Honey Girl(41)

“Maybe the red light ran straight through me,” Sani snipes, digging out his headphones. He shuts his eyes. “Wake me up when we get there, or the world decides it’s time to eat the rich. I’m not picky.”

Yuki turns around. “You holding up back there?”

“Seems that way,” Grace says. “I still can’t believe we’re going to look for a monster. What kind is it anyway? Loch Ness?”

Yuki makes a face. “Hey, Genius Girl,” she says. “That thing is supposedly in Scotland. We’re going to the border of New York and Vermont. Wanna see?” She holds out a map with circled areas of interest. “These are all the places where the thing, they call it Champ, has been spotted. We’re going to hit up the spots closest to this side of the state border.”

“Why not go into Vermont?” Grace asks, staring at the meticulously marked map.

“Too many white people,” Yuki and Sani say together, though Sani keeps his eyes stubbornly closed. “I’m not here, carry on with the monster mash.”

“Seriously?” Fletcher says incredulously. “You know the ‘Monster Mash’ from American fucking Bandstand but not Egyptian Rat Screw?”

“I’m asleep,” is the only reply he gets.

Yuki rolls her eyes and shoves the map toward Grace again. “We’re gonna split up around here, I think. Me and you, then Fletch, Sani and Dhorian if he ever decides to wake the fuck up. Why is he so tired?”

“Twelve-hour shift in the ED, then he took an Ambien,” Fletcher says. “I don’t think he factored lake monsters into his plan for today, so he might just stay in the car and get eaten.”

“If anyone’s getting eaten by a lake monster,” Yuki says, “it’s going to be me. Are we there yet?”

They are there according to the signs as they near the lake area. The trees are thick and green and lush, and the ground is sprouting with weeds and flowers. Fletcher parks his dad’s car a little way back, and they sit, staring out the windows.

“There is nothing here but undiscovered bodies and maybe, like, some water pollution,” Fletcher says doubtfully. “What will your radio listeners think about the scariest monster of them all—humans contributing to climate change?”

Yuki elbows him sharply and gets out of the car. Grace follows, eyes immediately tracing the long line of trees up and up and up, reminding her of being a kid and looking up at orange grove trees.

“There you go,” Yuki says quietly. Grace has heard her voice often enough to know when there’s fondness in it. “You’re always up in the clouds, Grace Porter.” She tilts her head back, too, hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “What do you see up there?”

Grace squints. “They remind me of home, I guess,” she says. She inhales, and the air smells like lake water and grass and sand and wood.

Behind them, Sani is trying to wake Dhorian up, keeping his voice low as he apologizes for the early hour. “It’s the boss’s fault,” he says. “She wanted a lake monster, so we gotta see a lake monster, babe.”

Dhorian groans, loud enough that the sound carries. “Do you think the lake monster will let me nap? Do you think it will take pity on me?”

Yuki snorts. She bumps her shoulder against Grace’s. “These trees must have nothing on the ones you have back home,” she says. “Those big Oregon redwoods—”

“Not those,” Grace says thoughtfully. “I grew up in Florida,” she explains, “in a little hippie town called Southbury. My mom’s family owns an orange grove there.”

She feels Yuki’s eyes on her, but she is looking up again. She’s been looking up her whole life, it seems, at one thing or another. “I used to climb the trees,” she says, like recounting a dream on the verge of being lost to morning. “You weren’t supposed to, and Colonel had my hide every time I got caught. But the best oranges were the ones at the top.” If she closes her eyes, she can feel branches scraping at her palms and arms, wounds to deal with later. But they were worth it, to find that perfect fruit, to hide in the trees that were big and strong enough to hold her.

She opens her eyes and clears her throat, swallowing down her most vulnerable memories. “Are we ready to monster hunt?”

“Born ready,” Sani says. They turn around, and Dhorian has pulled himself up, and with sleepy eyes and languid hands is braiding Sani’s hair into a high bun.

Fletcher tosses Sani items from the truck. “Three waters, Fletch.”

He wrinkles his nose. “You know the amount of plastic—”

“Normally,” Sani cuts in, “I would let you do this. I promise I would. But it’s 7 a.m., and if you want me to stay awake to Scooby-Doo this shit, I need to be hydrated. Dhorian, do you agree?” He turns his head a little, and Dhorian makes a little annoyed noise.

“Fletch, I get it. Climate change, polar caps melting, plastic in the oceans.” He yawns, hiding it in Sani’s neck. “But I’m very thirsty. I promise to recycle it. Or compost it. Or whatever it is you hipster Brooklyn yuppies do.”

“I’m from Queens,” Fletcher says, but he does throw three water bottles at Dhorian’s head.

“I really worry about them,” Yuki says absently. “They’re so weird.”