A saccharine odor weighted the air. A dead raccoon, its body twisted and bloodied, slumped against a tree. Newly dead, too, if the blood still smelled sweet and only a little rusty. Beyond the raccoon was a pile of several more discarded animals, torn apart, blood matting their fur.
Unable to catch my breath, I stepped back. Something crunched beneath my boot. Don’t look. But I couldn’t stop myself. I’d stepped on a raccoon’s head. Its tail twitched by my foot. Nearly getting sick, I covered my mouth.
What would cause this? A mountain lion? How had it gotten so many animals all in one place?
Okay, Sophia, don’t panic. Don’t be like that idiot girl who ran and got herself killed by some wild animal.
I tried to remember what to do. Back away and keep eye contact. Keep eye contact with what? And I wasn’t supposed to turn my back to the mountain lion. I could throw rocks or sticks to scare it away, but now that I thought about it, that made no sense. How could I pick up rocks and sticks if bending over would make it easier for the mountain lion to lunge for my neck?
I scanned the spaces between the trees, looking for any sign of life.
What if it wasn’t a mountain lion?
Footsteps fell behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. A dark figure, running away from me, turned back, and I glimpsed a man’s face before his shape bled into the shadows between the trees.
I ran for the main trail. My foot caught on a tree root, and I shot forward, my bag tumbling from my shoulder to the ground. Wet soil dampened my palms and knees.
Two feet away, several more dead animals were piled beside a tree. I looked down to my palms, realizing the soil was not wet from rain or water but from blood. As I tried to back away, something pulled at my scalp. My curls had tangled in a branch.
Shaking, I wiped my hands on my skirt and carefully untangled my hair. I climbed to my feet and looked at my hands. The darkness and my trembling made it impossible to see straight, but my stomach lurched when I spotted the cut bleeding on my palm, near my wrist.
Please don’t tell me any animal blood got in there.
I bolted the rest of the way down the forest path, slowing to glance back as I neared the trail’s entrance. A dark shape moved between the trees. What the heck is—
I stumbled into something.
It moved.
I shrieked and jumped back, my hand fanned over my chest as I sucked in a large gulp of air. “Shit, you scared me.”
Ivory, my friend from college—not the boogieman—stood in front of me. She grabbed my shoulders and held me at arm’s length. No wonder I hadn’t seen her. She was dressed in a black sweater and dress pants, with a black cable-knit beanie pulled low over her ears.
Sleek bluish-black hair brushed her shoulders as she leaned to look past me into the woods. She shifted back, crystal blue eyes on mine. “Are you okay, Sophia? Why were you running?”
“Is everyone hell-bent on sneaking up on me?” I snapped.
Her eyebrows knitted together and the moon cast a pale glow on her milky skin. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing.” I dug through my bag for my car keys. I thought she mumbled something else, but when I glanced back, her lips weren’t moving. Stupid, crazy, unintelligible voices. “What are you doing here, Ivory?”
She pointed to my Jeep. “I passed by on the way to Lauren’s and saw you parked.”
“Lauren’s home from Cali?”
She vacationed there every August to attend the Nihonmachi Street Fair in San Francisco and Nisei Week in Los Angeles.
“You’d know that if you answered your phone,” Ivory said. “No one can get a hold of you.”
“I left it at home.”
Part of me wished I’d gone with Lauren this summer. The year before, she’d taken me to see the pageants—the ones she refused to participate in because some people there didn’t think ‘haafus’ should enter.
It wasn’t the first time Lauren was shunned for her heritage. Lauren’s dad, after learning his parents weren’t thrilled he had married and impregnated an Irish woman, stopped speaking Japanese, changed his daughter’s name from Yumi to Lauren, and, as she grew older, forbade her from studying the Japanese language.
Now, with her parents gone, Lauren was eager to connect with the culture of her ancestors…while I stayed behind waiting tables.
Ivory grabbed my wrist, drawing my attention back to her. “You’re bleeding. And your skirt is covered in blood.”
“I fell.” I snatched my hand away and rubbed where her fingers had pressed. “Why are you going to Lauren’s anyway?”
“For the love of the Goddess, Sophia. She might not be the illest person on the planet, but it’s not like I hate her.” She was laying heavy into her Boston-talk. Sometimes I wondered if she did that purely for my amusement, or if she’d just lived there too long to shake the slang.
Ivory was still staring at my wrist, and I gave her a pointed look. “I fell, Ivory.”
“Yeah.” She frowned and took a step back. “You all set? Lauren’s expecting us.”
Great. Now she thinks I’m suicidal or something. “I can’t go,” I said. “I have work early tomorrow.”