ChupaCarter and the Curse of La Llorona

CHAPTER 1
Okay, okay, I’m lying.
That’s not how it happened.
We weren’t supersleuths and we didn’t have an office with a view of Albuquerque and a cool bronze plaque.
But you’d be surprised how much trouble a kid from L.A. can get into when his mom sends him to the middle of Nowheresville, New Mexico, to live on his grandparents’ farm. He could meet a chupacabra one night while sitting on his roof, moon watching.
They could become best friends. The chupacab-ra’s name could be Carter.
Trust me, it could happen . . .
I know because it happened to me.
My name is Jorge Lopez, and I have a confession to make: my best friend is a seven-foot-tall bloodsucking monster, and ever since my mom sent me away to live a quiet, “normal” life, my life has been anything but. Just ask the talking sombrero we teamed up with to find the treasure of El Dorado last month. Or, if you think you’re brave enough, have a lollipop and chat with the local haunted piñata. They’ll tell you. If exercise is more your thing, go for a run with the killer vampire dogs called the dips . . . you’re guaranteed to get a great workout with them!
Anyway, back to the sleuthing thing.
Like I said, my three best buds and I weren’t professional detectives or anything like that. But word about some of the mysteries we’d solved had obviously gotten around, because we finally got our first “official” case.
It happened exactly one week after the last day of school. Liza, Ernie, Carter, and I were hanging out in the woods about a mile from my grandparents’ farm on a warm, sunny afternoon, climbing trees and just generally goofing around. After everything we’d been through over the last few months, we were all hoping for a nice, peaceful summer.
Turns out, things were only about to take a turn for the scary. . .
Somewhere behind me, I heard Ernie shriek, “Aaaahhh! A chupacabra!” And Liza and I gave each other looks like,Uh, you think he just noticed that about Carter now?
But when we turned and spotted the huge, fur-covered, fang-faced monster—who, by the way, most definitely wasn’tCarter!—the two of us started sounding an awful lot like our pal Ernie.
The monster waved and said hola, showing us a smiley mouthful of gleaming white fangs, which didn’t help us feel any less scared. He politely introduced himself. I think he said his name was Pepe, but it was kind of hard to hear him over our shrieks and screams of panic.
“Carter! Where’s Carter?” I shouted, looking frantically around for backup.
“¡Ah, sí!” The strange chupacabra grinned. “¿Dóndeestá Carter?”
Just then, the big guy dropped down from a mass of thick branches overhead, landing as gracefully as a cat right beside me. “Right here!” he said.
But suddenly he froze, his eyes narrowing suspiciously on the other chupacabra. “And I’m rightthere, too . . . ?” I could see the supernova of panic exploding in the brown depths of Carter’s enormous eyes. “JORGE, HOW IS DIS POSSIBLE?” he cried.
“Carter, that’s not you!” Liza tried to explain. “That’s another chupacabra!”
At Liza’s inarguable logic, the big guy seemed to relax. A fangy grin that would send any goat (and probably most people) running for its life spread across his furry face. “Dat make sense! Hola, Not-Me!”
Pepe the chupacabra waved a skinny, clawed hand in return. “¡Hola, Carter! ¡Es un honor! I’ve very much been looking forward to meeting you and your amigos!”
“You . . . you’ve heard of us?” Ernie asked, sounding more than a little surprised as he peeked cautiously out from over my shoulder.
“¡Cómo no!” said Pepe with a sheepish giggle. “What chupacabra hasn’t heard of Carter and his three amigos? You are all muy famosos!”
“Famous for . . . what, exactly?” Liza wanted to know.
“For what?” Pepe looked at her like she’d just grown a third eyeball. “How about solving el misterio de la haunted piñata? Or finding the lost treasure of El Dorado!” Pepe was beaming at us now, happy as a mosquito at a blood bank. “I have to say, when I heard how the four of you gave all that treasure back to the people, I almost cried.”
Whoa. So he really had heard of us. “Who told you about all that stuff?” I said, honestly curious.
Pepe laughed. “Gossip is not only a two-footer thing.” I’m assuming “two-footer” was chupacabra slang for humans. “Forest animals talk, too.”
“You’re saying a little birdie told you?”
“Actually, it was a blue jay,” said Pepe. He sounded like he might be telling the truth, too, so I decided not to poke any more fun. “Pajaritos get a nice bird’s-eye view of the world and pass along mucha información.”
Huh. That kind of made sense when he put it like that. (Note to self: make sure there aren’t any birds flying by when you hide Grandma’s cooking pot so she can’t make her infamous pork stew.)
“Do you live around here?” Liza asked.
Pepe shook his shaggy head. “No. Mi familia y yo live very near the Sierra Pelona mountains.”
“Hey, isn’t that in Cali?” I said. “Right by Los Angeles?”
Pepe looked impressed. “You know those mountains?”
“Well, not personally or anything. But I’m from L.A.”
“What are you doing way out here?” Liza asked the grinning chupacabra.
Suddenly that bright, fangy smile froze, dimmed, and fell into a deep, fangless frown. “My clan is in trouble,” he revealed in a low voice. He sounded anxious now. Scared. And he looked it, too. “We are about to lose our ancestral home!”