Chapter 42
Aweek later, I've got movie plans with Felix again. I spend the hour before we leave rehearsing. I pull Dinah's mirror into my room to practice my dance, but I keep falling on the carpet.
Felix texts me that he's on the way. I've been so busy that I forgot to get dinner, so I run to the kitchen and grab a few spoonfuls of peanut butter.
Dinah rushes into the kitchen and grabs me. “Clint's waiting for us! We're gonna be late!”
“I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to the movies with Felix.”
“No, you're not,” she says, pulling me out the back door. “The safari is tonight. Remember?”
“You never said I had to come.”
“Your poor interpretation of our plans is not my problem. Someone has to record it.”
There's no way of getting out of this. I need to call Felix. “Let me get my phone first,” I say.
“Too late for that.” Dinah drags me to her car, overpowering my attempts to brake with my feet.
“I'm your social media manager! I never agreed to go into the woods with a bunch of idiots with guns! This is bullshit!”
“Where do you learn to talk like that? Such a trash mouth.” Dinah shoves me into the back seat and slams the door behind me.
___________
It's pitch black and freezing in the woods, and I'm stuck in a T-shirt and jeans, my teeth about to crack like porcelain from all the shivering I'm doing.
Even better, the worst people from Oyster Pit crawled out from the sewer to congregate here.
Leo Steger, Walrus Cop, Mr. Deel from astronomy class, and eight factory-made rednecks in camouflage, all carrying their own rifles.
Walrus Cop is dressed fearlessly in his uniform without any protection from the cold, while Leo's wrapped in ten layers of clothing, looking like a mummy with an elf cap.
“Don't forget to take your Plutonium Cactus,” Clint says to them.
As we trek deep into the woods, Mr. Deel feels the need to tell us all about the action screenplay he's writing that's going to make him rich and famous and expose the Jewish feminist scheme of global domination.
After five minutes of hearing how women being allowed to go to college has done more damage to humanity than J.
Robert Oppenheimer, Leo stops behind us, his rifle drooping to the ground.
Clint is the first to notice. “You find something there, pal? Sasquatch scat?”
Leo shakes his head. “Where am I?”
“About a mile into the woods away from Oyster Pit Park,” Dinah says, not really understanding.
“My hand to the Lord, I could swear 'Nam was hotter than sin” is all Leo says.
“You're such a joker,” Clint says, but Leo's obviously not joking.
One of the rednecks won't stop looking at me.
Whether it's because of my face or because he saw me on the news, I don't know, but it's not exactly a pleasant stare.
Dinah sets up a live stream on her phone for the subscriber in Russia and hands it to me.
She tells me he's paying good money to experience this virtually, so act scared and make the phone wobble a bit to add suspense.
I'm tempted to stop streaming and type a quick text to Felix. He must be so mad at me.
“Oh no, I'm so scared right now,” I say for the camera.
“Bundy hunts for the scent of testosterone,” Clint says, taking a puff from his vape pen. “Since I probably have the highest level here, I'll stay ahead of the pack.”
We walk straight for five quiet minutes, if you don't count the hooting of an owl and Leo's rambling. After we turn right into an open space through a pair of oak trees, Clint trips on something in a way that looks rehearsed, and his chest plops into a conveniently placed pile of leaves.
“I tripped on something! What could it be?” He picks up an object and shines his flashlight on it. A hardcover copy of Red, White & Royal Blue. All the men shudder and howl, “Ewwwwww!”
“Look! It left a whole trail of banned books! We must be close to it,” Clint says, as if he wasn't here thirty minutes ago dropping the books. “Don't look inside any of them. It controls your mind that way.”
Walrus Cop giggles. “Y'all ain't thinking no queer thoughts about me now, ain't you?” The rest of the group laughs, and he chuckles proudly at the response, as if his tarantula-hair mustache and Chewbacca tattoo and leather-seat cop smell put him at the top of the lust chain.
“Oh, that's hilarious,” I say, barely containing the sarcasm. What a knee-slapping comedy genius we got here. Dinah twitches her nose at me, and I nod. “Ahhh, it's so spooky out here, the monster could be anywhere,” I whisper into the phone.
I pull my shirt tightly over my body while recording with my other hand.
