Miranda held still, trying to determine if that glow came from the hallway or the bathroom.
What if that’s her?
What if she notices when I’m not in school today?
What if she asks me where I was?
A hand snaked up into her hair, to plunder, to take — her fingers pinched the chosen strand — but none of that mattered, she realized. After this weekend, she would never have to hide the truth about her life from anyone at school.
She’d never have to cover for her strange, monster-loving mother again.
Her hand fell back down to her side.
Whatever doubts she might have had about this weekend — about the e-mail, the tentacle . . . they evaporated as she looked up at Emma’s house. It would all be worth it.
The light flipped off, and Miranda turned to the Critter Mobile, squeezing the camping chairs into the last pockets of space, and closed the back hatch.
“Mom?” she called. “Let’s go!” She wanted to leave on schedule, but she also wanted to leave before anyone came out of Emma’s house. Before anyone saw.
Kat said good-bye to the gnomes and shut the front door. “Prepared for departure, drill sergeant!” She saluted, then her straight posture loosened. “Wait — what about school?”
Miranda froze. “School?”
“Didn’t you say you couldn’t miss any more classes?”
“It’ll be fine.” Miranda’s throat was suddenly a desert; she swallowed and swallowed and swallowed.
“I don’t know, Bean.” Kat chewed a thumbnail. “You’ve been working so hard — maybe this isn’t a good weekend. Maybe you should stay here.”
Miranda could only stare — was Kat about to throw a wrench in Miranda’s plans by being responsible?
“Mom,” she said, “I can miss school today. But we can’t afford to waste any more time. Every minute we putter around here is another minute Bigfoot is loose in the forest. Anyone could find him — we have to hurry.”
“Okay, Bean. If you’re sure. But I should call your school.” Kat pulled her phone from where she usually kept it — in her bra — and dialed the number.
Just like that. As if she’d done it every other time when Miranda’s desk was empty, and her teachers were lecturing, and everyone was questioning her commitment to any of it — to a perfect record, a perfect reign as the youngest-ever student body president.
Perfect.
She reeled when she heard the voice mail of the attendance office blare from her mother’s phone.
“Hello, this is Kat Cho, Miranda Cho’s mother, calling to tell you that she’ll be absent today. Thank you!”
Kat had never remembered to excuse an absence. Never.
She pushed her phone back under her shirt and said, “Shall we hit the road?”
Why was Miranda so upset? Wasn’t this a taste of what she wanted — wasn’t this what the trip was for? To summon forth a version of her mother that would remember to wash the dishes so they didn’t have to eat their chili on Frisbees? To bring out the side of Kat that would ground Miranda if she broke a house rule — to bring out a Kat that would make house rules in the first place, and give out curfews, and check to make sure her daughter’s homework was finished before the television went on?
To make Kat into a mom who didn’t drag her on these trips at all?
As Miranda climbed into the Critter Mobile and screeched the door shut, she let herself smile — a real one. Kat called the school. She’d done it herself, unprompted. Maybe this plan really would work.
Maybe somewhere deep, deep down, Kat was ready to put aside her little-girl self and finally act like a real mom.
The Critter Mobile was on and warm, the GPS on Miranda’s phone was blinking and ready to announce a route, but first, Kat angled herself to face Miranda and reached for her hand. “I have to tell you, Bean . . . I’m so excited for this trip, I’m jumping out of my gourd.”
“Me, too.” The lie fell out of Miranda’s mouth so easily, no thought required.
It frightened her, how effortless it was — to make something up. Something utterly believable.
“We’re going to find one this time, Bean,” Kat whispered. It sounded like Miranda’s whisper. “I know it.”
Something fluttered up into Miranda’s throat.
Something she hadn’t felt in a long, long —
She pressed the start button on the GPS, and the soothing robotic voice chased away that golden-soft whisper: “Starting route to Olympic National Park . . .”
Stay in control, Miranda told herself. This is a trip to get Mom to stop believing — not the other way around.
