Expecting to Die

Already rotting. No fuckin’ EMT in the world is gonna revive her. Come on! We
have to leave. Now! End the call. You . . . you can tell your mom when you get
home.”
“And call Detective Pescoli. . . . I’m her daughter!” Bianca had yelled into the
phone, trying to ignore Rod as he scrambled for his phone.
“You’re fuckin’ crazy!” he’d spat, getting his hands on the cell and ripping it
away from her. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Now the cops have my
number! We’re all gonna be in trouble. You’re an idiot, Pescoli. A fuckin’
hysterical idiot!”
“A girl is dead!”
But he had already been gone, running along the trail into the general area of
the parking area. She’d heard him start yelling at the top of his lungs, warning
the others. “Cops! The cops are coming!”
“What?” a girl had shouted from a ridge above. “No!”
“Wait!” another voice had cried over the sudden thunder of running footsteps
as kids ran pell-mell crashing through the forest. No one trying to be stealthy any
longer. Nope. They were all running to save their own skins.
“Hey! What’s going on?” Maddie’s voice had suddenly added to the din.
“Are you sure, dude?” another boy had demanded, his voice carrying down
the canyon. “Oh, shit!”
“Help me get Maddie out of here!” another one had hollered. “She’s drunk.”

---

Someone else had started crying. “Ow! Watch out!” Heavy breathing,
snapping branches, dust rising.
In the distance, sirens had begun to wail.
There had been screaming, cursing, and general pandemonium as everyone
tried to make it to their cars or flee on foot into the dark woods. The sirens had
wailed more loudly. Flashlights and lights from cell phones had dotted the dark
hills.
But few had escaped.
By the time Bianca had arrived at the parking area, limping and breathing
hard, cop cars had sealed off the gravel lane. The night had been illuminated by
the red and blue flashes from the vehicles from the sheriff’s department. Two
deputies with flashlights and weapons drawn had begun running along the path
Bianca had indicated, the dusty trail that wound along the banks of the creek to
where the body lay partially submerged.
Bianca crumpled against the front of an old pickup that belonged to Joaquin
Castillo, then realized the bumper was covered in dirt and dead insects. She
jerked herself upright as some of the other kids trickled out of the woods to be
confronted by the cops. Those who were still hiding, the idiots who thought they
could escape on foot, would certainly be identified through the vehicles that had
been abandoned and the statements of their friends, assuming everyone came
clean.
Had it really been Destiny? The quiet girl who had sat in the back of the
English class she’d shared with Bianca? A girl who had barely spoken? A girl
with big eyes and a shy smile? A girl no one had really noticed?
Now the events of the night caught up to her and she thought she might be
sick, right here, in the front seat of her mom’s car. She fought the urge to puke
and instead told her detective mother what had happened. Bianca didn’t hold
back. Usually she kept a lot of secrets from her mother. She had to. Not only did
Mom think she should run Bianca’s life, but there was just a lot of stuff that was
private, things she’d rather not let her mom know about. It was her life after all,
not her cop mom’s. But tonight, after being scared as hell, she spilled everything.
She’d already pointed out the way to the body, but then she’d led Deputy Rule
along the trail herself. She knew, deep in her heart, not to hold back, and she’d
made herself watch as they’d shined lights on the girl in the creek. They’d asked
if she recognized her. Could the body be that of Destiny Rose Montclaire? The
near-white hair was right. But the rest?
She thought so and had simply nodded.
Now, considering it, she shivered again.
“I’m sorry,” she said to her mother, but for once Regan Pescoli didn’t go

