She is wonderful, I decide.
Simply wonderful.
We chat the entire drive up to the trailhead. She tells me about her day, and her customers, and her lunch break at the Honey Bean diner.
I tell her about mine, as well, describing the sanctuary and the monsters—minus their monstrous bits. Her eyes go wide when I describe the breakfast Cookie made this morning. And then she laughs out loud when I tell her how they reacted to Big Jim’s show last night. “They are all into this,” I say. “They want to hunt monsters now too.”
“Are they gonna go with you?”
“With me?”
“Aren’t you hunting monsters with Uncle Jim and Sheriff Roth tomorrow night?”
“Oh. I forgot all about that. No. I had better leave them home.” Then I laugh at the thought of showing up for a monster hunt with the actual monsters being hunted.
Except Big Jim and Russ Roth aren’t hunting those monsters.
They are hunting Pell. They just don’t know it yet.
“Has your uncle ever caught a monster?”
“Yeah. Plenty of them.”
“What?”
She giggles. “I swear. He catches them for real. But like I said, they’re not around here. He never found any around here.”
For a moment I wonder if I will need to rescue these captive monsters and take them home to the sanctuary. “Where does he keep them?”
“Keep them?” Madeline looks confused.
“The monsters. When he catches them, where does he keep them?”
“Oh. He doesn’t catch them in that respect. He… hunts them.”
“He kills them?”
I’m appalled. And I’m pretty sure this shows on my face because Madeline says, “I know. I don’t like it either. Even though I’m like a hundred percent sure these monsters of his are just deformed deer, or whatever. I don’t like the thought of killing them. He should just let them be.”
I frown, picturing what this hunt might turn into tomorrow night.
“If you don’t want to go with them, you don’t have to, Tomas. You don’t need to impress my uncle. He will like you because I like you. Because he likes me.”
I reach for her hand and squeeze it just as we pull into the trailhead parking lot.
She is sweet. Maybe too sweet. Not for me—I love sweet.
But she’s misguided about her uncle. I don’t think he cares about her the way she cares about him.
Why would he say those things to me? Why would he call her ‘weird’ and ‘off?’
I don’t like it.
I don’t like him, I decide.
I am going on that hunt tomorrow night. He won’t be finding any monsters, but… perhaps it’s time for the monsters to find him?
“Here we are,” Madeline says. Then she lets go of my hand and opens her door. “Come on. I’ll take you up the trail and show you the waterfall.”