Scream and Scream Again! Page 10

  “Good evening to you, friend,” she said.

  “You’re here! Does that mean I can go back?”

  “Aye. For you have more than done your duty. Without Benedict Arnold to advise him otherwise, General Cornwallis will, indeed, make camp at the coast, in Yorktown, instead of Richmond. He will have his back to the sea when America’s French friends arrive.”

  “Yorktown was where the British surrendered,” said Parker.

  “Aye. Thanks in no small part to you.”

  “So, uh, now what do I do? Go to the bathroom again?”

  “No need,” said the tour bus driver. “Simply walk into the gift shop.”

  “There’s a gift shop?”

  “Aye. Straight through that door.”

  “I’ll kind of miss it here.”

  “Who knows? Your country might need you again.”

  “In Williamsburg?”

  “Or elsewhere.”

  “Cool.”

  Parker went back to his bowl to spoon down a few last bites of the awesome stew.

  When he looked up again, the transportation coordinator was gone.

  “Guess I better leave too.”

  He walked to the door.

  Pushed it open.

  And he was in the gift shop.

  The one in modern-day Colonial Williamsburg.

  All of his classmates were milling around, checking out the souvenirs.

  “People?” said Mrs. Lipinski. “You can shop later. Our first stop is the Governor’s Palace. Let’s go.”

  Most of the kids followed Mrs. Lipinski out the door.

  But not the pretty blonde, Grace.

  She was staring in horror at a whole row of bobblehead dolls under a placard reading: “The Unknown Patriot: Youngest Hero of Williamsburg.”

  Parker picked up one of the bouncy headed figurines. It was a young boy, maybe twelve years old, dressed in Colonial-era clothes. His ears were two sizes too big for his head. He wore ginormous glasses. And, of course, his mouth was full of sparkling silver braces.

  He looked exactly like Parker P. Poindexter.

  Parker grinned.

  Grace screamed.

  “Nooooooo!”

  Summer of Sharks

  by Lisa Morton

  I SCREAMED WHEN I FIRST SAW the coyote during my sister’s quinceañera.

  Okay, that might be a little misleading. I certainly didn’t scream at the church in San Fernando, where the first part of the day took place. It was after, when we all went up to this fancy restaurant in the hills above Burbank. Vanessa had fallen in love with the place when we’d been there for her birthday last year, and my parents had paid a fortune to rent it out for her big fifteenth-birthday celebration.

  As part of her Court of Honor, I had to pose with our cousins and her friends for all the official pictures—the whole group of us, fifteen all together, vogueing on the restaurant’s deck, the San Fernando Valley spread out behind us underneath its permanent smog layer. I couldn’t wait until the photos were done so I could take off the stupid shoes I had to wear.

  Vanessa, of course, looked radiant in a shimmering blue-and-purple gown, her long black hair trailing down her back in big fat curls, a glittery tiara perched on top of her head. In fact, she looked perfect, but then again, pretty much everything my sister did was perfect. She was beautiful and smart and hardworking and popular. She was an amazing student; she already had her whole life charted out (she wanted to work in the State Department), and no one who knew her doubted that she would succeed.

  I hated her a little, in case you didn’t guess. I was three years younger, but she made me feel like a toddler. I was a tomboy with short hair, a geek who was more comfortable with a tablet than a group of friends, and most scoffed at my desire to be a game designer. I had one BFF—Raphael, who I’d known since we were both in diapers—I struggled in school, and I thought a quinceañera was just about the dumbest thing ever.

  Everybody had gathered inside the restaurant’s side hall to dance. Papa and Vanessa were doing this traditional waltz thing while Mom sat at the side with my tía Lydia, who passed her Kleenex as she cried. I got my backpack, swapped the tight blue satin shoes I’d been forced to endure for my usual boots, then decided to hike off somewhere to play my Brainshot game in peace. I was in a mood to kill some zombies.

  There was an empty, quiet park just a short distance below the restaurant, nestled into a crook of the hills; a small swath of landscaped green against all the brown. It would only take a few minutes to hike down to it. Papa would text me when it was time to go.

