A shell which, if Miranda remembered, Kat sold on her blog for a decent amount of cash — and only yesterday she’d sold a wedge of white cartilage rumored to be the beak of an ivory-billed woodpecker.
But it was the only recent income of Kat’s that Miranda knew of. She hadn’t been booked for a keynote address or a lecture at a cryptozoology conference in a long time, maybe six months. That meant most of their trips this year had been one hundred percent self-funded by the revenue Kat received from the advertisements she hosted on The Bigfoot Files and the handful of cryptozoology e-books she’d published.
Miranda shuffled through the open mail. Here were Kat’s royalty earnings — she put out a book twice a year, and had just released a new one — eighty dollars and fourteen cents.
Eighty dollars!
Eighty dollars was a tiny fraction of the amount needed to sustain a living, let alone satiate all those bill collectors.
Eighty dollars wasn’t even enough for groceries.
Another stone around Miranda’s neck.
And here, in the stack of mail, was a letter from the Conklin University grant fund, loyal patrons of Kat’s cryptozoology research for the last three years:
Dear Katerina Cho,
We are sorry to inform you that the selection committee is unable to provide funding for your project at this time.
A rejection.
No research grant for her mother this year.
And here, a credit card statement:
Miranda’s eyes boggled. Were there supposed to be that many zeroes?
Stone after stone, heavy enough to pull her under . . .
Her head swam, her shoulders groaned. All those numbers, the words, the bold print, the red ink — how was Kat paying for anything? How were they surviving?
What if someone from the bank comes and kicks us out of the house?
What if we lose the house and we have to live in the Critter Mobile?
The car was the only thing Kat owned outright.
What if everyone at school sees me in that car? What if they find out about Mom?
Another stone.
What if Mom sees this nightmare as a blessing in disguise? What if she’s foaming at the mouth to pull me out of school and monster hunt full-time? Taking the country state by state? Beast by beast? With nothing to tie us down, what’s to stop her?
The stones around her neck piled high, enough to dam a rushing river.
And then, creeping, wormlike, a worse thought:
What about the leadership camp?
If her mother couldn’t afford the house payment, there was no way she could afford to send Miranda to her camp.
If she got in.
Miranda yanked out hair after hair as she stared at her blank wall; her mind had overheated and now it spiraled, lost.
What was she going to do? How was she going to fix this?
A screech, and a bang. Miranda jumped.
The Critter Mobile was back.
She straightened the stack of bills still in her hand.
“Dinner!” Kat called. “Come get it before it’s reheated mush!”
“Be right there!” Miranda hid the mail beneath her pillow and joined her mother at the counter, a hollow smile screwed carefully into place even though her heart still hammered like a windup toy. Until she knew how to solve this, she wouldn’t let Kat know she’d found the secret stash of unpaid bills — not until she had a plan.
Her vow of silence was irrelevant; the second the takeout containers were open, Kat did all the talking.
“A new kind of radar,” she explained with samosa in her mouth. “Uncle Bob found the machine in a dumpster behind a library and rigged it up. Isn’t that wild? One man’s trash . . .”
Dumpster diving — that was a new low, even for Bob, Miranda thought, and nearly said it. But then the words flashed in her mind: NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE.
What if we have to go dumpster diving soon?
Miranda kept waiting for a spot in the conversation to open, like a sad carnival game — wait for the spinning wheel, throw the dart, pop the balloon, win the stuffed frog. But she had eaten every bite of her curried potatoes before Kat finally stopped her verbal waterfall, kissed her daughter’s cheek, and went to pack her camping gear.
Miranda hovered in the kitchen, wiping the smear of sauce from Kat’s empty place at the counter with a rag.
Thoughts of her homework were gone; thoughts of her student council duties, gone. Thoughts of the Fall Fling, important though it was, gone. Her absences, the black marks on her attendance record, gone. The leadership camp flickered in her mind, fading, vanishing — and white-hot frustration blinded her.
