“Look, Temi, you don’t owe me any explanations, but I’ve been wondering why you’re here. If tennis isn’t an option for you anymore, why not go back to school? I’m sure you could stay with your parents to save money while you’re studying.”
She grimaced. “I can’t go back there. I stopped in for a couple of days, and it was… awkward is a nice way to put it.”
“I don’t get it; your parents are nice.”
“My parents didn’t think much of my decision to leave for Florida all those years ago. If I hadn’t been given a full scholarship to the academy…” Temi plucked a cobweb off her shoulder. “My parents were fine with tennis when I was a prepubescent girl and it was a hobby, but Yaiyai never thought it was appropriate for girls to run around hitting balls with sticks.” This last part she said in her high-pitched Yaiyai-imitation tone, one of an eighty-year-old woman who had a cane she swung like a cudgel at all the young men in the neighborhood, because she was certain they were thinking impure thoughts about her. “My parents became less and less enamored with it when it started taking more of my time.”
“I remember that. They wouldn’t drive you to the tournaments, right? You had to get rides and stay with the other girls on the team?”
Temi nodded. “You only saw the tip of the iceberg. We had a lot of disagreements. Once I was offered that scholarship, I believed I could be independent and didn’t need them. We had a big blowup on the night before I left. If you give up your studies and do this, you’ll never be welcome in our house again. Words of that nature. I threw some curses around, too, words a young lady shouldn’t know, much less say.”
“Yeah, I had a lot of those in my vocabulary too.” Though I’d never dared fling them at my parents.
“They forbade me to leave and wouldn’t help me get to Florida. I basically ran away from home. I hitchhiked and stowed away on freighter trains to get there.”
“I didn’t know that. At fourteen? You’re lucky you didn’t get mugged… or worse.”
“I know. There were a couple of scary incidents. When I got there, I handed over a parental release form with forged signatures. That first year, I kept waiting for the police to come and haul me back to New Mexico. I guess my parents never filed a missing person’s report though. I got the feeling they were waiting for me to fail and come back with my tail between my legs. That made me more determined than ever to succeed. I put an insane number of hours into my training, and when it paid off, and I started winning tournaments at the pro level… I don’t know. I thought they’d be happy, that they’d admit they were wrong, and that my choice had been right. That it’d all been worth it. But they always thought it was a crime to pay people money to play sports. And they never agreed with the jet-setter lifestyle, flying all over the world to compete. A waste of oil and the precious few resources the world has left.” This time she was imitating her dad’s voice-I’d known the family long enough to recognize the words without the impersonation though. “Even when I was succeeding beyond my own expectations… it didn’t matter to them. They never called or wrote, but I heard their words through my cousins’ mouths. They felt they hadn’t raised me right. They saw me as a failure.” Temi’s usual equanimity had faltered during her soliloquy, and she leaned back, blinking rapidly with her eyes toward the rafters. “I can’t go back there and prove them right.”
“Temi, you’re not a failure. It’s not a crime to go down a different path than the one your parents have in mind for you. It’s normal.” I probably should have patted her on the back and offered a sympathetic shoulder instead of a lecture, but I wasn’t good at comfort and commiseration. Besides, I didn’t know what she thought about our last meeting as teenagers, but I didn’t want her to think I was trying to hit on her.
“I’d believe that if they hadn’t been right in the end. The life I chose… I didn’t think it’d be so fleeting. I thought I’d have plenty of time to go back to school once I finished my pro career, and that I’d have enough money at that point and wouldn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay while I studied.”
I decided not to point out that she would have money now if she hadn’t been buying Jaguars and who knew what else. I probably would have made similar frivolous purchases if someone had handed me a few piles of cash.
“You could sell the car,” I said.
“I know. That’s on the table, but I wouldn’t get nearly what I paid for it two years ago.”
“Better sooner than later… like after it gets mauled by a rock-throwing monster. You keep hanging around with us and that’s liable to happen.”
Temi managed a smile. “Why do you think I opted for separate lodgings?”
“I assumed Zelda wasn’t up to your usual sleeping standards.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The van doesn’t seem much worse than the Motel 6, but you and your… friend are proving to be magnets for trouble.”
Before I could decide if I wanted to refute the comment, or explain that, yes, Simon and I were indeed just friends, my phone beeped. I pulled it out, expecting another “They haven’t moved yet” text message. Instead it read, Got something. Come get me?
Even though I was sure he had an ulterior motive in this tracking scheme, my heart rate still took a jump when I read the note. I grabbed the books and knickknacks I’d found. “Time to check out.”
“What does that entail in this industry?” Temi waved toward the items and their lack of price tags.
“Haggling with the owner until neither of us gets a price we’re happy with.”
“Ah.”
“Then we rush over to pick up Simon before he gets himself into trouble. More trouble.”
CHAPTER 12
Business had picked up at the Raven Cafe by the time we returned, finding Simon at the same table, hunkered over my laptop. There weren’t yet enough people that the servers felt compelled to glare at him for hogging seats when he’d finished his meal hours earlier.
“What’ve you got?” I asked, pulling up a chair.
Temi sat across from him. He gave her a shy wave, but focused on me. “You know those pictures I took?”
“The ones of the mauled bodies that are too garish for T-shirts? Yes.”
“I didn’t upload those, but I did share some of thrashed vegetation and footprints, except I missed something when I was posting them.” Simon pointed at the screen where the blog from our website was displayed. Even though I had a half-written review on Arrowheads amp; Stone Artifacts: A Practical Guide for the Amateur Archaeologist I’d been meaning to finish, I’d been avoiding the site since he started posting evidence of our adventures in the wilds of Prescott. Somehow I thought that book review might disappoint the crowd flocking to our blog in search of monsters. “I was reading through the comments people have left-two hundred and twelve of them, by the way.” He gave me an arch look.
“Any of them buy anything yet?” I asked.
“No.”
I returned his look with my own get-to-the-point-then expression.
“But this guy said he enlarged one of the pictures I took of the forest right after the police arrived.” Simon was pointing at the comment, so I read it for myself, sharing the last half aloud.
“‘Nice choice to use a phone to take such important pictures. At least get an app that lets you up your ISO, lower your aperture, and lengthen your shutter speed. My five year old could have done better with her Fisher-Price camera.’”
“I have an app,” Simon said. “The problem was that my hands were quivering with adrenaline. Anyway, here’s the picture in question.”
He tabbed over to photo-viewing software, and I found myself admiring a slightly blurry image of the forest at night. He outlined a corner and zoomed in. I gripped the edge of the table. There was a dark bump sticking out of the side of one of those trees, one that had…
“That’s the creepiest eye I’ve ever seen,” I said.