “Are you doubting my ability to spot supernatural bullshit?”
Grace sputters. There is nothing to indicate that anything beyond pollution-mutated fish and wiggling seaweed lives here. Maybe that is what someone saw, sitting on this same dock. Some shadows and fish moving in the water.
“I don’t doubt you,” she says finally. “I just don’t get it, I guess. You don’t know what’s out there. You don’t know if anything is out there. All you have is the word of someone who listens to your show.”
“Just some weird, lonely insomniac with delusions of grandeur, right?” Yuki shoots back, her voice dry as she stares at the water and not Grace.
“I didn’t say that,” Grace says. The sun reflects off the water, off Grace’s hair. “I just don’t get it,” she repeats. “The other stories I’ve heard you tell on your show, they sound like stories. I mean, they sound like stories that have been around for a while, you know? This,” she says, waving a hand at the vastness of the lake, “is different. There’s nothing mythic here. It’s just a—a campfire story, right?”
Yuki is quiet for a long moment. They both stare out at the water, at the little island way out, like there they will find all the answers they’re looking for. Her feet dangle over the side of the dock and hit the edge on the way back. Thump, thump, thump, she goes. Like a beating heart. Thump, thump, thump.
“What about the stuff up there?” Yuki asks, voice low. “The stories people tell about the stars and the moon and constellations. What’s the difference?”
Grace leans back. “The stars and the moon and the constellations are real things,” she says. “Physical and observable things. Things made of mass and matter and energy. Real things.”
“They are,” Yuki agrees. “And then people create mythos from them, for them. They create stories as a way to understand something that is so much bigger and blacker and more expansive than we can comprehend.” She wrinkles her nose. “Do I believe that sirens lure men into the sea to watch them drown?” she asks. “Do I believe there was a time where I had four arms and four legs and two heads, and that I was cut in half as a punishment?”
“Yuki—” Grace interrupts, fingers gripping the edge of the dock tight enough her knuckles bulge.
“I don’t know,” Yuki says abruptly. She looks at Grace. Her fingers reach out, stopping just shy of Grace’s hair, frizzy under the cap from the humidity. A small lake breeze blows, and the strands blow, too, as if completing what Yuki does not. “Do I believe the sun favored you enough to turn your hair that shade of honey? I don’t know, Grace Porter. Maybe it’s just a story, or maybe I think it’s true.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“The story is,” Yuki barrels on, “there’s a monster in this lake. People have said it looks like a reptile. They don’t know, maybe a serpent. There’s a guy that wrote a book about the thing. Says it resembles something prehistoric, and maybe this thing has been lurking under the waves for millennia, waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Grace asks before she can stop herself. She feels foolish for questioning any of it, because isn’t she here because she followed her own creature, her own siren?
Yuki shrugs. “I don’t know. They call the fucking thing Champ. Maybe it’s waiting for someone to find a better name.”
Grace breathes out, shoulders slumping. “So, people have seen it?”
“The guy that emailed me said he saw it,” Yuki says. “Said he couldn’t sleep, which—” She throws a wry look at Grace. “That’s kind of the point, you know? So, he couldn’t sleep, and he’s just driving. He said he just drove, until he ended up here. Didn’t know where he was driving to when he started.” Yuki kicks at the wood dock, where it begins to buckle from age.
“I’ve always wondered about that,” she says quietly. “I’ve had a few listeners say that’s how they found my show. Can’t sleep, get in the car and drive. Fuck around with the radio until somehow, they land on me. When I can’t sleep, I’ve ridden the train before. It’s stupid, riding it alone late at night, but. Sorry,” she says suddenly, to Grace. “None of this is what you asked me.”
“Tell me,” she says, her voice rough. Her hands claw into the warm planks beneath her thighs. “I’m listening.”
Yuki looks down at the water beneath them. It shimmers blue-green and dark. The water is a swamp-like mystery, and Yuki stares at it like she can see straight through.
“The walls blur so fast, you don’t notice that when it’s rush hour and the train is packed. Sometimes it’s just me in an empty car, and it goes by so fast, I can’t even recognize my own reflection.” She shakes her head, and the fringe under her ball cap shifts into her eyes. “I wonder if it’s the same when you’re driving. So tired that you can feel it, like, like a cloak or something.” She looks at Grace. “Have you ever felt like that?”
