3

I'm not scared," Clay insisted. But he looked scared. His round face was kind of pale. And his eyes were blinking a lot behind his glasses. With his short, feathery blond hair and round eyeglasses, Clay looked a lot like a frightened owl.

Muttering to himself, Dad slowed the car to a stop. Then he turned it around, and we headed back in the direction we had come. "Great vacation," he said through clenched teeth.

"It's still early," Mom told him, checking her watch.

The late morning sun was nearly straight overhead. I could feel its warmth on my face through the open sunroof.

We drove for nearly half an hour. Luke wanted to play Twenty Questions or Geography with Clay. But Clay moodily said no. He just stared out the window, watching the desert roll by. Every few minutes, he'd ask, "Are we still lost?"

"Pretty lost," my dad would reply unhappily.

"We're okay," Mom kept reassuring us.

As we drove, the scraggly trees reappeared. Then, after a while, the sand gave way to darker fields, dotted with trees and low shrubs.

I sat silently, my hands clasped in my lap, staring out the window. I wasn't really scared or worried. But I wished we would at least see a gas station or a store or one other human being!

"I'm getting hungry," Luke griped. "Is it lunchtime?"

With a long sigh that sounded like air escaping from a tire, Dad pulled the car to the side of the road. He reached across Mom to the glove compartment. "There's got to be some kind of map in there," he said.

"No. I already looked," Mom told him.

As they started to argue, I raised my eyes to the open sunroof above my head.

"Oh!" I let out a cry as I saw a hideous monster staring down at me, lowering its enormous head, about to crush the car.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

The monster glared down at me through the sunroof. It was as tall as a building, I realized. Its red eyes glowed with evil, and its mouth was twisted in a hungry grin.

"D-Dad!" I finally managed to stammer. Dad was bent over, fumbling through the papers in the glove compartment.

"Wow!" I heard Luke cry.

I turned and saw that Luke was staring up at it, too, his blue eyes wide with fright.

"Dad? Mom?" My heart was pounding so hard, I thought my chest might explode.

"Lizzy, what is it?" Mom asked impatiently.

The monster lowered its head over us. Its mouth opened wide, ready to swallow the whole car.

And then Luke started to laugh. "Wow! Cool!" he cried.

And I realized at the same time that the monster wasn't alive. It was a mechanical figure, part of a giant billboard display.

Ducking my head to get a better view through the side window, I saw that Dad had pulled the car up right beside the billboard. My parents were so busy arguing about maps, they hadn't even noticed it!

I stared up at the red-eyed monster. It lowered its head and opened its jaws. Then the jaws snapped shut, and the enormous head slid back up.

"It looks so real!" Clay exclaimed, staring up at it.

"Didn't fool me," I lied. I wasn't going to admit that I nearly leaped out through the sunroof. I'm supposed to be the calm one, after all.

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