  As I walked down to the park, I pulled out my tablet and brought up the main screen for Brainshot, hoping Raphael might be online and we could team up. The truth was, I was little mad at him for not coming to Vanessa’s quinceañera; I was surrounded by my sister’s friends, and it made me wish there was just one person there for me. Raphael had a big family, though—four sisters, two brothers, and an eighty-year-old grandmother who lived in a trailer beside the house—and as the oldest, he got stuck with a lot of babysitting duties. I knew not to expect him to show up for anything, but it still hurt a little.

  He wasn’t online for Brainshot, either. I’d have to go zombie killing on my own.

  The road to the park was bordered by a steep hill going up on one side, and a large, overgrown flat shoulder on the other. I was walking on the shoulder, focusing on my tablet, when I heard a skitter of rocks hitting the asphalt. I looked up, squinting against the sun, and saw a flash of movement. Something was moving along the top of the embankment.

  I walked faster, trying not to be too obvious when I looked up. More rubble fell. Something up there was keeping pace with me.

  I almost turned around and walked back to the restaurant. The surrounding area was overgrown—sage and cactus and lots of rock—and I was out here alone, in a frilly blue dress and boots. I’d heard stories of mountain lions still inhabiting these hills, even attacking hikers. Or maybe it was a human up there, running along the top of a cliff, waiting to strike. . . .

  I stopped and looked up, waiting. . . .

  Nothing. Nothing charged down the hill at me. Nothing made a sound up there. No more rocks fell to the street.

  After a few seconds I decided it had been something random—a stray dog or even a jackrabbit—and I continued on to the park.

  The park was empty and pleasant. Picnic tables and trash cans were nestled among magnolia trees and agave, on a green lawn that probably used up too much water. I almost settled down on the ground, beneath the shade of spreading leaves, but I remembered the dress I still had on and how Mom would probably kill me if I came back covered in grass stains, so I opted for a bench instead.

  I was bent over my tablet and had just popped off my first few rounds when I heard the sound again. I looked up—and that’s when I screamed.

  Maybe fifteen feet up, the cliff was split by a small canyon. Wedged into the mouth of the ravine was a huge tawny dog. It took me a few more seconds to realize it wasn’t a dog—it was a coyote, its golden eyes fixed on me, ears alert, mouth partly open so I could see its really big teeth.

  I stopped screaming, but my heart still pounded as I stared at it. I’d seen reports on the news about coyotes showing up in foothill neighborhoods, preying on cats and the occasional small child . . . like me. Should I back away slowly? I doubted I could run in my stupid dress. Yell something threatening at it? Pick up a branch and take a swing?

  I was pondering all these possibilities when the coyote did a strange thing: it bobbed its head up and down, like . . . a nod. It looked like someone offering an enthusiastic yes. It stopped nodding, and I looked into its wide, intelligent eyes, and I felt as if I’d somehow known this coyote forever, as if we were old and dear friends. My heart stopped hammering, my terror replaced by wonder.

  My phone rang, the opening blast of the Star Wars theme crushing the moment. I dropped my eyes for just a second, my hand shot down for my phone—and the coyote van
ished. I cursed myself for not putting the phone on vibrate or at least giving it a different ring tone. I wanted to answer it and yell at whoever had chased off the coyote, but then I saw it was Papa calling. He couldn’t text me like other people— No, he had to call. But I pushed down my anger as I answered.

  He wanted me to come back. We’d be leaving in fifteen minutes. I said okay, hung up, got ready to head up the hill . . . but not before tiptoeing up to the mouth of the ravine where I’d seen the coyote, just in case. Of course it wasn’t there. I didn’t see it again on the walk back, either.

  But somehow I had the feeling that the coyote and I would meet again.

  “You shouldn’t have left the party. It wasn’t safe.”

  That was Papa, after we were home and I’d gotten out of that dress and back into my cut-off jeans and T-shirt. Vanessa was out with friends, and I was about to head into my room and see if Raphael was online yet. Papa, Mom, and mi abuela (whose English was only slightly better than my Spanish) were in the living room watching some news report on the television.

