A few minutes later, she came silently back to the great room, dragging her duffel across the floor by its strap.
I made a mental note to remind her of that next time she made fun of me for sweeping every two days.
Adrienne lived a couple of miles away in a neighborhood called Lakewood, which was built in the 1970s and filled with bizarre, asymmetrical wooden tract houses. Near the entrance was a small man-made lake and a few acres of woods.
As we pulled into the driveway, my phone rang. It was Megan.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m ten minutes away.”
“Don’t bother.” She sounded drained. “The party’s canceled.”
“What? Why? Is everything okay?”
A huge sigh. “No.”
Kasey was poised, her fingers on the door handle. I gave her a little wave, but she stayed put.
“Hang on, Megan.” I covered the mouthpiece and turned to Kasey. “Bye. Have fun. Hint hint.”
Kasey’s frightened expression made her look about ten years old. “But—I don’t know—what am I supposed to do? What if I don’t like the games?”
“Games? You’re not in sixth grade anymore. It’s a slumber party,” I said. “Just don’t fall asleep first, and you’ll be fine.”
She shook her head, faster and faster, working herself up into a panic. “No, no, I changed my mind. Take me home.”
“Kasey, go inside. You’ll have fun. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
She gave me a desperate look.
“See you at noon,” I said.
She took her time getting out of the car and walked up the driveway at quarter-speed.
I went back to my phone. “Megan?”
There was a pause, and for a second I thought she’d hung up. Then she spoke. “At cheer practice today, I demonstrated a back handspring.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said. “Not at all. But Coach Neidorf called my grandmother. Apparently they had some secret agreement to keep an eye on me.” She was quiet for a long few seconds. “Grandma was spying on me, Lex.”
“Only because she cares about you,” I said, but I knew it was a weak excuse.
“So I’m grounded for a week, and the party’s canceled. Can you call a few people? I’m phone-grounded, too.” Then there was a muffled voice in the background and bumping and shuffling. “I’m almost done!”
“Sure,” I said. “Text me the names.”
“Lex?” she asked, her voice suddenly small. “Don’t have a party without me, okay?”
I imagined Megan sitting in a jail cell, her grandmother—the warden—pacing outside. “Never,” I said. “I swear.”
Carter and I ended up back at my house, watching a Twilight Zone marathon on TV. We were halfway through the one where Captain Kirk finds a magic fortune-telling machine when Carter jostled me. “My foot’s buzzing,” he said.
My purse was under the blanket. He tossed it to me, and I pulled out my phone. Kasey’s name popped up on-screen.
“Kase?” I asked.
“Lexi?”
She sounded upset. I sat up. “What’s wrong?”
She sniffled. “Barney ran away.”
“Who’s Barney?” I asked, mentally running through the roster of Adrienne’s siblings. Weren’t her brothers in college?
“The dog,” she said, and I exhaled a giant breath. “Can you come help us find him?”
“Can’t Mrs. Streeter help you?”
“No. We think he’s in the woods, and she can’t go there in her chair,” my sister said. “Please? Adrienne’s about to lose it.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”
“For real?”
I was taken aback. “Of course, Kasey.”
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
I hung up the phone, wondering why she found it so shocking that I was willing to help her. Wasn’t I always the one who helped her?
As we pulled into the Streeters’ driveway, the girls converged on us. Adrienne was in tears. Kasey hugged herself tightly and looked warily around the dark neighborhood.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. There were four girls there: Kasey, Adrienne, a pretty girl I didn’t know, and Lydia, who saw me looking at her and turned away to kick at the loose gravel in the driveway.
What was Lydia doing at a lame slumber party?
To my surprise, my sister had a plan. “I’ll go into the woods with Lexi. Adrienne, go in the car with Carter,” Kasey said. “Tashi and Lydia, go on foot. Call everybody if you see him.”
We all fanned out, carrying flashlights and bags of dog treats. Kasey and I started down the street, shining the flashlight between houses and shrubs.
“What kind of dog is it?”
“A Westie,” she said. “He’s white, luckily.”
Or not-so-luckily. Sure, a white dog was easier for us to see, but that also meant he was easier for coyotes and other predators to see, too. I quickened my pace.
“How’d he get out?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” Kasey exhaled. “Something scared him.”
“Mrs. Streeter must be going crazy,” I said. “Not being able to help.”
“Yeah.” Kasey shined the light under a car.
“Why is she in a wheelchair?”
“It’s a degenerating disease,” Kasey said. “Adrienne has it, too.”
“Degenerative?” I caught a glimpse of something white, but it was a trash bag by someone’s side door.
Kasey fidgeted with the treats. “Alexis, if we find Barney, you should probably get him.”
“Why?” As far as I could recall, the lengthy list of things that scared my sister didn’t include dogs.
She turned the light over in her hands, trying to decide what to say next. “I don’t know if he likes me very much.”
“What we should probably do, if we see him, is call Adrienne and let her come call him.”
“No,” Kasey said. “He won’t go to her, either.”
“But she’s his owner.”