How could her mother do this? Ignore the bills, let the overdue amounts stack up like moldy old garbage on a back stoop? What kind of grown-up let things fester like this? How could Kat be so irresponsible?
And how could she do this to Miranda? That leadership camp had been the sun in Miranda’s mornings, the sugar in her cereal — the very thing that pushed her through classes and schoolwork and student council responsibilities, even when she felt like she couldn’t do it anymore. It had been her beacon on Kat’s creature hunts: Make it through this trip, Miranda would coach herself during particularly dark moments, so you can go to your camp. Your camp will save you.
And now, because of Kat’s ridiculous monster chasing, her inability to let this obsession with Bigfoot go, Miranda would have to be the one to let something go. She’d have to give up her leadership camp, see it fly away, off to some other overachiever, and her escape route out of this house — out of this hairy, musky life — would be blocked.
Had her mom even thought of that?
Outside, Kat was unrolling the tent, shaking out stale leaves left from its last sojourn as she sang under her breath.
Miranda stood among the gnomes on the porch, thinking.
The sun was on the edge of the hills, balanced there like a coin. The shadows in their yard stretched themselves taller, almost like hands running from the light.
“Mom?” Miranda said. “About my leadership camp . . .” She swallowed, her throat dry as bark. Was she ready to hear the answer no?
“What about it?” Kat staked the tent in the lawn and crawled inside.
“Can I still do it?”
“Of course.” Her mother sounded far away from inside the blue canvas. Kat popped her head out of the tent. “Bean, did you get in?”
“Not yet.” Miranda slung and unslung her foot from her sandal, over and over.
“Help me for a sec?” Kat gestured for Miranda to hold up the A-frame while she tightened the lines. Miranda stepped down from the porch and into the grass. “I just wanted to make sure we can still afford it.”
Kat frowned. “What do you mean?”
A swarm of evening aphids danced around their feet. “It costs a thousand dollars, remember?”
The quiet seemed to stretch as long as the shadows before Kat answered.
“Yes, Bean. Not a problem.” Her mother sounded so cheerful, so assured, Miranda was almost convinced.
She went back inside and shut herself in her room.
What was she going to do?
The evening slowly drained like a pierced fruit. Miranda stayed in her bedroom under the pretense of working on math; instead she shuffled through the bills and statements again and again — the saddest hand of cards she’d ever seen, and Kat would have to play them soon.
Kat was drowning in bills and credit card debt — and so certainly the tuition for Miranda’s leadership camp would be impossible. No camp. And also no food, no Internet, no electricity, and no house.
Miranda had to solve this. She had to.
Miranda got out a fresh yellow legal pad. She still had the laptop, but she saved writing longhand for her most serious work, and this was serious. OPTIONS, she wrote at the top in big bold letters with her fattest black marker and underlined it.
OPTION ONE.
She tapped the marker’s
cap against her chin as she thought.
Option one, she decided, was to call the bill collectors directly and ask them for more time. She wrote it down, but it didn’t seem a fruitful choice, given the intensity of the red stamps on all those envelopes. FINAL NOTICE, FORECLOSURE, FAILURE TO PAY — those weren’t words used by companies who were in the mood to be merciful.
Option two. She wrote, DO NOTHING. Let the house go. Let the bank take it back, and figure out a new place for them to live — hopefully somewhere other than the Critter Mobile. Miranda didn’t feel desperate enough for this option — not yet — but she knew it belonged on the list. If there was nothing to be done, it would be easier if it felt like it had been a choice.
Option three. BORROW MONEY, she wrote.
Not the most responsible action in the world, but an option that adults succumbed to when times were tough.
But who could they borrow money from? Another bank? She knew loans existed, but she had no idea how one actually went about getting one. Plus, she couldn’t imagine a bank would be eager to give them money when Kat had this paper mill’s worth of final notices.
They’d be better off asking someone they knew.
Uncle Bob?