  “I didn’t go that far. . . .”

  Mom nodded at the screen. “He’s right, Miki. Look at that.”

  I stopped and glanced at what looked like a local report. It was a helicopter shot, over a beach, probably somewhere near Malibu. Police and photographers surrounded a crew of paramedics who were loading somebody onto a stretcher. A reporter’s voice was saying something about how this was “the fourth shark attack on a teenage girl in this area within the last four months.”

  “They think this one was thirteen or fourteen,” said Papa.

  “But these girls were all attacked by sharks,” I pointed out. “I’m safe as long as I don’t go swimming in the ocean, right?”

  There was no way I could ever tell them about the coyote.

  Papa said, “Miguelita Chavez . . .”

  I loved Papa, but sometimes he was crazy when it came to safety. He saw threats to Vanessa and me everywhere. I thought for sure he was fretting about me right now only because he’d let Vanessa go out with her friends. “I’ll be careful,” I said as I left the room.

  The Star Wars theme sounded as I entered my bedroom. I shut the door, saw it was Raphael, picked it up. He didn’t even say hi, just asked, “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Dani Martinez is in the hospital recovering from a shark attack. It bit her in the leg.”

  “Dani Martinez?” I flopped down onto my bed, stunned. I’d known her since the third grade, when her family had come up from Mexico. We’d never been besties or anything—for one thing she was a year ahead of me—but everybody at Revere Elementary knew her. She was pretty and popular, one of those girlie-girls who wanted to be a fashion designer.

  “Will she be okay?”

  Raphael answered, “From what I heard.”

  We talked some more after that, first about Dani Martinez, then about swimming in the ocean and how awful it would be to get bitten by a shark, then about my sister’s quinceañera. “I wish you’d been there,” I told him. “I got so bored at one point I wandered off.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where’d you go?”

  “Just to a park near the restaurant. Oh, this weird thing happened there: I saw a coyote. Not like from a distance or something, but close-up, like maybe twenty feet away. It looked at me, and it just seemed like . . . like a person, not like a wild animal. It was really awesome.”

  There was a pause before Raphael asked a strange question: “Do you like coyotes?”

  I was so surprised I laughed before answering. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I never thought about it. I know they’re kind of all around LA, up in the hills and stuff . . . why?”

  “I just always thought they were cool, that’s all.”

  After that we played a few rounds of Scorched Metal 3, until I heard my sister come home. She wasn’t alone; I heard a male voice with her. When I groaned I missed a shot and was promptly eaten by aliens. Raphael typed into the game’s chat, Epic fail. Waddup?

  I typed back, Sis just got home. I hear Parker.

  Raphael wrote, Watch out for that guy, k?

  I knew he didn’t like Parker Madigan, whereas my parents worshipped him. He wasn’t exactly Vanessa’s boyfriend—Papa had told her she couldn’t have a boyfriend until she reached sixteen, and she’d actually agreed to that—but they’d been hanging out a lot lately.

  They’d met when Vanessa got to intern for a week in Parker’s dad’s office; Davis Madigan was a deputy district attorney for LA, and it’d been a big deal for a fourteen-year-old from a public school to score the internship, even if it was only a short one.

  Parker, of course, didn’t go to our school; his daddy paid for an expensive private school. Parker even looked rich, with his perfect blond hair and his perfect teeth and his easy grin. He was cute and smart and friendly, but something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. When I’d mentioned that to my mom once, she’d brushed it off. “Don’t be jealous of your sister.”

  “I am so not jealous,” I’d assured her. If anyone had a crush on Parker, it was Mom, with the way she giggled and fluttered whenever he came around.

  Gotta go, I typed before closing out the game. I’d call Raphael later.

  I walked out to the living room to see Parker and Vanessa sitting on the couch, near each other but not too near. My mom was just passing them both tall glasses of iced tea, fussing as always. Dad wasn’t around, but I knew he liked Parker too.

