“You could check the phone book. They might have one inside…” She trailed off when she saw the look on his muzzle. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“No! Don’t tell me! Let me guess…” I tilted my head in a hmmm and waited, because I know how to do suspense, too. “It’s Batsquatch, right? He waits for them in his doorless cave at the tippity-top. When the herd least expects it, he pops out of solid rock and says Boo! Then the deer die quickly of a painless heart attack so they won’t feel it as he rips them to pieces like a stuffy toy. Right?”

“Drop the potato chips and no one gets hurt!” I barked, refusing the empty paw. 

“What the smell is that woman saying?” Mom grumbled the umptieth time I heard it. “Wait, you can hear it too?” 

“Don’t you dare take off!” Mom hissed, hooking her frozen claws around my collar and trapping me for monster meat. 

Before we even started our hike, we found a real treasure: an unlocked people-potty!

“I thought that being right was the only thing you liked about talking to other people,” I said. “You can’t correct people without disagreement.”

“Who’s in charge of milk-checking around here?” I asked. “Just say the word and I’ll get him fired.” 

I’d always doubted whether people existed when they weren’t with me, even before everyone disappeared. Now I knew that people folded into laptops and disappeared into The Cloud until Mom clicked on them again.

These days, bushes crowded in too close for a car to squeeze through and roots had chewed up most of the pavement, but you could still smell the rusty skeletons of old wrecks buried in the bushes like a forgotten bone. The ghosts blew in with the morning fog and swirled featherlike through the brush until the sun shined them away around lunch time. 

The Stuck House was supposed to be the only place where the universe had to obey her rules, but now she couldn’t even boss around a lousy banana.

“It’s not criminal, but it’s a violation of something-or-other,” Mom said in her law-gic voice. “I wouldn’t call it il-legal. More like extra-legal.” What a relief. If the Law found us, they would probably give me a medal for being so much more legal than everyone else. 

I looked back at the bite mark and my body went cold. A something was flapping just beyond the edge of it...

“You don’t know where they’ve been,” he said judgily, like Mom was irresponsible for not caring enough to check what her avocados were up to