The voice on the other end of the phone sounded excited, eager, maybe even frantic, but underneath it was the tone I'd always heard when people talked about my work — the man thought I was completely nuts. And he expected I wouldn't hear it through his gushing. “We really think you're the best choice for the show, Ada, far and away. But you know how the executives can be... They want options. They want to see how you play in front of an audience, what you really bring to the gig.”
“Okay,” I said, a touch of wariness creeping over me. It wasn't like I wanted to do stand-up. “What does that mean?”
The voice downshifted into a bit of condescension. Clearly, I was a backwoods oakie who didn't know which end of the pot to piss in. “A screen test. We need at least thirty minutes of footage of you doing your thing out in the environment. Narrate everything, edit it together, and we'll be able to show it to some test audiences to see how they react. If you've got evidence of Bigfoot to show, that would be best.”
He might as well have snorted in derision when he said 'evidence,' but I kept my temper in check. No use pissing him off before I got what I wanted. “Sure. My camera equipment isn't great; is there —”
“Just use what you've got,” the producer said, chipper once more. “I'm sure it'll be great. And make sure you talk about your family and friends and how the rest of the town views your... occupation. That's all great color for the show; audiences love that kind of thing. They'll eat it up, particularly your background, your missing brother, your quest to fulfill your father's dying wish... They'll fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”
Well, bully for me, since my shining ambition was to entertain a bunch of judgmental city folk. My heart thumped oddly and I couldn't look at my best friend, sitting next to me at the bar, as I held the cell phone closer to my ear and turned away. “Right. I can do that. But the show is about the cryptids, it's not —”
“It's about you,” he said. He sounded rushed, ready to get the toothless bigfoot hunter off the phone. “The audience wants to follow people, see you triumph and fail and get back up again.”
“I get it,” I said. “But I thought it was already a done deal.”
He laughed, and it wasn't a kind sound. I expected him to tack on 'bless your little heart' like my best friend did when she wanted to be condescending but still sound sweet as peach pie. “It's almost a done deal. We have to make sure you're a character people can get behind.”
My heart sank a little lower. A character. Not exactly how I wanted to be portrayed, but it would be worth it if I found Jamie. “Sounds good. When do you need the film?”
“Saturday okay? Good luck, and make us both look good!” It sounded oddly like a threat for something so cheerful, and before I could open my mouth to assure him I'd do my best, he added, “Ciao,” and hung up.
I took a breath and tossed the old flip phone onto the surface of the bar; it slid into a puddle of spilled beer, though Betsy fished it out before any permanent damage could be done. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she studied me. “That didn't sound good. What do they want you to do now?”
“Send in some film of me looking for cryptids. Bigfoot would probably play the best, since people know him, but maybe some of the lesser known would be better. Really get that Appalachia flavor.” I frowned and I rubbed my right shoulder as it ached. Must have been a storm moving in over the mountains, if the injury acted up.
“Babe,” she said, pausing, and I knew from the look on her face and the tone of her voice what she was going to say. She'd sensed the hesitation in my voice when I spoke to the producer. “Are you sure this is a good idea? It sounds like they want to make a fool of you.”
“It pays a lot,” I said. I swigged the fruity beer so it would all seem like a much better idea. I couldn't let Betsy know my concerns; she already wanted to talk me out of it. “And with the exposure this could get me, I can find Jamie. Someone will know something. Or they'll give me better equipment so I can search more effectively. Or we’ll draw a ton of crazies out to the park to search around, and maybe they’ll find him. With the money from the producers, I can pay private investigators and really get —”
“This isn't healthy,” she said, voice soft. “Come on. It's been ten years.”
My throat closed and I stared into my beer. She didn't understand. “I'm not giving up.”
“They're doing this to make fun of people who look for sasquatches and black dogs and aliens and things. They're using you.”
“And I'm using them,” I said. I glanced at the bartender, a girl I'd known briefly in elementary school before I skipped straight to college, and gestured for another beer. I looked back at Betsy and toasted her with my empty glass. “Everyone gets something.”
“If you do this,” she said, speaking slowly and enunciating every single syllable, “No one in serious science will ever hire you. No one will take you seriously. You'll always be the loon who runs around the mountains looking for aliens. I think you should stop, reconsider, maybe talk to someone. My sister knows a really great psychologist; she could —”
“No,” I said. I shook my head and pulled a few crumpled bills out of my jeans pocket to give to the bartender. She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me and flashed an insincere smile before handing over the beer and turning away. “I'm not crazy. And if I go talk to a shrink, everyone will think that.”
“Everyone already does, hon, and you know it.” She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You know everything. You seriously know everything. But you can't see how all of this is going to blow up in your face.”
