Uncertain Summer Read online

  I kept my thoughts off of Bigfoot and gators as I jumped out of the boat. I wobbled when I landed on the soft ground.

  Mama hesitated before following my lead. For someone who was trying to convince me there was no Bigfoot, she sure inspected the area. Then again, I’d just crashed the boat, and we were stuck here for who knows how long while my brother was home alone.

  All of us positioned ourselves at the front of the boat and pushed. “I’m so sorry,” I said over and over. I probably said sorry on my birthday more times than I had in all my twelve years put together.

  After our fifth or sixth attempt, the pontoon boat gave a bit, scraping against the ground and the roots. We shoved it again right at the same moment another mysterious knock sounded. That freaky noise seemed to give us supernatural strength. We pushed the boat back into the water and crawled aboard.

  “How can you explain those noises?” I asked Mama as we huddled together while Papa cranked the engine. She reached for my hand, and even though I’d turned twelve today, I clung to her.

  “A large tree frog?” Mama guessed.

  As I told her that tree frogs make noises like quank!quank!, not loud knocks, the engine churned and reeked of gasoline.

  “I bet Bigfoot felt threatened and was trying to scare us off,” Gramps said.

  “No way,” Mama said.

  After another attempt, Papa finally got the engine to hum to life. “The boat might be scratched up, but it doesn’t look like there’s any major damage,” he said, backing out of the mud trap while Gramps directed him. I’d been rightfully demoted as co-captain.

  “I’m really, really, really sorry,” I said as Papa guided us back to the marina.

  “The blame belongs to your father more than it does to you, though I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  My lungs clenched up again. The last thing I wanted was to make things worse between my parents. The silence on our ride home felt like an awful form of torture where I kept reliving my failure. I’m not just talking about almost destroying the boat and hurting my family—if I’d been able to capture a clear picture of the beast, this would’ve been a victory ride instead. We would’ve won the contest before those professional hunters in California stood a chance or anyone else who was looking, for that matter.

  My birthday wish haunted me.

  It was late by the time we dropped Gramps off at his cabin and then pulled into our driveway. I expected Emmett to peek out of his room and ask us what took us so long to get home, but he must’ve fallen asleep.

  As Mama and Papa moved into the kitchen to talk things over, I banged on Emmett’s door almost as loud as those knocks we’d heard outside. Not really, because that noise wasn’t human. No matter how much Mama tried to dismiss those noises, there was only one real explanation.

  Emmett still didn’t answer. I had so much to say, and who knew when he’d talk to me again. I dug out some school supplies from my desk and scribbled how Papa now owned the marina along with Gramps and explained how I’d seen Bigfoot. I admitted I’d driven the boat and crashed it, even though it made me cringe to do so. Emmett would never let me live it down.

  I slipped the two page letter under his door before getting ready for bed.

  My room was as safe as could be, but the bright pink floral wallpaper closed in on me, like the most overgrown rose garden you could imagine. I stretched out in bed and took a few deep breaths in an attempt to relax. That was hard to do given tonight’s events, plus Mama and Papa were arguing down the hall in their room.

  I curled up with my stuffed pig collection and put the pillow over my head to block everything out. Neither helped. The bayou scene kept replaying in my mind. I sat up and scrolled through the pictures on the camera at least a dozen times.

  I’d been so close. So, so close. I had a mission to seriously prove Bigfoot was real now. Not even the thought of those sharp fangs or the way that beast had stared me down could change my mind.

  5

  Claws gripped me by the shoulder and thrashed me about. “Help!” I cried, trying to run away from being mauled to death.

  “Shh,” Emmett said. “And wipe your mouth. You’re drooling.”

  I sat upright in bed. I’d been asleep for a while—the clock on the nightstand read a quarter after ten in the morning. When I rubbed my face with the back of my hand, I almost called my brother Snagglemouth like some of the guys on his football team do. I thought better of saying it because my front tooth overlaps too, just not as much, and I had been drooling. Besides, Emmett and I had a lot to discuss. “Did you read my letter?”