I'm so used to being miserably hot for most of the year that I forgot that being miserably cold is even worse.
Tack on my anxiety about Felix, and I feel like I'm a tragic character in a Russian gulag, surrounded by a bunch of eight-foot-tall children.
Leo spins around like he's tripping on edibles in a magic forest. “Them Viet Cong monsters ran off with my Guffy.”
Mr. Deel rolls his eyes and quickly presses ahead of him. “Thanks for taking us down memory lane, Leo!”
“What is going on with Old Leo tonight?” Walrus Cop asks Clint, and I think he answers his own question. Leo has the same empty look in his eyes that my grandpa had when he was becoming senile. Fortunately, he's got a mass-murder machine in his arms, so I'm positive everything's going to be okay.
When I explain my concerns to Dinah, all she can say is “Shhh. That's the best kind of customer,” as she takes a puff from her vape, and I'm not sure what she means.
“We gotta be quiet, y'all,” Clint whispers. “Getting closer.”
The crack of a branch stops us dead in our tracks. Everybody holds up their guns.
“Oh no, we're gonna die,” I tell the live stream.
Clint's flashlight reveals a shirtless redheaded guy stripped down to a jockstrap, his waist tied to the tree behind him with a hempen rope.
It looks like we've stumbled upon a bizarre cult ritual, and on top of that, I immediately recognize the guy.
It's Ross McConnell—Oyster Pit High's prized quarterback.
He's practically the Byron of the sports crowd at my school.
I step up close to him, with Walrus Cop and Mr. Deel behind me. “Aren't you supposed to be hazing the freshmen and not the other way around?”
“Shhh!” He has his finger over his mouth.
Right as Walrus Cop takes one step closer, a siren goes off above us. An obnoxiously bright green light pulses. Something is flying above us. It clicks open and a heavy net falls on us, pinning us to the ground.
Mr. Deel is having a panic attack on top of me, his knee digging into my spine. “It's a UFO! They're taking us away like in Fire in the Sky!”
“You're hurting my back!” My face is pushed into the ground, muffling my voice.
The more we struggle, the tighter the net gets. Walrus Cop reaches for something strapped to his leg.
“Stay still. I'mma cut us a hole here with my machete,” he says.
“STOP!”
Out of the darkness, Brandon Barton Buckley appears with a group of men in suits. I can see the glow of his teeth through the net.
“Don't cut that net! That's made of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber designed by NASA scientists! It'll grab you tighter the more you struggle.”
Clint puts one leg forward and stabs his finger in Brandon's face. “What the hell are you doing out here? This is our Sasquatch safari.”
“Last time I checked, it was a free market. We're testing our new drone called the IntegriDrone, and I promised real gay Sasquatch action to my shareholders!” He puts his arm over one of them, a bearded, frowning man. “This here's my pal Sarwar! Came here from Islamabad by way of Dallas.”
Clint steps back next to Dinah and nudges her. “Dammit, I told you we ought to look into foreign money! Now Brandon got himself one of them Saudi investors.”
Dinah takes another hit from her vape and blows the vapor in Brandon's face. “What a crew. The oily oligarch and his army of rich nerds. Tell me, what bleached corn cob did you pluck your veneers off of?”
Brandon rubs his throat with two fingers, chuckling. “I ain't an oligarch yet, but I like the direction of your thinking!”
It takes Sarwar and his crew five minutes to untangle us from the net. Meanwhile, Ross is still hanging there and begging for someone to cover him up.
“I want an explanation now,” Mr. Deel says.
“We're optimizing the chances of a Bigfoot encounter to learn more about it and how it can help us reverse aging in our own bodies,” Sarwar says. “We believe there is enormous financial potential in capturing it alive and using it to biohack.”
“That's why we've brought some bait,” Brandon says, pointing to Ross with skeevy glee as he licks his lips. “Nothing like a red-blooded, supple-skinned young gladiator to bring this gay Sasquatch to his knees.” He winks at me.
“We don't want it alive,” Mr. Deel says. “We came to kill it.”
“That won't be necessary,” one of Brandon's other clients, a stern lady in a suit, says. “We'll take it off your hands so it won't bother you anymore.”