Miranda wasn’t supposed to know this, but Bob had a tax debt from a failed ghost-hunting business he’d started with his first wife. He wouldn’t have any extra money to loan; he pinched pennies like a crab.
Uncle Bob was out, then. And that was it. There were no other friends. No family.
Well, that wasn’t completely true. Her mother did have some family.
Miranda’s grandmother lived in northern California, but she and Kat didn’t talk. Not anymore. Not since they built a wall of a silence between them, years ago, after some disagreement — Miranda didn’t know details, but it had been enough to burn it all down. They didn’t even see her for Christmas anymore.
What if I ask her for help and she says no?
What if she doesn’t even remember me?
Miranda fiddled with her marker cap.
What if I ask her for help . . . and she says yes?
Miranda wrote down Grandma Hai’s name as an option, followed it with a giant question mark.
She couldn’t remember much about her grandmother, only the look of her — a taller, older, more tired version of her mother — and the scents of her house: citrus slices in a cast-iron teapot, first-edition books, dried lavender hanging in the window. Besides those few memories, Grandma Hai only existed in the rare photographs of little-kid Kat that resurfaced in a junk drawer every now and then, or from random recollections from Kat’s childhood — if it was an anecdote with Grandma Hai in a leading role, Kat usually mentioned her with a disdain thick enough to frost a cake with.
But still. Miranda always got a birthday card with a crisp ten-dollar bill from Grandma Hai. She’d never missed a year. She had to be considered as an option.
Right now, she was Miranda’s only option.
Outside, Kat had put away the pup tent and was now loading crates into the Critter Mobile’s back hatch: nets, ropes, other creature-catching equipment. Miranda watched through the bay window, making sure her mother was fully occupied, then searched through her mother’s phone until she found the number.
She then dialed on her own phone with trembling fingers.
“Hello?” The voice that answered was sharp, the sound of a grandmother who believed in the value of a dime, who baked cookies from scratch because she trusted the work, a grandmother who didn’t easily forgive an unpressed collar. Or was Miranda already projecting Kat’s version of Grandma Hai onto this unsuspecting, hopefully compassionate lady?
Miranda cleared her throat and tried to sound pleasant. “Hello, is this —” saying her grandmother’s first name felt like she was speaking to a famous historical figure —“Liang Hai?”
“It is,” the voice said, suspicious. “Who is this?”
Miranda paused. “It’s Miranda.”
The only noises coming from the other end of the phone were the faint tittering of people talking and the clinking of glasses.
“Hello?” Miranda said. “Are you there?”
Her grandmother inhaled, then said to the room, “Hold on, ladies, I need to take this.”
Once she had moved to a quieter room, Grandma Hai said, “Sorry, Miranda, you caught me in the middle of my book club.” Miranda didn’t think she sounded very sorry. “Are you — that is, is everything all right?”
Miranda braced herself. “My mom — I mean we . . . we’re in a bit of a pickle.”
“A pickle?”
“Financially.” Miranda winced as she said it.
“So, Kat needs money,” Grandma Hai surmised. “And she couldn’t even bother to pick up the phone herself.”
“Mom doesn’t even know I’m —”
“Making her daughter do her dirty work.” Grandma Hai’s mutterings dissolved into silence, and Miranda closed her eyes, wondering if shame could be detected through phone lines.
“Miranda,” her grandmother finally said, “I’m very sorry you’re tangled up in this mess, and it’s very kind of you to try to help your mother, but no.” Her no was as solid as a war drum. “I can’t help. Whatever she wants this time — more of her gadgets, registration fees for her conferences, gas money for another one of her wild goose chases — I am not a bottomless vault. I am not a bank. I won’t do it. No more money. No more bailouts. When she called me six months ago for help — that was the final loan.”
This new information slapped Miranda in the face like a cold wind. Kat called Grandma Hai for money? “But . . .” She swallowed the boulder in her throat. “I don’t know what else to do.”