  Emmett rolled his eyes. “Why else would I be talking to you, Everdil Pickle Breath? Start explaining.”

  And so I did. Emmett grilled me with so many questions that I repeated the entire story—telling him about the drive, the weird encounter with Swamp Sam, the news about the marina, seeing Bigfoot, and yes, crashing the boat. I choked and churned just like the engine when I came to that part.

  Emmett smirked, and then his eyes narrowed. “How is it that you saw Bigfoot and no one else did?”

  “I had an advantage at the front of the boat. Gramps believes me. I’m telling you the truth, Emmett. I’d swear on my own life, not just yours.” If I had a Bible in my room, I would’ve placed my hand on it like people do on those courtroom TV shows. I held out my little finger to do a pinky promise instead.

  Emmett said that was too girlie, and right as I spat in my palm to shake on it instead, he shook his head. “You’re disgusting, Everdil.”

  When it came to my brother, I couldn’t do anything right. “Fine, but I know what I saw. With Bigfoot this close, we have a decent chance of winning the contest.”

  Emmett stood there in the middle of my room, rubbing his chin like Papa has a tendency to do, only Emmett has a wimpy amount of chin fuzz instead of dark prickly stubble. “We should start by talking to Tim. He’s as much a Bigfoot expert as his dad. You better shower first,” he said, waving his hand in front of his nose. He grinned when I threw a stuffed pig at him.

  As he turned around to leave, I said, “Hey, I’m sorry about what I said and smashing the cake in your face. At least it was the best frosting in the world.”

  Emmett nodded in acknowledgment, and his face softened like he was about to apologize too. “I can’t believe you’re not grounded until high school. You really are a rotten sister, Everdil, but if we win the Bigfoot contest I promise I won’t say that ever again.”

  As if I wasn’t already motivated! I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of involving Tim and his dad, but last night proved I couldn’t do this alone.

  After showering, I got dressed in a camouflage t-shirt and cutoff jean shorts, the same kind of stuff I wore most of the time. For some reason, thinking about seeing Tim made me start to sweat—and not because I’d taken an extra warm shower. No, it had to do with that hand incident.

  I cringed all over again as I thought about what had recently happened. Emmett, Tim, and I had been hanging out after our last day of school. Tim kept walking closer and closer, his shoulder bumping into me once or twice. Right as Emmett skipped rocks across Caddo Lake, Tim held his hand out toward me. Without thinking, my fingers reached for his, and as soon as we touched, my skin zinged.

  But to my horror, Tim had only been offering me a piece of gum. Emmett turned around at that moment. Tim dropped the gum on the ground, backing up from me like I’d come down with a swamp plague. I’d been avoiding him since.

  I changed into my camouflage tank instead of the t-shirt. It’s not like it was more fashionable or anything, but at least I didn’t feel as toasty.

  Mama and Papa weren’t around, and I wondered where they were, then I saw a note on the kitchen table. They both left to work the early shifts and wrote that if we needed anything to call them. I couldn’t believe they left me alone after how much I messed up yesterday, but times were tough.

  In case my apology wasn’t enough, I cooked
breakfast for Emmett. Turns out there’s an art to breaking eggs. I accidentally smashed one into the bowl. Picking out the eggshell shards took a while, and I lost patience waiting for the pan to preheat. I cranked up the heat until the element below the stainless steel pan glowed red. When I poured the mixture in, the eggs sizzled as if they’d been dipped into a hot fryer. They didn’t just scramble, they scorched.

  “It smells like a stink bomb went off,” Emmett said when he joined me in the kitchen.

  “I made you breakfast. Unless you like eggs very well done, it’s the thought that counts, right?” I said before I pitched my attempt.

  Emmett shook his head in disbelief. “Leave it to you to mess up even the simplest of meals. Even Chuck Norris couldn’t unscramble those eggs.”

  I tried to keep a serious face as I said, “Unlike her precious sous chef, Mama’s cooking genes passed me over.”

