She paused, taking a giant breath and a giant inhale of her coffee. I looked over at Dex who was watching her thoughtfully while shoving the remains of the pie in his mouth. I wondered how he ate it so fast and he gave me a look that said you know how I feel about pie. I did and found myself smirking at the nostalgia.
“Where was I?” Christina said, wiping her lip. “Oh right. I go to the other cabin and it looked like someone was inside, so I thought it was Rigby. I tied up Taffy to the post and the door to cabin was open and everything and there was a very small, dying fire in the fireplace. But, like, no one was there. Then I heard Taffy scream. Like, you know when a horse really whinnies but it’s like a scream? I ran out of the cabin and she was rearing and she just snapped the reins off of the post and galloped off. I didn’t know what to do or what had spooked her. There’s no phone or electricity in there so I was totally stuck. The only thing I could do was make my way back home. I was only a few feet away from the cabin when…”
She trailed off and I realized I was hunched over in suspense. Dex’s hand was on my thigh, squeezing it lightly. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to comfort me or what. I turned my attention back to Christina and prodded her with my eyes for her to continue.
Her gaze ping-ponged between us quizzically. “Are you guys a couple?”
I snorted, unprepared for that question. “What? No.”
She didn’t look convinced. I gave Dex a disgusted look, and shaking my head, brought the same look over to her. “No. We’re just partners. Why?”
She shrugged. “I can tell he’s touching you under the table.”
“I guess he thinks I’m scared,” I explained slowly and moved an inch away from him.
Meanwhile Dex was smiling openly. “I’m trying to win her over. It only works about half the time.”
I lowered my head toward him. “Oh, this is you trying now?”
He matched my look. “Shall I remove my hand?”
The thing was, I didn’t want him to. I loved the feeling of his hands on me, and would love it more if he moved his hand to my inner thigh and slid it up. But I said, “Yes please.”
“Hand has been removed,” he said in a robotic voice. He took it off and my thigh was left feeling cold.
I tugged down at my sweater sleeves and swallowed. “You should probably ignore us for the time being. Please go on with your story.”
She looked lost in her head for a moment. Man, this girl had the shortest attention span.
“So…yeah,” she started up, finally. “I decided to go back home, you know, my other home. On foot. I could jog it. Anyway, I wasn’t far when I heard branches breaking in the forest. I thought it was Rigby or maybe Bandy, so I stopped. I listened, cuz I wasn’t sure. I mean, there are bears and mountain lions around, even though I swear it wasn’t ether of those. I heard this weird low growl, not like a dog but kind of like if someone was trying to clear their throat hardcore. But it wasn’t my dad. It sounded like bad news. I didn’t want to find out what it was and I was totally about to go when I saw something shift coming around the corner of the cabin. It was so dark but it was low and hunched over like this.”
She got out of her seat and stood in the restaurant, demonstrating. Her knees were bent, her back hunched over, her hands poised beneath her, ready to claw. She looked like a cross between a zombie and a velociraptor.
And considering how much Jurassic Park scared me, that was probably the worst combination on earth.
By now, everyone in the diner was staring at the teen and some were even giving a little laugh. She shot them all haughty looks and sat back down.
“Well that was demented looking,” Dex remarked.
“It was demented looking!” she reiterated. “Jeez. And it was dark, covered in hair, and its eyes were crazy black, like holes. Obviously nothing I should stick around for. So I ran and I made it only a few steps before it knocked me down and clawed at my leg, dragging me backward. I tried to turn around to fight, to get a look at it but before I could, Taffy came screeching out of the woods, like she finally remembered she galloped off without me. The Sasquatch let go of me and took off. Here. Look at what it did.”
Christina stuck her leg out of the booth and was trying to roll up her jeans when the waitress came by with our food and interrupted her.
Even though her story hadn’t really scared me (because how could you be scared of something that wasn’t real), I had lost my appetite. I stuck the bacon in my mouth and pushed my eggs over to Dex, who snatched them up and added a helping of hot sauce.
“So, you called this thing Sasquatch,” I said. “No offense, but this doesn’t sound like Sasquatch. Isn’t he, it, whatever, supposed to be tall and big? I mean, Bigfoot…he has big feet…means that it’s tall.”
“I don’t know, do I look like a monster expert? I’m just saying what I saw.”
“Then you went on the news and told everyone about it, that it was a Sasquatch,” Dex said between chews. “But the doctors said your leg looked like you were scratched up by a mountain lion. Those kind of claws.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Of course I went on the news. People should know it’s out there! And yeah, I’ll show you, they definitely were claws.”
She reached down for her pant leg again but I patted her arm, stopping her.
“That’s OK. We believe you. We’re just trying to get our facts straight before we start filming.”
She blew a loose strand of hair out of her face and crossed her arms in a huff. “Well those are my facts. If you want more, you have to talk to Rigby. He’s the one who has seen this beast thing a bunch of times, and has molds of the footprints. And guess what, what I saw exactly matches what I saw. So explain that.”
Dex put his fork down on the empty plate. “We will explain it. That’s why we’re here.”
Ten minutes went past as Christina went off of the topic of Sasquatch and onto how much she wanted to get out of Snow Crest. Apparently her parents had been saving up for university when she finished her schooling but because of the economy and the rising Canadian dollar, the town and the tourism industry were hit really hard over the last few years. The business was dwindling, but she had no choice but to help out her dad. Despite her headstrong personality, I felt sorry for the girl. She might not have to go to school half the year, but it didn’t sound like she should be working up in the mountains either.