The Critter Mobile moved backward out of the driveway, and question after question flocked in Miranda’s tummy like geese —
What if this doesn’t work?
What if Grandma Hai was right?
What if Mom is too entrenched in this nonsense to be rescued?
What if we lose everything, and my leadership camp is gone, and then I am really, truly alone —
No, Miranda thought. She wouldn’t let any of those things happen. She would do this — she was Miranda Cho.
If something was on her to-do list, it got done.
She slipped out of her boots, rested her stocking feet on the dashboard, and scrolled through her to-do lists on her phone, making new notes of extra credit assignments she could do for her teachers when she returned to school on Monday.
Ways she could make up for another absence — her last one. Ways she could prove she was still the same old Miranda. Still perfect.
With her other hand, she yanked out hairs, one at a time, until she lost count.
“Bigfoot, here we come!” Kat cheered as she urged the Critter Mobile up the ramp, merging onto the highway at the exact moment Miranda had detailed in her itinerary.
Indeed, Miranda thought. Ready or not.
Here we come.
By the third hour, Miranda was ready to admit this was a mistake.
Kat was on her fifth Bigfoot story and her second cup of drive-through coffee, paying no attention to the weariness reeking from the wilting daughter in the captain’s seat beside her. Miranda tried to do schoolwork, to read, snooze, anything — but seconds after she was absorbed, Kat sucked her back out.
“Someone last summer saw a figure twice the size of Bigfoot around Mount Saint Helen’s — sort of a super Bigfoot,” Kat was saying now. “What do you think, Bean? Could there be a Superfoot out there?” and Miranda nearly erupted, so furious and so quick was the dart of anger that hit her.
Can’t she hear herself? Miranda thought. Can’t she hear how she sounds?
“Anyway, she whipped out her camera,” Kat said, “and you can see it on the video — this black figure moving through the trees. It’s a little shaky, but it’s right there —”
Sometimes Miranda watched her mother speak and wondered if she would actually rustle up dust with how fast she talked, how many sentences she spat out. Perhaps they could be tracked, as they wound up past the city, through dairy farms and onion fields — just follow the trail of chaff, the dull nonstop sound of jabber, the spinning wheels.
“Just think, Bean — all those creatures out there. Just waiting for someone to be in the right place at the right time.” She paused to nibble a vine of strawberry licorice, and Miranda breathed out, counted to three, reached for the stereo —
“Oh! I brought this for us!” Kat pushed an ancient CD into the slot and handed Miranda the cover to peruse — a woman with hot pink hair sneered at the camera, swirling galaxies and cold ringed planets behind her.
Kat then proceeded to both sing along off-key and narrate the album’s major themes and influences during the guitar solos, and Miranda resisted the urge to swing the Critter Mobile door open and take her chances with a jump into traffic.
Two more hours to the forest, she reminded herself. Then another hour to the southwest entrance, and one more through the park to their campground. Miranda had a certain
site in mind: Tallulah Flats — a five-minute walk to the trailhead, gravel parking for the Critter Mobile, a nice, flat area for the tent, and a row of indoor bathrooms with showers and running water.
Campsites were first come, first serve — another reason to hurry, hurry, hurry.
Only a few more hours until they were unpacking.
Only a few more days until they were making this drive the other way. Back home.
We’re already halfway to the forest, she reassured herself.
Only two more sleeps until her mother admitted there was no Bigfoot.
“Time to get gas,” she announced after checking her itinerary.
Kat looked at the meter. “We’ve still got half a tank.”
“Really?” Miranda looked at her notes. She’d made the calculations for pit stops herself — oh, but she hadn’t accounted for the half hour of idling they’d done in that bottleneck outside of Seattle. “We should fill up now. Gas stations get sparse after this exit.”
“If you say so, Bean.” Kat stretched to check her mirror. “I need more coffee anyway.”
They pulled off the freeway and found a gas station where a plastic red T-Rex chomped on a sign, large enough to cast its big-headed, small-armed shadow into the street.