She sighed. “It’s a long story.”
We came to the parking lot by the lake. There was a small log cabin with padlocked bathrooms and a water fountain. We stepped off the paved surface onto the clumpy grass of the picnic area, which led to a small stretch of beach dotted with dilapidated picnic tables and a barbecue grill covered in caution tape.
I scanned the lake. The fountain in the center sputtered irregular streams of water, illuminated by the few floodlights that hadn’t yet burned out.
“There he is! I see him!” Kasey said, pointing down toward the water’s edge.
The beam of the flashlight bounced off a small white dog trotting along the shoreline.
“Here,” Kasey said, handing me the bag of treats. “Call him. Make sure he sees that you have food. He’ll do anything for food.”
“What do I do if he comes to me?” I asked. “Do you have a leash?”
Her face fell.
“I’ll grab his collar,” I said. “Go back to the Streeters’ house and get his leash.”
“Okay,” she said. “And I’ll call Adrienne.”
There wasn’t time to say more. I started slowly toward the shore.
The dog heard me approach and looked up, his ears pricked at attention.
“Baaaaaaarney,” I called, keeping my voice as smooth as possible, “here, boy.”
He glanced at me through suspicious eyes and began to amble away, checking back over his shoulder.
I didn’t want to get too close, for fear that he’d run. So I stopped moving. The dog stood still and watched me.
“Hey, boy,” I said, dropping to my knees and landing in a puddle of wet dirt. Great.
I reached into the bag for a treat.
Barney cocked his head.
“Yummy!” I said, holding it out. “Who wants one?”
I tossed it so it landed a couple of feet in front of him, and he
pounced on it, tail wagging.
I tossed another one, and he came closer. Now we were only separated by a few yards. A third treat, and then a fourth, and I decided to go for it—instead of tossing the next one, I held it on the flat of my palm. “Come see what I have. Come on.”
Barney, by now pretty psyched about the goodie-throwing stranger, wagged his tail once and took a curious step toward me, his eyes trained on the bit of food in my hand. I raised it to my nose and took a sniff. It smelled pretty good, actually.
“Mmmm…maybe I’ll eat it,” I said. “Better hurry.”
He came closer, his gaze never leaving the food. I shifted my body so he’d have to come within grabbing distance of my left hand to reach the treat.
Almost there—
There was a loud clattering sound from behind the maintenance building on the far side of the picnic area. Barney’s ears shot straight up.
“No! Stay!” I said, making a grab for his collar. But he scrambled away from my grasp and stopped at the very edge of the tree line.
A second noise—this one louder.
Barney flattened his ears and took off, straight into the thick woods.
I ran after him, but was forced to slow down once I got past the outer layer of trees. There were low, scrubby plants and exposed roots everywhere, and the last thing I wanted was to face-plant in the middle of a forest.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Here, boy! Come back!”
I kept going until I saw a flash of white.
“Barney!” I called. “Who wants a cookie?”
I’d stumbled on the magic word. Twigs snapped furiously as the dog tumbled back through the trees and stopped directly in front of me, his stumpy tail wiggling madly.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re doing this my way.” I leaned over and grabbed his collar. He was too transfixed by the bag of treats sticking out of my pocket to notice.
“Cookie?” I offered him one. He gobbled it down and looked back up at me, hoping for more.
Since I didn’t have a leash, I reached down and scooped him up. For such a little dog, he was solid. He settled contentedly into my arms, licking my face and snuffling the air, evidently enjoying the ride.
I looked around for a way out, but there was no discernible path. I tried listening for the lapping of the water on the shore, but I couldn’t hear anything over Barney’s excited panting and the chirping of the crickets.
And of course my cell phone was in Carter’s car. Perfect.
“It’s a good thing your food smells so good,” I said to Barney. “We might be sharing it.”
He glanced at me, then went back to the business of sniffing, his nose quivering.
“Which way is home?” I asked. He probably knew—superior sense of smell and all that—but I couldn’t set him down and take the chance that he’d run off again. So I turned in what I figured was the approximate direction of the parking lot.
Then we reached a spot where the brush grew too thick to pass. Barney looked at it, twitched his ears, and yawned. I shifted him in my arms. He was getting heavy, fast.
I knelt down to study a bit of grass, wishing I’d lasted past the friendship-bracelet-making stage of Girl Scouts.
Suddenly, the dog tensed. He scrooched deeper into my arms, ears back, and showed his teeth for a moment. A low, menacing growl rumbled in his throat.
Then, through the brush:
Snap.
Barney snarled and whined, straining toward the sound. I had to wrap both of my arms around him to keep him from jumping to the ground. His dirty paws left black streaks all over my clothes.
“Are you crazy?” I hissed. “Stop that!”
What if it was a coyote? Or what if it’s not a coyote? I suddenly thought. What if it’s a mountain lion—or a bear? Did we even have bears in Surrey?
I started walking. Any movement away from a scary sound was better than standing like a lump. Even if we walked so far we came out on the other side, the woods had to end eventually.
