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“Oh, my God!” June turned the flashlight up to the sky, illuminating the

leaves of the tree and the branches overhead, and a set of glowing, beady

eyes higher up, staring back at them.

“What is that?” June screeched.

“I don’t know!” Arabella leaped up and ran as fast as she could away

from the tree. If something else was up there, she didn’t want to stick

around to find out the hard way. If it landed on her, that would be a hundred

times worse than the scare she’d had from the leach and from June leaping

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bsp; out of the tree combined.

June came huffing and chugging away from the tree, her bare feet

flashing in the wildly swaying flashlight beam. “Shit,” she squealed. “I

have no idea what that was, but I was up in the tree with it without even

knowing.”

“Oh, my God, it could have been a bear!”

“Up a tree? Not hardly. I think it was more likely that it was an

opossum.”

Arabella’s heart slowed down a few beats and she was even able to smile

at her foolish assumptions about the bear. She was thoroughly and truly a

city girl. She’d never seen an opossum in person in her life. They were

really cute on videos, though. She wasn’t afraid of them, even though they

hissed and stuff and that often scared people.

“You’re probably right.”

“Should we go back inside just in case? What if it wasn’t? It’s pitch

black.”

“Maybe we should.”

Seeing as they’d just scared each other again, they both rushed up the

cabin steps, the flashlight illuminating the way so there wasn’t any missteps

or accidents. June threw open the door and Arabella followed. They went to

their rooms silently, without saying anything further, even though Arabella