Expecting to Die

And Lara fakes it?
She eyed the kids at the shoot. Could it all have been a wild prank, one that
had been blown out of proportion? But why? And who would have been behind
it? And how did it connect with Destiny Rose’s death? That was the really
disturbing part, that Destiny had been killed, and now Marjory. Lindsay Cronin,
too, if Bianca’s mom was right. Regan was convinced that the deaths were
somehow connected.
Standing between a crane and the path to the Porta Potties, Bianca stared at
her friends with new eyes, her vision changed by the tragedies that had occurred.
Despite the warm night, Bianca shivered and rubbed her arms with her hands. As
the campfire scene was filmed, then over, the crew switched to the second
location in the parking lot, where two pickups and Austin Reece’s BMW were

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parked.
Lara and Austin were to be making out inside the sports car. According to the
script, there was to be a dark shadow looming and moving ever closer behind the
back of the BMW. As Barclay had described the scene: “It’s going to look like
all those ghost stories we all grew up with where the teenagers are really going
at it, the girl’s blouse is coming off and she’s in her bra, but there’s a deadly
killer outside and we, as the viewers, see it. Know that death is nearby. Bill,”
he’d called to one of the cameramen, “I’ll want the camera to come in from the
Big Foot’s perspective, at the rear of the car, of course—make sure we don’t see
the license plate, just the rear window, which will be foggy as things are really
heating up inside, okay? Everyone else, back, we want this to look like Lara and
Austin are all alone.”
How this new scene would fit into the original story line, Bianca wasn’t
certain, since the scenes were filmed out of order rather than sequentially, then
patched together. She didn’t know if the make-out scene in the car would be cut
in before the guitar scene at the campfire or Bianca’s already filmed action scene
where she ended up in the creek.
As the actors were moved from one shooting site to the next and the cameras
were rearranged, Maddie, the diet soda swinging from her fingers, sought out
Teej again. Once more, Bianca was left on her own. She thought about calling
Jeremy to come get her, but she wasn’t ready to go home yet, and besides, the
deal was that everyone was supposed to stay until the shoot was over for the
night.
So she hung in the periphery, saw Carlton Jeffe and Ivor Hicks and a few
other Big Foot Believers and wondered how she’d fallen out of favor so quickly.
Not that long ago Barclay Sphinx had been interviewing her, talking up her story
at the Big Foot Believers meeting. And what had happened to all that talk about
a trailer and setting up a reward for helping locate Destiny Rose Montclaire’s
killer? Was that still on the table? She didn’t know because she was out of the
loop and Lara, now in only a bra and short skirt as she stood near the open door
of Austin’s BMW, was Barclay’s latest discovery.
Bianca couldn’t help but feel a little like a girl out in the cold, her nose
pressed to the window of a home where a birthday party was in full swing, a
celebration from which she’d been excluded or, more likely, recently uninvited.
Wah, wah, she chided. Get over your bad self.
“Okay, everyone . . . back up. We need a little more room here,” Mel said to
the crowd.
The action started up again, and Bianca inched farther into the shadows, her
attention focused on Austin’s car and Lara overacting all over the place. Bianca

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couldn’t stand it another second. Who cared if she was supposed to stay for the
entire shoot? They were never going to ask her to be a part of any of the scenes.
She’d been here over three hours, and not once had anyone in production spoken
to her, except to tell her to stay out of the way. It was all just a big waste of time.
She should just call Jeremy and go home, rest her ankle and figure out what she
was going to do with the rest of her life, which, obviously, wasn’t going to be a