“Hands where I can see them.”

  Not a monster. A cop. The cruiser must’ve rolled up with the lights off while I was staring at the gelatin nightmare.

  My scream strangled into a hiccup. I lifted my hands. One still wore a yellow-splattered glove. The other clutched my stupid sneaker by its torn lace. I must’ve looked like a raccoon caught mid-trash heist.

  “Stand up,” the cop said. He was broad through the chest, uniform creaking, a neat nameplate over his pocket: MORALES. His partner swept a flashlight over the sidewalk, over the slick trail the…thing…had left. The beam jittered right over it like it wasn’t there.

  “It went that way,” I blurted, pointing with the shoe toward the curb. “Green. Like a—like a fat worm with teeth. It smelled like rotten strawberries—”

  Officer Morales traded a look with his partner. The kind adults use when a kid says aliens stole their bike.

  “Okay,” Morales said, patient in the way that means not really patient at all. “Let’s talk at the station.”

  I ended up in the back of the cruiser, sock squishing on the vinyl. The window bars threw little shadows across my knees. We drove in silence. The highway roar was a low animal somewhere outside.

  At the precinct, everything was fluorescent and beige. Coffee smell, ancient and burned, seeped from somewhere. They parked me at a desk with a glass top that had been scratched into frost by a thousand pens. Officer Morales sat across from me, flipped open a drawer, and pulled out a thin packet.

  He sighed like he’d used this sigh a lot. “Unusual Incident Report,” he said, tapping the top page. “Department policy. We get an odd call, we write it up. Start at the beginning.”

  “I wasn’t calling,” I said. “I was running. I saw—” I started to talk and then I couldn’t stop. The rain, the smell, the tendrils, the blink of those weird little eyes. The way my legs had moved like they were new. Words stacked up and toppled, and I pushed them back into order. He wrote slowly, in block capitals, pausing when I said “rotting strawberries” so he could underline it.

  His partner leaned against the doorframe, pretending not to listen.

  “Okay,” Morales said when I ran out of air. “Color?”

  “Green. Neon. Like a highlighter had a baby with snot.”

  “Size?”

  “Six feet long? Maybe more? I was—” I made a helpless gesture with the shoe.

  “Teeth or no teeth?”

  “Teeth,” I said, and my skin prickled remembering. “Black. Serrated. Mandibles.”

  He wrote. He didn’t roll his eyes, exactly, but I could feel him wanting to. He flipped to a second page, and kept going. He was obeying policy like it had personally insulted him.

  By the time I stopped shaking, my heartbeat had settled back into a rhythm that didn’t make me feel like I was going to pop. I became painfully aware that I was still wearing a latex glove splattered a very specific shade of yellow. The other one lost somewhere between the fence and the snot monster. The shoe dangled in my other hand like an exhibit.

  Officer Morales followed my glance, then glanced at my hands. “While we’re here,” he said, reaching into another drawer, “let’s talk about the skating center.”

  He set a clear evidence bag on the desk. Inside sat a spray can with a bright yellow cap. A smear of rain had turned the paint on it to a drooly smile.

  “We found this in the lot,” he said. “Fresh. Matches your gloves.” He pointed—gently, which somehow made it worse.

  My cheeks heated. “I…was just looking,” I said, which even I didn’t believe.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Looking with your hands?” he asked, dry. “Ms…?” He looked expectant.

  I told him my last name. Spelled it out. He wrote it on the top page of a different form. He had so many forms. He probably had a form to request more forms.

  “It’s a misdemeanor,” he said. “First offense gets you a stern talking-to and maybe some community service. We’ll call your mother.”

  My stomach dropped to somewhere under the chair. “She’s going to—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

  A tiny rasping sound made me glance up. Something fluttered around the fluorescent tube above us, casting a jittery, stuttering shadow. At first I thought moth. Then it banked, and the light picked out a line of little spines down its back and a set of clear, veined insect wings beating a blur. Six inches long, lizard head, needle teeth. It zipped after a fly that wasn’t there and pinged off the light cover.

  “Uh,” I said. “Do you—” I pointed. “Do you see that?”