Walrus Cop tightens his grip on his machete. “Sounds like you misunderstood the gentleman. We're on a mission to annihilate that fuzzy gay bastard.”
“No offense, but maybe you should leave this to the professionals,” the lady says.
Dinah flips her hair back indignantly. “How dare you. That is an officer of the law!”
“Y'all hearing that owl hoot?” Leo asks, but nobody's listening.
Literally quick on his feet, Clint skulks over to a tree behind Sarwar. “Psst. Hey, you! Star Wars!”
Sarwar does a double take, scanning the area around him before he notices Clint. “My name is Sarwar.”
“Pecos!” Clint says. “What if I had an even better product for you to invest in? Maybe rope in some of your friends, maybe the king of Saudi Arabia?”
Now that this circus of idiots is distracted, I stop the live stream and call Felix, hoping he'll pick up even though it's not my number. He doesn't, and his voicemail isn't on for whatever reason, so I keep calling.
“Maybe you're working with Bundy,” Dinah says to Brandon. The rednecks cheer.
Mr. Deel pulls out his bottle of Plutonium Cactus. “We got the only thing that can stop it!”
While I wait for Felix to answer, Leo staggers around us, looking above. “I know this owl. I've seen him before,” Leo continues to himself.
After five calls, Felix finally picks up and I launch into a rapid-fire explanation. “Felix, it's me, sorry, I'm outside using my aunt's—”
“Where are you? Did you seriously forget about tonight?”
“I'm so sorry. I got kidnapped by Dinah for one of her stupid things. Can we do tomorrow night instead?”
Sarwar rejoins the conversation and studies the Plutonium Cactus bottle. “With all due respect, you don't seem like the kind of people who lead in scientific innovation.”
The hunters gasp. Mr. Deel cocks his shotgun.
“What kind of people do you think you're dealing with here?” Mr. Deel asks.
I cover one of my ears so I can hear what Felix is saying.
“No. My dad won ringside tickets to Xtreme Wrestling Xtravaganza at the Toyota Center tomorrow night, so I'm going with him,” he says, and now I know he's pissed at me for bailing on him again.
So pissed that he would rather go to a wrestling event with his dad.
He's never cared about wrestling before.
Walrus Cop gets into Sarwar's face. “I got a good mind to send you back to Islam-is-bad, Mr. Satwar.”
“Felix, please don't be mad at me. Listen. I can't do this anymore. I love y—”
“THAT GODDAMN OWL IS VIET CONG. YOU TOOK MY GUFFY!”
Leo holds up his rifle, firing indiscriminately into the trees, hitting Brandon's drone that's still hovering over an almost-blue Ross. I feel like I'm in a Rambo movie and fall to the ground, along with everybody else. The drone explodes, showering shrapnel all over us.
“I'LL GET THE LITTLE BASTARD,” Leo says, running off into the darkness.
I grab the phone and check if Felix is still there.
“Huh? Holy shit,” Felix says. “Is there a shooter?”
Sarwar stands back up and brushes the metallic debris off his shoulders. “You're going to pay for that!”
“NOT MY GUFFYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
Leo, somewhere in the distance, continues firing. One of Brandon's guys whips out a pistol and starts shooting. Clint and Dinah scrabble at some bushes to find a hiding spot.
“Hold your fire! Hit my cap and I'll sue you into oblivion,” Brandon says, holding on to his coonskin cap.
Walrus Cop dives behind a tree with his gun. “It's on sight, you candy-asses,” he yells as he shuffles his aim.
I'm about to get my shit rocked by a bunch of bullet babies with enough firepower to make Rambo blush. I need these to be my last words, or else I lived in vain.
“I fucking love you, Felix, don't you get it?” But the words are drowned out by the cross fire. The battle of Oyster Pit Woods continues for another minute until Walrus Cop calls for a ceasefire.
“Uh, I think I need a bathroom break,” he says, wincing while he holds his gut, then disappears into the darkness.
“Me too,” Mr. Deel says, and he and everybody else in Clint's party, also holding their bellies, sink to their knees and hobble in the same direction.
“That is how you know Plutonium Cactus is effective,” Clint says to Sarwar.
“Can anybody help me?” Ross cries even louder, still wrapped around the tree.