  If you know how hard it is to clean burned eggs from the bottom of a stainless steel pan, you have my sympathies. By the time I washed and dried the pan, Emmett had put on one of Mama’s many cupcake themed aprons and whipped us up crepes. Yes crepes, because that’s my brother for you. He didn’t seem to think any of that was too girlie.

  Mama would’ve been especially proud of Emmett’s breakfast. The crepes tasted flawless and so buttery that I almost started drooling again.

  “Do you remember one of Gram’s favorites?” Before Emmett had a chance to guess, I answered, “Chuck Norris can cut a knife using butter.”

  This made Emmett smile again, and in case he still had some hard feelings, I swiped a cream cheese rose from the doomed cake and added it to my plate.

  “Not a bad idea,” Emmett said, grabbing several frosting roses himself.

  We both had a sugar buzz after gobbling up more frosting and downing the rest of the crepes. When Emmett called Tim, I had more dishes to wash and then responded to Mama and Papa’s note.

  I wrote out the last part of my letter larger than the rest so they’d focus more on that than how much I messed up. I drew an enormous smiley face for the same reason. Before we left, I made sure to bring the camera.

  The walk to Tim’s had me sweating even more. The humid air wrapped around my skin like a soggy bandage. It had to be at least ninety degrees. I glanced around after sensing someone was watching me but didn’t see anything unusual, just an older couple out walking a fluffy white dog. I photographed the dog, only he ruined the shot by hiking his leg on a tall weed.

  Mr. Nash and Tim live close to the lake near a section of older houses and cabins that tourists sometimes rent. Caddo Lake is peaceful and pretty, but Uncertain wouldn’t be my idea of a vacation spot. If I had a chance to go anywhere, I would’ve picked an amusement park with roller coasters. Shawna had promised we’d visit Six Flags together after she moved to Dallas, but that never happened. She blew me off every time I hinted at visiting.

  Emmett had nothing to say to me, so I thought of some food related trivia based on a show called Garbage Can Gourmet. Contestants are presented with a copper trashcan containing unlikely ingredients they must make into a gourmet meal. The contestants can use the studio’s fully stocked kitchen to help, but the trashy ingredients must be the star of the dish. Anyway, Emmett liked Garbage Can Gourmet a lot, and I listed some items that might stump him. “Potato peels, that sugary part at the bottom of a cereal box, sweet tea, and an old box of raisins. Quick, what would you make?”

  “The Ingredient Game, huh,” Emmett said. He stopped for a moment to stretch in the same way he warmed up before a football game. “Cinnamon raisin potato bread. With cream cheese frosting. Hit me again.”

  I couldn’t shake the feeling of being tracked somehow, so it took me a moment to come up with the next batch of ingredients. “Okay—pre-cooked hamburger patties, Halloween gummy eyeballs, a packet of ketchup, and rusty lettuce.”

  “Easy! I’d cook taco soup.”

  Our Ingredient Game ended when we reached Tim’s place. The door swung open right as we were about to ring the doorbell. I drew in my breath.

  “What’s up?” Tim said, looking right at me.

  I turned away to stare at a spiderweb in the doorframe as if it was the most interesting thing ever. Tim’s thick brown hair had grown out and needed a good brushing. He’d stretched out several inches taller than Emmett this last year which I found strange considering Mr. Nash is much shorter than Papa. Given our family histories, it seemed Emmett would’ve hit his growth spurt first.

  “Nice necklace, Everdil,” Tim said.

  “Uh, thanks.” I stepped forward to check out the spiderweb at such close range that I’m lucky the spider kept from jumping on my nose.

  “That’s our newest resident, a spiny backed orb weaver,” Tim said, mentioning a few facts about the spider as he greeted Emmett with a complicated handshake.

  I knew the hand motions, but kept my hands at my side to avoid any additional embarrassment, even as we walked inside the house. This threw my balance off, and I tripped over one of the many pairs of shoes scattered in the front entryway. I braced myself by hugging the wall to keep from face planting in a pair of tennis shoes. So much for not being embarrassed.

  To make matters worse, Tim said, “Have a nice trip, Everdil. See you next fall!”