  Morales didn’t look up. His partner didn’t either. The thing did another sloppy loop and landed on the corner of the light, clinging upside down like a gecko, spines silhouetted.

  “It’s right there,” I said, louder than I meant to.

  Officer Morales followed my finger to the light, humoring me. His gaze slid off the buzzing tube and landed back on my face. Above us, the little thing flicked its tongue and did a fast, smug circle.

  He closed his eyes for a beat, then opened a drawer and pulled out…another form. He set it next to the first packet and clicked his pen. “Supplemental. Same policy.”

  “You really don’t see it?” I asked. “Six inches. Lizard. With, um, dragonfly wings and tiny knives down its back?”

  He didn’t look up. “Number of appendages?”

  “Four legs, two wings. And spines. Like—like a hairbrush got angry.”

  “Color?”

  “Brown-green. Mossy. Teeth.” I made a little chomp with my fingers because apparently I was five now.

  He wrote “dentition present,” sure, that made it better.

  The creature launched itself and pinged the light cover. The bulb flickered. No one flinched.

  “How can you not—” I stopped. He was doing his job. Mandatory weird paperwork. He’d already indulged me more than he had to.

  He finished the addendum with the same careful block letters, squared the edges of both packets, and finally looked at my hands again. “Back to the actual crime,” he said, dry. He tapped the evidence bag with the yellow can. “Misdemeanor vandalism. First offense. I’m issuing a citation. We’ll contact the rink. You’ll probably get to know our community service coordinator.”

  My cheeks burned hotter. He slid a different sheet across the desk, this one with boxes and a signature line. “Guardian’s signature for release. What’s your mother’s number?”

  I recited it. He dialed, introduced himself, and gave a short version. I heard my mom’s voice through the receiver, even from here, tight and pitched high. Morales said “she’s okay” twice, then “yes, ma’am,” and hung up.

  Waiting was the worst part. The lizard-thing finally lost interest in the light and zipped away down the hall like a paper airplane. The silence it left behind felt ridiculous.

  My mother arrived in her coat thrown over pajamas, hair yanked into a lopsided knot. She took one look at me—at the glove, at the shoe lying on the desk—and pressed her lips together like she was holding in a thousand words. Officer Morales explained the citation and the reports without any of the jokes he’d given me. He slid the sheets over; she signed where he pointed.

  “You’re releasing her to me,” Mom said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Morales’ voice was careful again. He kept the unusual incident forms and tore a yellow copy of the citation for us. “If you remember anything else about…either thing, call the number at the top.”

  Mom tucked the paper into her coat pocket as if it might bite. “Come on,” she said to me.

  We walked out past the humming vending machine and the bulletin board with a “Neighborhood Watch” flyer from three years ago. Outside, the air had scrubbed clean with the rain. My sock squished across the precinct lot. Mom didn’t look at me. I didn’t try to talk.

  We drove home in silence. The wipers thudded a steady heartbeat. The heater smelled like old pennies and dust. My shoe sat upside down on the floorboard, the torn lace trailing like a little white tongue. I curled my paint-splotched glove fingers into a fist and then unclenched them, over and over, until the latex squeaked. Annoyed at myself, I ripped it off and shoved it in a pocket.

  Our triplex crouched on the block like it was tired: three stacked porches, peeling paint, railings that had opinions. We lived on the middle floor. Mom pulled into the narrow drive, killed the engine, and stared through the windshield for another few seconds before getting out. The porch light two doors down blinked. Across the street, the dark brick house with the slanted roof had a window lit upstairs—Sketch’s room. If I leaned over the middle porch rail, I could see straight in when his blinds were open. Tonight they were closed.

  Mom took the stairs first. Keys in hand, jaw tight. I followed, one foot wet, one foot sweating inside a shoe, sneaker dangling by its stupid, ruined lace.

  At the top, she unlocked the door and stepped aside to let me in. We still hadn’t said a word.

  Behind us, a car hissed past on wet pavement. Somewhere, a cat yowled. And in my mind, faint and impossible, I could still smell rotting strawberries.