Page 4 of Hot Summer's Prey

“Because Dawn’s driving them and you’re driving us.”

“I was only going ten miles above the speed limit,” they grumble.

“I’m sure Dawn will catch up any second now,” Taara nods, a smirk tweaking her lips.

Dawn and Anelisa will not. Dawn can’t be convinced to take anything but the rightmost lanes, terrified she’ll miss her exits. Zephyr, meanwhile, weaves in and out of traffic, speeding at every opportunity. For them, the slow lane is a passing lane. If Zephyr didn’t find driving so soothing, Taara and I would have fought to drive instead. But it’s hard to argue with someone processing their grief. Even if it means a little car sickness.

“Ah, speak of the angel,” Zephyr says, digging into their pocket.

My phone goes off too, as does Taara’s. It’s a message from Anelisa. Well, not so much a message as a picture. It’s pretty blurry—a zoomed in photo of what I can only assume is the sea.

“It’s like one of those magic eye posters, right? The longer I stare at it, I’ll finally start to see something? What are we looking at?” they say.

Another photo hits the group chat, this time slightly different. A maroon speck rises from the water, reaching out towards the sky.

“Hey, Anelisa,” Taara answers, holding her phone out for all three of us as she turns on speakerphone.

“Did you see it?!” Anelisa’s voice is surprisingly high-pitched. Elated.

“The red smudge?” I ask.

“The octopus! Or squid! Something, I dunno, it was huge!”

“If the dot is anything to go by, that’s an overstatement,” I laugh.

“It was fighting with this weird bird,” Anelisa says.

“I missed it, whatever it was,” Dawn says, slight annoyance in her voice.

She’s probably bitter she didn’t see it. Dawn always likes knowing and seeing everything she can.

“I tried to get you to! That’s why I took the pictures in the first place!”

“I couldn’t make it out,” Dawn grumbles. “You guys got the best of the pictures—so as you can see, very illustrative.”

“Zeph, are there, like, big octopuses out here?” Anelisa asks.

Zephyr shakes their head. “I’ve never seen one. But I dunno. Maybe things have changed since I’ve been back here. It’s been a while.”

Taara reads off a quick internet search. “There was a Humboldt Squid in Seattle, at around eight feet long.”

“No, it was definitely way bigger than that,” Anelisa insists. “And Seattle’s too far away.”

“I really don’t think it was bigger. I mean, I would have seen it if it was that big, right?” Dawn contests.

“I don’t think it was a squid—squids look way different, don’t they? Their tentacles aren’t quite the same—”

“Actually, octopuses have arms, not tentacles,” Dawn slides in.

“What?” the rest of us interject.

“My whole life is a lie,” I moan dramatically, putting the back of my hand to my forehead.

“At least we’re both mourning now,” Zephyr laughs.

Taara’s eyes shoot up to register Zephyr’s lighthearted mood before we all burst into laughter.

“What about the…okay, the Giant Pacific Octopus is a thing, right? How big are those?” I ask.

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