Free The Attraction by Douglas Clegg Page A

think so,” Ziggy said. “It’s that little bastard. That’s what it is. It’s that little rat bastard.”
    Bronwyn pulled her knees into her chest and looked at the fire. She puffed away at her cigarette, and didn’t seem bothered by the noise.
It’s because she doesn’t want to think about them,
Josh thought.
She doesn’t want to think about Griff screwing Tammy. She loves Griff. There’s no way around this. He hits girls. He’s stupid. But he looks good and girls want that. They want to feel they got the football hero. They want to feel like they won some prize. Just like guys want pretty girls, no matter what the girl is on the inside.
    She’s never going to look at me the way she looks at him. And he’s a complete jerk. But she doesn’t notice that. She just knows she wants him.
    He scootched over in the dirt and sat next to her, crossing his legs in front of him. “You okay?” he asked.
    She shrugged, holding her cigarette aloft as if she could write in the sky with it. “Life just sucks, that’s all.”
    “I’m here,” he said, looking at her, trying to make her see him. Really see him.
    She turned her face toward him, and had an inscrutable look. “Don’t cozy up to me if you just want something from me.”
    Ziggy pushed himself up from the rock on the other side of the fire. He stood there, beyond the crackling flame, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “What if it’s all true? What if we brought that thing to life?” He balanced his weight on one foot and then the other, and looked toward the car nervously. “It’s dark over there. I can’t see anything. But I heard that.”
    “Sit down, Zig,” Bronwyn said. “It’s okay. You’re freaking me out. Just calm down, have a smoke or something. I promise you that Scratchypoo isn’t coming out of that trunk.”
    Josh laughed. “Scratchy-poo.”
    “Scratchy-poo,” Ziggy repeated, but didn’t laugh. He just kept watch in the direction of the car. “You know, I heard that sometimes these things have special powers. I mean, there are stones in England that Druids put together and they have ceremonies there still. And there’s a place in France where there are these caves and they found these bones. It was some ancient religious thing. And I saw on
National Geographic
about this temple in India where there’s this cult . . .”
    “Zig,” Bronwyn said. “What’s your point?”
    He looked at her, and the flickering from the firelight cast his face in a brilliant yellow and red shadow. “People believe in things. They do. And maybe if they believe in them bad enough, maybe those things can be real when they don’t seem like they should.”
    “We should never have dragged you to
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
at Halloween,” she said. Turning to Josh, “He screamed like a baby the whole time.”
    “You never know what stuff is like until it happens to you,” Ziggy said. “You never know. People go missing all the time. Bad things happen to people and no one can explain them. I heard in Oregon that two kids got lost in the woods and got torn up, and they thought it was a tiger only no one could see how tigers could be in Oregon.”
    Bronwyn raised her hand. “Oh, pick me. I know! I know!”
    Josh cracked up, laughing.
    “What’s so funny? It happened. They said the woods were cursed. They got torn up,” Ziggy said.
    “Zig, it was because of marijuana farms. That same weed you smoke doesn’t come from nice Midwestern farmers. Some of them use tigers and mountain lions on their property to scare off—or kill—intruders.”
    Ziggy looked at the joint in his hand.
    “What, you think marijuana is grown by Old MacDonald? That the Feds don’t raid the plantations in Hawaii and the Northwest? That nice people run them and everybody’s stoned and happy? They’re drug lords, Zig. You smoke that stuff—hell, so do I now and then—and we’re ultimately supporting people who would be happy to cut our throats if we stole an ounce