---

ballistic, nor read her the riot act, nor even mention that Bianca had been a
Cretin to be a part of the party. She didn’t point out that Bianca had lied to her,
or that there was a curfew or anything. She didn’t even ask if Bianca had smoked
any weed or drunk as much as a swallow of beer. No. All Regan had been
concerned with was that Bianca was okay. Which she wasn’t.
Bianca still shuddered at the thought of that pallid body, eye sockets empty
and dark, water causing her pale hair to float around what was left of her face.
“It . . . it was horrible,” she said now, and looked out the open window of the
Jeep. No more music now, no rumbling engines, just the sound of cops asking
questions, low voices and boots or shoes or flip-flops on the bare, sparse gravel.
She wondered if she could ever get the image of the dead girl out of her mind.
She doubted it.
“But you recognized her?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe she’s Destiny. Her hair was right, I think . . . she
could be.” She shuddered, again trying to eradicate the horrid, deeply etched
image from her brain.
“We’ll figure that out. How’s your ankle?”
“Awful.” That wasn’t a lie—it was throbbing like crazy.
“Let’s have the EMTs look at it.”
“No! I just want to go home.” Never had her new bedroom sounded so good.
“That’s not happening,” her mother said, and Bianca noticed she shifted
uncomfortably behind the wheel. “Santana will take you to the hospital. For X-
rays. I’ve got to stay here for a while.”
“Mom, no!”
“It’ll be okay. If you want, I’ll have your father meet you there.” For once, her
mother’s lips didn’t tighten at the mention of her ex, Bianca’s dad, Luke Pescoli.
Everyone called him “Lucky” and everyone liked him. Everyone, that was, but
Regan Pescoli. While all of Bianca’s friends thought Lucky was fun and kind of
cool, even sexy for an old guy, her mom seemed to hate him, or at least be
irritated by him all of the time. Worse yet, Mom didn’t like his wife, Michelle,
even though Bianca thought her stepmother was pretty cool. Yeah, Michelle was
only a few years older than Jeremy, but she was fun. Mom wasn’t. Bianca
guessed her mother hated Michelle because she was thin, blond, and fashion
conscious, always wore high heels, and looked great in a bikini. Bianca had
heard her mother called Michelle a “Barbie doll,” so it stood to reason she was
jealous.
Whatever. It didn’t really matter. At least not tonight.
“Dad doesn’t need to come,” she said, then hesitated, wavering, thinking
about her run down that mountain.

---

Regan Pescoli’s parent radar went up. Or maybe her detective radar. “There’s
something else.” It wasn’t a question.
Bianca nodded. Swallowed hard.
“What?” Her mother’s voice was soft. Not demanding.
“It sounds stupid.”
“Nothing’s stupid.”
Bianca blew out a long breath of air. “Well, this is. I mean . . . I told you about
being chased through the woods.”
“Umm.”
“Well, it was more than just the boys, you know, chasing the girls. I think
there was something else.”
Her mother tensed. “Like what?”
“I—I’m not really sure.” Bianca lifted a shoulder. Felt dumb. “Maybe a wild
animal—some kind of creature chasing me.”
“What kind of creature?”
Bianca felt her mother’s gaze boring into her. “I don’t know. Something big
and smelly. A huge thing. I mean, this is crazy, I know. But . . . I think it was a
monster, you know.”
“No, I don’t know.” Her mother stared hard at her.
How could she explain when it seemed weird, stupid, even made-up? “A
beast, I guess.” Saying it out loud made her cringe inside.
“What kind of beast?”
“Just big and kind of animal. Horrible. Not human.” She shuddered
remembering the immensity of the thing, how it had reeked, its glowing eye.
God, it did seem surreal now. “I just had the feeling that, whatever it was, it was
. . . like pure evil.”
“Evil?”
“Yeah, like really, really bad. I had the feeling it wanted to kill me!”
“This was before you saw the dead girl?”
“God—yes! I told you it chased me! Right down to the creek!” Bianca
remembered the creature’s loud footsteps, its hulking size, and she felt that
mind-numbing fear all over again. “I already told you. Can we just stop now?”
“We will . . . yes. But first. Just answer this,” her mother said calmly while
Bianca was on the brink of hysteria. “This ‘monster,’ could it have been
someone dressed up in a costume, you know, one of the boys playing a joke on
—”
“A joke? Are you serious? This thing was like a mountain, so big, so scary . . .
oh, crap, you don’t believe me.”
“No, no. I’m just trying to figure out what it is.”

---

“I told you what!” Bianca wrapped her arms around herself. Her mother didn’t
believe her.
“Then try again. Calmly.”
“Okay. It was huge.”
“We’ve established that.”
“And hairy and smelled like . . . wet dog, only a hundred times worse, like if
Sturgis took a bath in a lake filled with raw sewage, that bad. And it had an eye
that kind of glowed gold. Like topaz or something. You know, like the stone in
that necklace Michelle wears sometimes. It was like that.”
“One eye?”
“I only saw one.” It sounded weird. All of it sounded weird, not just the eye.
Bianca knew that.
“Could it have been a cougar? A mountain lion was spotted not far from
here.”
“No! Mom! This thing was huge. Massive. Like way taller than me and it . . . I
mean, I couldn’t tell, but it was on two legs. Or rearing up. I don’t know. It was
dark. It all happened so fast, but it scared me. It scared the hell out of me.” Oh,
God, she was saying this all wrong.
“But could it have been human? Just bear with me and think about it.
Someone dressed up to really scare you?”
“No! Yes? I don’t know! But it would have had to have been a giant. A hairy,
stinky giant!” She let out her breath and tried to calm a bit. “It was . . . awful.
And then . . . and then it chased me down to the creek where . . . where she was.”
The more Bianca thought about it, the crazier it sounded. Tears welled in her
eyes. “Can we just go home?”
“You can. After you go to the hospital. I’ll be a little longer. I have things I
have to deal with here.”
“But—”
“I know.” Struggling with her massive girth, Mom turned in her seat and
hugged Bianca. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Promise.”
Bianca nodded as she stared out the windshield to the eerie gloom. Knots of
kids, now with parents or cops beside them, were huddled in the play of light
from flashlights and headlights, everyone telling his or her side of the story. She
spied Austin Reece, blond head held at a lofty angle, looking down his nose at a
short woman cop. Maddie was standing next to Teej, leaning on him. She was
probably drunk. Not good.
But then nothing was. Groups of other kids, some with their parents, formed a
wide, uneven circle as they talked to the cops. Rod Devlin was dealing with the
same deputy with whom Bianca had first spoken, Kayan Rule. The party mood