As we went farther, Barney calmed down. But then, after about a hundred feet or so, he tensed and growled again.
From behind us: a scratching noise, and a scrambling, and the thud and whoosh of something falling and running away.
I looked around for a large branch to use as a club, if it came to that—but the one decent-sized stick I found disintegrated in my hand.
Barney whined miserably, panting and trying halfheartedly to get away.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said.
Snap-snap-snap-CRASH!
The dog yelped and vaulted out of my arms, already poised to run by the time his paws touched the ground.
I launched myself at him, belly-flopping on the pine needle floor, barely managing to hook my fingers around the edge of his collar. When he realized he was caught and couldn’t escape, he changed tactics and went on the offensive, rolling off a series of vicious-sounding barks and frantically hopping around.
“Cut it out! Get back here!” I said, tugging him toward me. I’d gone through way too much trouble finding the dumb dog to let him get eaten by a bear now. “Barney, stay!”
His barking became one extended growl, and he was pulling so hard his front legs were off the ground. My fingers felt like they were about to pop off.
Whatever was back there, he wanted to kill it.
After managing to get a better grip on his collar, I got to my feet and picked him up, pressing my cheek against the back of his head as I looked around.
“Now what?” I asked him.
“Woof!” he answered, looking over my shoulder.
I swung around to see Carter appear between two trees, looking ridiculously out of place in his starched oxford shirt and spotless brown shoes.
“Alexis? Are you okay?” He came over and scratched the dog’s neck.
“Relatively,” I said. “I have no idea how to get out of here. I hope you dropped some bread crumbs.”
“Right back this way,” Carter said. “Want me to carry Barney?”
“He’s filthy,” I said, but Carter reached out any- way, and my aching arms were dying for a break. So I gladly handed him over, and we started back through the brush.
“Kasey went back to get a leash,” I said. “I hope she stays back in the parking lot. I think there’s some sort of wild animal out here.”
Carter squinted. “I doubt it. We’re still in the suburbs.”
“Suburbs or not, I heard something,” I said. “Something big. Barney heard it, too.”
“Maybe a raccoon?”
“Bigger than that. Forget it. I don’t know.”
And then, another snap.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“It’s probably a bird, Lex,” he said. “Wait, where are you going?”
His dismissal annoyed me.
“Just to take a peek,” I said, walking away. “I’ll be right back.”
“But what if it’s dangerous?” He looked around, sud- denly seeing the forest for what it was: Big. Dark. Spooky.
“Like a raccoon?” I asked. “Or a baby bird?”
He waited, one hand idly rubbing the dog’s belly, while I went deeper into the forest. The farther I went, the more opaque the canopy grew overhead, branches and leaves weaving into a dense cover that blocked out what little starlight there was. The trees were crowded here, the brush thicker.
More scratching…but as I got closer, it didn’t sound like scratching, exactly. It was more like…I looked down at the bed of pine needles on the floor of the woods.
Like moving. Like something was being dragged through the pine needles.
And whatever it was, it was getting closer.
Fear sent roots down through my feet, locking me in place. I gulped in half-breaths of chilled night air, waiting for an outraged, wounded mountain lion to pop out at me.
Then I saw it—between the tree trunks, which were almost as close as crayons in a box.
A shadow.
This was no wounded mountain li
on. It was no wounded anything. It moved too fast. And in the deep darkness, I couldn’t tell whether it was coming closer or getting farther away.
How could I be so stupid? I’d basically lived through a horror movie and still hadn’t learned my lesson.
At some point, my eyes had squeezed shut and I’d lost the ability to breathe.
Snap out of it. Get control of yourself. And then get out of here.
I forced my eyelids open, positive that some beast would be standing right there, drooling blood and exhaling the smell of death.
But the woods were empty. And the only sound was a snap—
Right behind me.
A hand snaked around to cover my mouth, but my self-defense training kicked in. I bent my knees, reached back to grab the attacker’s arm, and delivered a swift kick as high as I could, dropping my attacker to the ground. Then I turned around to get a good look at it—him—
Her. It was my sister.
“Seriously, Kasey?”
She whipped a finger to her lips, librarian-style. “SHUT UP!” she hissed. Her eyes were wild, frantic, as she jumped to her feet and grabbed my arm, scanning the woods behind us.
“What are you doing out here?” I whispered.
She said, “Shhh,” and pulled me along, treading as lightly as she could.
The scraping grew louder as Kasey looked around. She dragged me behind a bush next to a thick pine tree and crouched down, hauling me with her.
I shot her a questioning look. But she was staring back at the clearing.
The animal, the beast, whatever it was, stepped into a small patch of light. There was a peculiar lightness in its step. It raised and lowered its head in a subtle bobbing motion as it moved.
I shivered. It was primitive, feral…inhuman.
In the darkness, I still couldn’t get a good enough look to tell what it was. It didn’t move like a person, or a bear, or even a werewolf.
I thought of Barney wandering these woods alone and shivered, glad we’d found him and that he was safely with Carter.
But were they really safe? Carter was alone, unsuspecting. I had to get back to him.