  Parker saw me and smiled, toasting me with the glass. “Hey there, Miki. How’d you like the quinceañera today? I didn’t see you around for most of it.”

  “I was there.”

  Vanessa glowered at me. I made a face at her. Parker saw and laughed.

  I turned around and left. I just didn’t like the guy.

  I saw the coyote again four days later.

  It was night, almost ten. The day had been hot—triple digits in SoCal’s valleys—and the evening air felt good after a day of enduring sputtering AC.

  Everyone else was in the house, watching television (the parents) or talking on the phone (the sister). I was in the backyard with my tablet, testing out a new game I’d heard about in a forum. Starmind was still in beta, but it was pretty cool.

  I’d just piloted my interstellar ship through an asteroid belt when I heard a sound nearby. Our backyard wasn’t huge, but it had a few nice trees and Abuela’s rosebushes. The rustling came from those.

  I lowered the tablet and squinted into the dark. The bushes rustled again. Something was moving in there.

  We get an amazing amount of wildlife in the San Fernando Valley—squirrels, possums, raccoons, even sometimes skunks—so I wasn’t really scared . . . until I saw a flash of golden eyes. This was too big even for a raccoon. My breath caught; I started to inch up out of my plastic deck chair—

  It stepped out of the rosebushes into the light from the kitchen window, and I saw the tan fur and long snout.

  The coyote.

  I should have been scared, but somehow I wasn’t. I settled back down into my chair, waiting.

  It stepped forward, and I saw it had something in its mouth. It took another step toward me; it was holding a piece of printer paper. It set the paper down and backed away, waiting.

  Moving slowly, I rose and leaned forward to pick up the white sheet. I never took my eyes off the coyote; it held my gaze steadily, with confidence and something else . . . amusement? Affection?

  I picked up the paper and turned it to the light. There, in Times New Roman, were these words:

  DANI MARTINEZ WAS VISITING PARKER MADIGAN’S BOAT WHEN SHE WAS ATTACKED.

  Shocked, I looked up from the words to the coyote. We stared at each other for a last second before it turned and ran off.

  I carried the paper into my room and hid it under my mattress. I didn’t want to deal with explaining it if somebody found it. I didn’t even know how I would explain it.

  But somehow I knew it was right.
>
  There was only one person I did show the note to: Raphael, when he came over the next day.

  He read it and then handed it back to me. “So where’d you say you got this?”

  “I . . . ,” I hesitated, debating telling Raphael, as I had all night. He was my best friend; I’d told him some pretty crazy things in the past, and he’d told me crazy things, and I thought I could trust him with anything, so I dove right in. “Remember that coyote I saw in the canyon, during the quinceañera?”

  “Yeah, I remember. He brought this to you?”

  I blinked in surprise, mainly because Raphael didn’t sound like he was kidding. “Well, as a matter of fact . . . Wait—do you know something about this?”

  “I might. . . .”

  Raphael had been sprawled on my bed, reading the note. Now he got up, went to the door, and closed it. Something in my gut flip-flopped; he almost never did that. “I think there’s something I need to show you, but it’s the biggest secret in the world, and you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

  This was all making me very nervous, so I made a bad joke. “That depends. If you’ve got a tiny head growing from your armpit that sings at night, I might have to turn you in—”

  He cut me off, something else he almost never did. “Miguelita, this is serious. I have to know I can trust you.”

  My smirk vanished. “You know you can. You’re my best friend.”

  “Okay.” He stood in front of the closed door and gestured me to sit on the bed. “You should probably sit. And promise me you won’t scream.”

  I sat. I nodded once. “I promise.”

  I waited.

  Raphael looked at me. . . .

  His face abruptly twisted, growing long and pointed. His black hair turned tan; his brown eyes, gold. His ears disappeared, then reappeared on top of his head, long and pointed.

  It was a coyote head, coming up out of Raphael’s T-shirt.

  I started to make a sound, remembered what I’d promised, and clamped both hands over my mouth. I simultaneously jumped up and buckled, which left me sliding off the bed to the floor.