When Grace can’t sleep, she counts. She counts tiles and stars and the number of cars that pass once she relegates herself out to the balcony. When Grace can’t sleep, time does not blur so much as stand still. It is frozen, as Grace is. Her eyes prickle and her chest aches and sleep hovers just out of reach, just like the stars that meander across the sky.
“Yeah,” she says simply, blinking fast. “I think I get it.”
Yuki nods, and maybe she can hear how much Grace does truly get it. Maybe lonely creatures can hear it in other lonely creatures. That thing in their voices that says, I am like you.
“So, he was driving, and he ended up here,” Yuki finishes with a shrug. “Says he sat on a dock and stared out into the water and something stared back. Something else was awake and hiding in the dark. I don’t know,” she says again. “It’s just a story he told me. But I wanted to see. I wanted—I wanted him to know that I was listening and believed him, so here we are.”
That’s all Yuki says for the rest of the time they sit there. The sun beams steadily, and they sit, and they wait, and they watch. Yuki stares resolutely out into the water, her fingers tapping an incessant, infrequent beat.
Grace finds herself wanting to tell Yuki stories about the moons orbiting Jupiter, named after the god’s lovers. She wants to tell Yuki about vain Cassiopeia, condemned to the sky, and the eagle Aquila, who threw thunderbolts in Zeus’s name. Maybe she can see it now, the thin line that connects fact to a story passed down.
She extends her hand in the space between them and hopes that a tentative touch serves as a story of its own. She waits, and Yuki reaches out, too, their fingers tangled together over warm wood and under a vast sky.
* * *
“Find anything?” Yuki asks when they get back to the car.
Sani shakes his head, lifting his sunglasses to reveal a bruise from training that seems extra dark in the sunshine. “It seems as if our monster was quiet today,” he says. “Fickle little things, aren’t they?”
“Aren’t we all?” Yuki sighs, lugging her and Grace’s backpacks into the trunk.
“This was the most peaceful and relaxing monster hunt we have ever done,” Dhorian says, rubbing his eyes. “Let’s do more like these.”
“What?” Fletcher starts, rolling over carefully so he hovers over Dhorian, teasing. His long hair has been braided, little leaves and flowers tucked in the strands. “You didn’t like breaking into funeral homes like that one time?”
“Something touched me,” Dhorian whines, and Sani laughs, jumping off the top o
f the car. “There were cold spots all over that place, and something touched my leg. I’m Black, I don’t do ghosts.”
“You felt a presence?” Grace asks, curious as she leans against the car. “You really felt something?”
Yuki raises her eyebrows, a satisfied smirk pulling at the edges of her mouth. “You sound intrigued,” she points out. “Maybe there’s more to these stories than you thought, huh?”
The ride back is sleepy and hushed. Yuki hunches over her phone as she tries to format a script for the next episode of her show. Dhorian goes back to sleep, pillowed once more in Sani’s lap, his hoodie under his head.
Sani and Grace watch slime videos on his phone. “I watch these after a match,” he says quietly. “Too much adrenaline gets in my system, so this weird shit helps me calm down. I tried ASMR, but I don’t like strangers whispering in my ear, you know?”
Grace smiles, eyes locked on lime-green slime that gets molded and folded and poked and prodded. “Yuki says you’re good,” she says, “at the MMA fighting thing.”
He shrugs, but his eyes crinkle, pleased. “I found this trans-inclusive gym in Brooklyn,” he says. “It’s been good. You should come watch me fight. Sometimes you just need to punch shit out, you know?”
“Seems healthy,” Grace says. But she thinks she sees the appeal. She can’t punch the uncertainty or the guilt or the fear folded inside her. But she would like to. God, would she like to. “But yeah, I want to come.”
Sani makes a satisfied noise and looks back at his screen. “Good.”
She goes quiet, working up the courage to ask the question that’s been growing in her.
“Do you think,” she starts, voice low to ride under the sound of the car and the radio, “Yuki really believes in this stuff?”
Sani turns his head to squint at her. “Believe what?”
She makes a frustrated noise. “This. The show, the—we drove five hours in the middle of the night to watch a lake. There’s no—even if there was, it wouldn’t come out if it knew we were watching, right?”
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