Elatsoe

That night, Trevor appears to Ellie in a dream. He tells her that he is dying, and she notices that his face is “swollen, broken, and bloody” (32). With his dying breath, Trevor tells Ellie that he was murdered by “Abe Allerton from Willowbee” (32). He didn’t know Abe well, and they only met one time, “two years ago,” at a “parent-teacher conference” (33) when Abe’s son was in Trevor’s class. Trevor asks Ellie to protect his wife and son from Abe, and “before the dream end[s], [Trevor] [is] gone” (33).

The next morning, Ellie wonders if her conversation with Trevor was real or just a dream. She remembers the story of how long ago, her Six-Great grandmother, a legendary monster hunter, went to the Kunétai (or the Rio Grande River) after “eleven adults, four children, and a pack horse disappeared,” and the locals suspected that “someone or something was intentionally causing harm” (36). As Six-Great slept on the riverbank, a teenage boy appeared to her in her dreams and told her that the monster in the river had just drowned him. The next morning, Six-Great learned that a teenage boy had just gone missing. In the present-day, Ellie texts Jay and plans to meet him to explain what happened. She notices that he “removed the picture” of Trevor hanging on the wall because “it [is] dangerous to speak his name, see his face, or risk calling him back” (40) to the world of the living.

Ellie’s father tells her that Trevor passed away during the night, and Vivian caught an early flight to south Texas to be with Trevor’s family. Ellie is heartbroken, but “thinking about Trevor’s widow, infant son, and parents” reminds her that “she ha[s] a job to do: protect them from Abe Allerton” (43). She tells her father about her dream, and although he believes her, he warns that “everybody is still wondering what happened, not who did it” (46). Trevor was found along a road that wasn’t his usual route home, and his injuries were consistent with those of a car crash. Ellie decides that she “[can’t] protect Trevor’s family with an eight-hundred-mile gulf between them” (46). She asks to join her mother in south Texas, and as she and her father plan their route on the map, Ellie sees that they are headed for a town called Willowbee: the very town Trevor mentioned in Ellie’s dream.

Later that day, Ellie meets Jay at the mall. As she waits for him to join her, she thinks about her dream and wonders if the police will be able to piece together the truth about what happened to Trevor. She believes that “Trevor’s death was so strange, magic might have been involved” (49). When Jay arrives, Ellie tells him about Trevor’s death, and he offers to help in any way he can.

Ellie asks Jay about the graffiti on the Herotonic bridge, and Jay explains that he told his sister, Ronnie. Ronnie then told her boyfriend, Al, who “wants to climb the bridge in [Jay’s] place” (53) to help modify the graffiti heart. Al has “the vampire curse” (55), and Jay’s parents “aren’t happy” (55) that their daughter is dating a cursed man. Jay has mixed feelings about Al: he doesn’t know if Al is a good guy or if he’s “faking it to get [Jay’s] approval” (56). Jay says that although Ronnie and Al’s relationship is serious, they’re not engaged, and he thinks they are too young to get married. Ellie offers to join Jay and Al at the bridge tomorrow because she “can’t do anything about Allerton until [she’s] in South Texas” (57), and she and her father won’t leave for another 30 hours.

Jay and Ellie meet Al at the Herotonic Bridge at sunset. Al climbs up to the beam where the graffiti heart is, and Jay and Ellie discuss the vampire curse in his absence. Jay mentions that “cursed people need to be welcomed in a house,” but Ellie points out that “if their welcome is revoked, the curse makes them sick” (64). As Al changes the graffiti heart to a broken heart, Ellie calls up to Al and asks how serious his relationship with Ronnie is. Al demonstrates by using the can of spray paint to write a marriage proposal to Ronnie on the Herotonic Bridge. Jay panics and tries to stop him because he thinks “[his] parents will freak” and “stop paying for Ronnie’s tuition” (66), but he falls into the river. Ellie tries to catch him but falls in as well. As they swim to shore, Ellie thinks again about the river monster Six-Great battled. She wonders if “the creature had friends” and if they have a “thirst for revenge” (69) because of Six-Great’s actions.

Ellie recalls the rest of the river monster story: Six-Great asked the Lipan villagers to make her “a net large enough to ensnare a bison” (69). Six-Great suspected that the boy entered the water willingly, and she asked the villagers to provide her with fresh meat to bait the monster with. One night as Six-Great waited for the monster to appear, “she saw the missing boy” (72) crying for help in the river. She realized that this was how the monster lured its victims: it had two faces: one “shaped like it belonged to a large river gar,” and the other “human-shaped and malleable as clay” (73) that it wears like a mask.

The monster ate the bait, which Six-Great had poisoned, and the next day, she used her net to drag its dead body out of the river. In the present, Al helps Ellie and Jay out of the river, and Ellie thinks about how one small mistake almost cost her and Jay their lives. Ellie warns Jay that they might “skirt the line between wise and unwise danger” (78) as they investigate Trevor’s death and must be cautious. When Ellie returns home, her father scolds her for being reckless on the bridge because accidents can kill.