Kat parked by a nozzle. “Get me a coffee with three sugars and something sweet — a doughnut. A chocolate one. No, a maple bar. No, both. And something for yourself.”
Miranda stared at the wrinkled five-dollar bill in Kat’s outstretched hand. “I packed snacks for us.” She had a budget in mind for this weekend, one tight enough to cut off circulation. They had to save money where they could.
“Oh, come on, Bean, we’re on a road trip! Plus this is all tax deductible.” Kat ran a tired-looking credit card through the machine at the pump.
Miranda bit her tongue so hard, she could nearly taste the words.
Instead of arguing, she scurried into the station before she could see how much Kat’s beloved gas-guzzling Critter Mobile was going to cost to fill up.
Bigfoot, she thought wryly, you’d better be worth it.
Raisinets. Lemonheads. Boston Baked Beans.
Miranda shuffled down the aisles, past the kaleidoscope of gas station offerings, the multi-textured universe of salt and sugar and grease. It was nine o’clock. By now, homeroom bell would be ringing, the halls of the school swimming with students — but no Miranda. She’d been gone so often; would anyone even notice when her desk was empty? Would someone else raise their hand in the hefty silences after the teachers asked their questions? Would someone else give the right answers?
Ms. Palmer — the name was dense in her mind, sinking all the way down into her stomach. Ms. Palmer would notice she was gone.
Miranda battled the thickening guilt with a single thought, sharp as a sword cutting through briars: I have to pull this off. When we drive out of the forest on Sunday, we have to leave Bigfoot behind, or else I’m missing school for nothing.
She threw two doughnuts into a bag. There were no maple bars, so she chose one with orange frosting and Halloween sprinkles. Kat would like the little pumpkins, and cats, and witch hats —
Miranda stopped cold, next to the tubes of sunflower seeds in every conceivable flavor: extra-salted, ranch, barbecue.
A car had just pulled up to the closest gas pump.
A silver sports car, chrome hubcaps, tinted windows. Big enough for only two.
The same car she’d seen online, when she was searching for things she shouldn’t have been searching for —
Black pepper. Spicy jalapeño . . .
Her father’s car.
Miranda crouched down, gut lurching as she peeked through the hanging bags to watch the door open.
Salted lime. Sweet ’n’ sour. Pickle . . .
What if it’s him?
What if he comes inside?
What if he doesn’t come inside?
Nacho cheese. Beet. Sriracha . . .
No one wants to taste the actual sunflower seeds, she thought idly. They want to pay for flavor. They want to pay to be fooled.
Sunlight striped the door white as it opened — Miranda couldn’t breathe.
What if, what if, what if?
It wasn’t him.
She couldn’t see the details of the person who was driving — sunglasses obscured most of his face — but it wasn’t him.
Now that her heart had stopped its pounding, she studied the car, collecting its details. She could see it now: the way its front was blunt, awkwardly rounded down like a parrot’s beak instead of a smooth, pointed torpedo. The way it was more of a dull gray, the color of a grimy nickel, than actual silver.
She rolled her eyes — someday she’d laugh at this, she told herself, at the time she hid inside a gas station because she thought it was — she thought she saw —
“Bean?” Kat came down the aisle and squatted next to her daughter. “There you are! Did you get coffee?”
“Not yet.” Miranda wiped her sweaty hands on the seat of her pants — she’d sweat enough to make two small swamps in her palms.
Kat inspected her. “You okay? You look weird.”
Miranda blinked, pulled out a hair, and finally the world focused: There was her mother, a grown woman with purple sparkly lipstick and a butterfly clip in her hair, clutching a package of tropical Skittles. Tension returned to her limbs.
“I’m fine.” She stood up, led her mother to the java station, where Kat filled up the largest-size cup with coffee and enough sugar to almost make it solid, and Miranda yanked out three more hairs, emptying herself of the embarrassment that had nearly sunken her.
How could I have thought that was his car? What would I have even done if it was?