  “Ha, ha. Let’s get to business,” I said after steadying myself.

  Apparently, we’d missed Mr. Nash—he had to work today, too. The living room was as junky as the entryway, and there wasn’t much room to talk and make plans. Thick science texts covered the coffee table, and the furniture functioned like a closet of sorts with stacks of folded laundry. I made sure not to knock over a tall pile of clean shirts next to me on the loveseat, especially when I used my hands to explain what had happened last night.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, but too bad you didn’t get a picture,” Tim said.

  “No kidding.” I scrolled through some of my practice pictures to continue avoiding his eye contact. I backed up to the picture I’d taken last night after the boat crash. I hadn’t noticed it when I looked through the pictures before, but a minuscule spot of light stood out in the blackness. “Hey, look at this,” I said, holding out the camera. Sure enough, I knocked over the stack of laundry piled next to me. Shirts tumbled off the loveseat and onto the floor.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tim said when I jumped to pick up the clothing. Several pair of briefs, both men’s and boys’, were curled up under the shirts.

  No way was I going to touch those things! Before I moved, Tim lunged to cover up the laundry, our heads cracking together. Ouch.

  He’d caught me so off guard that I stumbled. When Tim helped me get up, I was forced to look him in the eyes. Blood rushed out of my brain and into my cheeks.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “It’s o—”

  “Everdil would find a way of falling even if she’d been sitting on the couch,” Emmett said. He must not have seen the underwear.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “So what were you going to show us?” Tim asked. His face was sunburn red.

  Oh, yeah. I showed Tim and Emmett the picture, but neither one of them could see what I was talking about. It didn’t help that Emmett smudged his fingerprints on the screen. He wiped the screen with his t-shirt only he smeared his finger grease worse.

  “We should download the picture on the computer so we can zoom in,” Tim suggested. He picked up the remaining piles of shirts scattered in the living room, and we headed into Mr. Nash’s office.

  This was the one and only organized room in the house. Several pictures of Tim’s mom hung on the wall before she graduated to Heaven when he was a baby. Carefully framed newspaper clippings of Bigfoot sightings also decorated the wall including one that had appeared in our local paper last year. The title read “Uncertain Sighting,” where, supposedly, an elderly woman saw an ape walking upright at Caddo Lake State Park. I’d kind of thought the lady must’ve been senile or something, but not so much an
ymore.

  Emmett grabbed a white object off of the top of the desk while Tim removed the memory card from the camera and inserted it into the computer’s card reader. The object resembled the bottom of a foot. I squinted and counted the toes—four or maybe five.

  “It’s a cast Dad made of a print he recently found at the park. It had been raining and some plant roots got in the way,” Tim said, explaining why it looked weird.

  And speaking of weird, the picture finished downloading. So that minuscule light? When Tim zoomed in, it looked like a set of glowing eyes.

  6

  “That’s got to be bogus,” Emmett said, moving his big head in front of the computer screen to get a closer look.

  I elbowed him out of the way. “You didn’t see me tamper with anything. Like I’d even know how.” Well, I could probably figure things out eventually, but that’s not the point.

  Tim moved in closer to me, and I wasn’t sure if I should take a step back or stay put. The last thing I wanted was another lump on my forehead. Tim kept enough distance that I forced myself to stop worrying about it.

  Tim clicked through several files saved on the computer. “Dad took a similar picture after he set up night vision trail cameras around the park. Here, look.” Tim zoomed in on a trail camera photo that was amazingly similar to the one I’d taken—a pair of almond-shaped eyes shimmering against the pitch blackness.

  The resemblance was enough to warp my skin into gooseflesh. “We should send these photos into the contest!”

  “They’re weird—really weird—but they don’t prove anything,” Emmett said.

  I hated that he was right. Tim looked the contest rules up on the computer just to be sure. “The picture must be clear enough to prove Bigfoot’s existence by a panel of experts who will thoroughly review all entries,” he read aloud. Like on TV, a warning popped up on the computer. “Cryptic Cryptid Productions is not responsible for any related attacks or injuries.”