“No one can tell the future,” I muttered into my beer, then slid her a sideways glance. “That's the crazy-talk.”
She went to psychics and used divining crystals and burned sage to clear her chakras or something, and we both knew it. Apparently, that was an allowable level of crazy, while thinking cryptids might exist beyond the frontiers of human habitation was worth a ticket to the psych ward. And believing my brother was still alive, despite disappearing in the mountains a decade earlier, just made me crazier. Everyone else thought he was dead, but I knew better.
Betsy's expression soured as she sipped from her fancy martini. She fiddled with the tooth-picked olive since she didn't want to look at me. “I'm serious, Ada. Please reconsider. This has to end eventually, and you'll need to get a job. A real job,” she added when I opened my mouth to argue. “Counting bats and bugs for the Park Service doesn't count.”
“It's a perfectly legitimate profession,” I said under my breath. I needed something stronger than beer to handle the argument I knew was coming, but I didn't have enough cash to order any hard liquor — or anything not on the happy hour discount. I'd be lucky if I still had a few packages of ramen at the cabin to get me through dinner.
I used a shitload of beakers and slides examining possible cryptid specimens, and Santa wasn’t going to just drop off the fancy centrifuge I needed to test DNA. That didn't leave a lot of money left over for things like food and clothing. Or even utilities some months.
“It’s not an acceptable occupation for someone with two PhDs,” she shot back. “I hardly think that brain of yours is being utilized when you're tracking the migratory patterns of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. And you can bet your ass anyone who googles you won't see the headline of child genius conducting groundbreaking research, but crazy local girl chases ghosts through the mountains.”
“You know I don’t believe in ghosts.” I'd heard the same arguments for the last three years, after she gave me a while to get cryptids out of my system. When I didn't, Betsy kicked into tough love big sister mode instead of best friend mode. “I'm fine with how things are, Bets. Really.”
“But what about how things will be?” She lowered her voice when the bartender hovered a little too close, no doubt trying to catch up with how the town's resident kook spiraled into hermitage or cat-lady status. “Say you do this show and it takes off and you find out what happened to your brother. What then?”
“What do you mean, what then?” I sipped the beer and let my thoughts drift to where I'd go to film. It was late summer and there was already the threat of snow in the mountains, which would play well with the audience. Maybe the leaves started to turn farther up the mountains and would provide a nice splash of color. “We'll figure it out together.”
“What if he isn't alive?” she said gently. Betsy reached out like she wanted to squeeze my hand but pulled back when I retreated. “What if you find him and you have to bury him? What would you do after that? What would you move on to, if you don't have a real job at a university or a place to live?”
I refused to even consider it, shaking my head. “He's alive. I know he's alive. I'll find him and it'll all be fine.”
I couldn't even imagine my brother being dead. I'd been looking for him since he disappeared, two years before Dad died, and it simply wasn't possible Jamie was gone, too. I couldn’t have lost both of them. “There's no evidence to say he's dead. None.”
“There's no evidence to suggest he's still alive,” she said.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. I needed sleep and come up with a plan for that footage the production company wanted. It was an opportunity I couldn't ignore or let pass, and I had to do my best. For so late in the summer, there were a few really great spots to search for tracks, but catching video would be more difficult because of the early darkness but still having a lot of leaves to shade everything. “I know you mean well, Bets, and I appreciate you think you're helping. But I will not stop looking for Jamie. I won't. And if what you say comes about — then I'll figure it out when I get there. Okay?”
She leaned her elbow on the bar and sighed. “Okay. I'm just worried about you, Ada. Be careful with those Hollywood people. All they want is to make good television, and they're more likely to get it if they mock you than if they show your actual research.”
“I know,” I said. “I can hear it every time they talk to me. That's fine with me right now because that's the kind of character they want. But I can show them I'm a serious scientist, someone with a brain who is investigating every lead, and it'll make the difference. It will.”
Her lips pursed with disapproval.
I half-smiled. “Come on, you know how this goes. Some reality show gets popular and all of a sudden everyone thinks they can get rich pulling crap out of their attic or buying up junky storage lockers. Even being labeled a freak show will draw out the real dedicated cryptid hunters out here, and the more attention, the more people looking through the mountains where he was. The more people looking, the better the odds someone will find a clue about what happened to Jamie. It’s just stacking the odds in my favor, Bets. It’s nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with probability.”
Betsy looked at me for a long time and I saw the doubt in her eyes. I hoped resolve was clear in mine. Whatever it was she saw, though, she just raised her martini glass and clinked it against my beer bottle. “Okay, then. Call me before you leave.”