At the counter, Kat gestured for Miranda to plunk down the five-dollar bill; Miranda did so with some trepidation. Five whole dollars, gone, just like that. For a pile of junk food and caffeine.
“What flavor?” asked the attendant, semi-bored.
Kat frowned. “What?”
The attendant held a cup to the Slushie machine. “Flavor?”
“Oh!” Kat fidgeted with her capelette, beaming. “What? Oh — blue, I guess?”
The attendant pushed the Slushie toward her, along with her change. “Thank you for choosing Gas ’n’ Go for all your refueling needs.”
As soon as they got back in the Critter Mobile, Kat fanned herself and pretended to swoon. “Wow, that guy was cute. Did you see the way he was flirting with me?”
“He was not flirting with you,” Miranda said.
“Uh, exhibit A.” Kat held up the cup of blue ice crystals. “Free Slushie, Bean. Maybe he wrote his phone number on the cup.” While she checked the domed lid for digits, she drove right past the sign that explained it: FREE 16-OZ. SLUSHIE WHEN YOU SPEND $40 OR MORE ON GAS.
Miranda opened the trail mix she’d brought from home and leaned her head against the window.
All the proof in the world was right under Kat’s nose, but she didn’t catch a wink of it.
“So you’ve been searching for Bigfoot for — how many years, exactly?”
If Kat was surprised that Miranda was asking such a question, she didn’t show it; she pursed her lips, thinking. “Let’s see, Bean — I went on my first tracking trip when you were six. So that’s about —”
“Six years,” Miranda said. “Is that around the same time you quit at the dentist?” Kat used to work as a receptionist for a kind-faced dentist who wore her hair in a long gray braid down her back — Miranda had vague memories of seeing her mom behind the front desk, filing and answering phones. It had always seemed a strange sight, like witnessing a zoo animal doing office work.
“About five years ago.” Kat ate the last yellow Skittle in her bag and started on the green. “That was a good job, but it was too hard to balance everything once the blog took off. There was no time to go out on searches.”
Kat had left the dentist’s office and never looked back. Left a consistent paycheck to
cobble together a living from research grants, convention speaking fees, and the ad revenue from The Bigfoot Files, with a sprinkling of e-book royalties and freelance articles here and there — and, as Miranda now knew, at least one big bailout from Grandma Hai.
Miranda was going to help her mother back into something steady. Another desk job, hopefully something where Kat’s extroversion could be utilized, and her tendency to imagine the impossible could be seen as an asset.
But first, she had to write her mother a résumé.
She subtly jotted down the dates of her mother’s employment history in a blank corner of her notebook. “So you’ve only had one job before this?” she clarified. “Just the dentist’s office?”
Kat shrugged. “Before that, I had you. That’s why I never finished college.”
Miranda looked at her mom, recalculating. “I didn’t know you went to college.”
“I dropped out after sophomore year.” She smiled at Miranda, her lips stained blue from her Slushie. “Pregnancy migraines and morning sickness got in the way of homework. I always meant to go back when you were older, but then . . .” Her shrug was cheerful, but something inside Miranda shifted, a spring river thawing.
But then he left.
Miranda catalogued what facts she did know about Kat pre-motherhood, a topic they rarely, if ever, broached: Kat met Miranda’s dad and married him at eighteen, even though Grandma Hai didn’t approve. Grandma didn’t think they’d known each other long enough, and whether or not that was what ultimately sunk their marriage, within a year of the wedding Kat was pregnant, and within five years she was divorced.
Not exactly the fairy-tale ending any mother would want for her daughter.
“You’re talking about real college?” Miranda confirmed. “Not some online certification program, or —”
“Real college, Bean. I was a biology major at Reed.”
Reed College? Miranda’s astonishment reached down to her toes. Reed was a good school — a really good school. And biology was a real science — none of her mother’s textbooks would have mentioned Bigfoot — or the Loch Ness Monster, or the Frogman, or any of the creatures Kat now devoted her life to.
The Bigfoot Files Page 7