Expecting to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“I—I’m not really sure.” Bianca lifted a shoulder. Felt dumb. “Maybe a wild animal—some kind of creature chasing me.”

“What kind of creature?”

Bianca felt her mother’s gaze boring into her. “I don’t know. Something big and smelly. A huge thing. I mean, this is crazy, I know. But . . . I think it was a monster, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.” Her mother stared hard at her.

How could she explain when it seemed weird, stupid, even made-up? “A beast, I guess.” Saying it out loud made her cringe inside.

“What kind of beast?”

“Just big and kind of animal. Horrible. Not human.” She shuddered remembering the immensity of the thing, how it had reeked, its glowing eye. God, it did seem surreal now. “I just had the feeling that, whatever it was, it was . . . like pure evil.”

“Evil?”

“Yeah, like really, really bad. I had the feeling it wanted to kill me!”

“This was before you saw the dead girl?”

“God—yes! I told you it chased me! Right down to the creek!” Bianca remembered the creature’s loud footsteps, its hulking size, and she felt that mind-numbing fear all over again. “I already told you. Can we just stop now?”

“We will . . . yes. But first. Just answer this,” her mother said calmly while Bianca was on the brink of hysteria. “This ‘monster,’ could it have been someone dressed up in a costume, you know, one of the boys playing a joke on—”

“A joke? Are you serious? This thing was like a mountain, so big, so scary . . . oh, crap, you don’t believe me.”

“No, no. I’m just trying to figure out what it is.”

“I told you what!” Bianca wrapped her arms around herself. Her mother didn’t believe her.

“Then try again. Calmly.”

“Okay. It was huge.”

“We’ve established that.”

“And hairy and smelled like . . . wet dog, only a hundred times worse, like if Sturgis took a bath in a lake filled with raw sewage, that bad. And it had an eye that kind of glowed gold. Like topaz or something. You know, like the stone in that necklace Michelle wears sometimes. It was like that.”

“One eye?”

“I only saw one.” It sounded weird. All of it sounded weird, not just the eye. Bianca knew that.

“Could it have been a cougar? A mountain lion was spotted not far from here.”

“No! Mom! This thing was huge. Massive. Like way taller than me and it . . . I mean, I couldn’t tell, but it was on two legs. Or rearing up. I don’t know. It was dark. It all happened so fast, but it scared me. It scared the hell out of me.” Oh, God, she was saying this all wrong.

“But could it have been human? Just bear with me and think about it. Someone dressed up to really scare you?”

“No! Yes? I don’t know! But it would have had to have been a giant. A hairy, stinky giant!” She let out her breath and tried to calm a bit. “It was . . . awful. And then . . . and then it chased me down to the creek where . . . where she was.” The more Bianca thought about it, the crazier it sounded. Tears welled in her eyes. “Can we just go home?”

“You can. After you go to the hospital. I’ll be a little longer. I have things I have to deal with here.”

“But—”

“I know.” Struggling with her massive girth, Mom turned in her seat and hugged Bianca. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Promise.”

Bianca nodded as she stared out the windshield to the eerie gloom. Knots of kids, now with parents or cops beside them, were huddled in the play of light from flashlights and headlights, everyone telling his or her side of the story. She spied Austin Reece, blond head held at a lofty angle, looking down his nose at a short woman cop. Maddie was standing next to Teej, leaning on him. She was probably drunk. Not good.

But then nothing was. Groups of other kids, some with their parents, formed a wide, uneven circle as they talked to the cops. Rod Devlin was dealing with the same deputy with whom Bianca had first spoken, Kayan Rule. The party mood had dissipated, and most of her friends looked grim or scared or both.