There was a pause. “Sometimes with Katerina,” Grandma Hai said, “you have to let her fall on her face.”
Miranda was completely deadened. If Kat fell on her face, Miranda would smash down right alongside her.
But after all these years without a real relationship, Kat had called Grandma Hai for money. No wonder Grandma Hai sounded so weary when Miranda told her the reason for the call. No wonder she seemed so uncaring now — how would that feel, Miranda wondered, to know your daughter only looked at you as a human credit card?
A chorus of laughter chimed in the background. She has more friends than I do, Miranda thought, and marveled at the things that were possible if you cut Katerina Cho out of your life.
Grandma Hai coughed. “It was good to hear from you, Miranda. Even considering the circumstances. You — you seem like a nice girl.”
“I am.” As if to prove it, Miranda added, “Thank you for the birthday cards. I get them every year.”
“I know.” Her grandmother spoke with unexpected warmth. “I get your thank-you notes. I hope you buy something fun. I’m sorry I can’t pick out gifts myself.” I’m sorry I don’t know you well enough is what she really meant, Miranda knew. “You’re twelve now?” Grandma Hai added.
“Yes.”
“Twelve years old.” The pinch of wistfulness Miranda detected in her grandmother’s voice vanished with her next sentence. “Well, I’d better get back to my club.”
“Good-bye,” Miranda whispered. She ended the call and barely noticed when her hand went into her hair. Three strands of hair yanked out, just like that.
Yank, relief. Yank, relief. Yank, relief.
She crossed her grandmother’s name off the list and held the marker against the paper, as if to write.
But she didn’t, and an hour later she had nothing but an inkblot and a dull ache in her chest as she let her grandmother’s voice echo in her mind, over and over and over.
The minutes on the clock passed hushedly — Miranda hated when this happened, when her time was emptied with nothing to show for it.
Her mother knocked. “Bean, are we out of toothpaste?”
“Under the sink,” Miranda called.
Sometimes with Katerina, you have to let her fall on her face. Grandma Hai’s words danced around Miranda like
bonfire goblins, taunting, snarling — easy, so easy for her grandmother to say such a thing. She didn’t have to live with Kat anymore. She didn’t have to live with the consequences.
Miranda turned over her legal pad so she didn’t have to stare at her failure and opened the laptop. Perhaps the Internet would have some ideas. Perhaps she could find a bank willing to talk to a seventh-grade girl.
Instead she looked up her father.
The crinkle of his eyes. His thousand-dollar smile — those teeth hadn’t been that straight when she’d known him, she was sure.
The sadness in her was overwhelming. She didn’t think, I wish you had never left. I wish you had stayed and Mom had gone; I am with the wrong parent — not exactly, but the notions churning in her mind were similar, less-formed versions of those.
“Bean?” Kat knocked again. “Are you turning in soon?”
Miranda had forgotten about sleep. About school. About everything else but this — this person on the other side of the computer screen.
“Not yet,” she answered, making her voice calm. “It’s only nine thirty.”
“I know,” Kat said. “I’m going to bed, though. I want to be on the road early.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Hold on. We haven’t gone over the rules for this weekend.” Without asking for permission, Kat opened Miranda’s door.
At the sound of the knob twisting, Miranda deleted her history and shut the laptop.
Her mother, oblivious as ever, leaned against the door frame, her hair in a floppy knot on top of her head.
Miranda stared. “What are you wearing?”
Kat’s pajamas were a one-piece zip-up with footsies, printed with sweet pink ice cream cones on a candy-blue background.
“Aren’t they cozy?” Kat hugged herself, then put on a false stern face. “Now, the rules for this weekend are . . . there are no rules.” She grinned, delighted with herself.
Miranda’s nostrils flared as she held herself steady. Why did everything have to be a joke, a game with Kat? Why couldn’t she take anything seriously?
“Be safe,” Kat said. “Be smart.”
The Bigfoot Files Page 5