---

had dissipated, and most of her friends looked grim or scared or both.
“Okay, I need to talk to some of the others,” her mother said. “Find out if
anyone else got a look at the body.”
Bianca’s stomach turned over as she thought of the corpse still lying in the
creek. She swallowed hard and didn’t let her mind wander too far to what had
happened to the girl.
Her mother urged, “Let’s go.”
“Fine.” Reluctantly, Bianca climbed out of the Jeep and saw that Santana was
out of his truck in an instant, as if he’d gotten the high sign from Mom, or more
likely been watching like a hawk. He acted as if he was going to do something
stupid like try to help her, so she shouted, “I’m okay!” before he touched her,
then hobbled her way over to Santana’s pickup, wincing with each step. Still, she
made it and was able to climb into the passenger seat and roll down the window
unaided.
“Really, how ya doin’?” Santana asked as he stood next to the cab.
“How do ya think?” she tossed back, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. “Just
super.”
He lifted one dark eyebrow and she felt immediate remorse. “I just want to get
out of here. To go home,” she muttered.
“Okay. I’ll be right back. Just want to get a couple of things straight with your
mom.”
“Perfect.” She waited in the passenger seat of her stepfather’s battered pickup
and listened to the sounds of the night.
Over the drone of insects and a frog croaking somewhere she heard the voices
of kids being interviewed, the rumble of engines and crunch of tires as more
parents or guardians arrived. Bianca also caught pieces of the conversation
between Santana and her mother as they stood in front of the pickup’s grill.
Regan was filling him in and giving instructions. “Bianca . . . body . . .
unconfirmed but working on it . . . a girl reported missing. . . some kind of one-
eyed monster . . . I know . . . crazy . . . shock probably . . . check it out at the
hospital with the ankle. Yeah, it’ll be a while. Take her home . . . I know. I’ll call
him.”
Dad, she thought from the tone of her mother’s voice. The only other “him”
they could be talking about, she thought, was her brother, Jeremy, but her mom
didn’t talk about him the same way. Surprisingly, she wished Jeremy were here.
As much as he’d bugged her while they were growing up, now she missed him.
Bianca closed her eyes, felt the heat of the summer night against her skin, and
wondered what the hell she’d seen in the woods. A wild animal? A kid dressed
up like a monster—but who? And how? And why? Or something else? The skin

---

on the back of her arms prickled as she considered the options. Possibly
something otherworldly. Lately she’d been reading a lot of books with
paranormal themes, about ghosts and ESP, and vampires. She’d even gone
through a zombie phase and the truth was, she did believe in an alternate
universe, one few could see. But she probably shouldn’t mention ghosts or
wraiths because it would only freak out her seeing-is-believing mother.
Again, the image of the dead girl came to mind, and she tried like crazy to
think of anything else.
But it was no use. As the old driver’s-side door opened with a creak and
Santana climbed behind the steering wheel, her mind wandered back to that
moment when she’d touched what she’d thought was a stick but had turned out
to be a bone with rotting flesh still attached.
Acid climbed up her throat. “Wait!” she yelled and she shoved open the door
and heaved, vomiting over the gravel and part of the truck’s door frame. Her
stomach turned inside out, bile rising, the stench burning through her nostrils as
she hurled again. When it was over, she spat, wished she could wash her mouth
of the sour taste that lingered, then yanked the door shut and leaned against the
back of the seat. Tears were hot in her eyes.
“You done?” Santana asked and reached into the glove box to pull out a box
of Kleenex.
She didn’t know. “Yeah.” She plucked several tissues from the box and
cleaned herself. “Let’s just go.” Though her eyes were closed, she couldn’t shake
the image. Deeply embedded in her brain was the mental photograph of the dead
girl’s mangled face, pale floating hair, and deep, empty eye sockets.

---