The police had driven out on a couple of ATVs, and she could hear one of them taking the names of the kids they had caught while the others loaded the keg onto one of the racks. The cops’ flashlights were stronger than anyone else’s and cast sharp beams that cut through the forest. She was about a hundred feet away, her knees wet and her nails thick with dirt, when the earth dropped out from underneath her feet and she stumbled into a hole.
Loo thought she’d fallen into a grave but it was the cellar of an old homestead, lined with rocks. The hole was muddy and cold, the stone walls still supporting the base of the foundation, six feet down. There was a pricker bush and the thorns raked her hands. Loo watched the beams of the flashlights pass overhead and listened to the police talking to one another. The men found a few more teenagers and then they went back and put out the bonfire, and everyone was rounded up and the police left, a few riding in the ATVs and the others walking out with the kids. One of the girls was crying and another was begging them not to call her parents, and then their voices grew faint and they were gone, and Loo was left alone in the forest.
She struggled through thickets and over logs, a trail of mosquitoes and moths following her and swooping after the flashlight as she searched for the path. She scrambled over rocks and got a mouth full of cobwebs. It seemed like she was lost for hours. All the while shadows just beyond her flashlight moved, until she was sure that someone was tracking her, watching her from the trees. She turned off the light and hid. She waited. And then she ran right into one of Babson’s boulders. It smelled of earth and metal and glass. She clicked on her flashlight and touched the words. USE YOUR HEAD. Loo pulled out Marshall’s map and found the trail again. She followed the stones, from IDEAS and KINDNESS to LOYALTY and COURAGE until she returned to BE CLEAN and BE TRUE.
Loo stepped out of the woods, relief easing into her bones. It was late, and all of the cars that had lined the street when she arrived had disappeared. She hoped that her father was still out with Fisk; she needed at least forty minutes to ride back to Olympus. Loo took off her sweatshirt, wiped her face and tied the sleeves through her belt loops. Then she went over to the tree where she had left her bike and saw that it was gone.
She checked the woods, searched up and down the road, rooting in the bushes, even walked back down the path before giving up and sitting on the curb. She could try to thumb a ride out on the highway, but the thought of hitching made her nervous. She would have to walk back across town. It was going to take all night and Hawley would be home by the time she opened the door. She’d have to think of some excuse along the way.
Loo stood up and brushed off her jeans. They were covered with dirt and prickers. Her socks were soaked through. Her boots made a squishing noise with each step down one dark road and then another. There was a broken streetlamp ahead, shards sparkling in pieces across the asphalt, covered with dead moths and bird dung. But just beyond this pile of glass was a house, and that house was glowing. Every window, every switch turned on. The house was flaking paint, the front porch crooked. A rusted-out car was in the driveway. Loo would have thought the place was abandoned if it wasn’t for all the lights. Then she recognized the pineapple knocker.
If she’d seen Mabel Ridge’s house on the way into Dogtown, there was no way Loo would have stopped. But she was desperate without her bike—as well as tired and shaken and covered with brambles—so she turned and headed straight for her grandmother’s door. The stairs creaked. The brass pineapple was heavy in her palm as she lifted it and let it fall. A moment passed and then the door opened and Loo was face-to-face with the old woman. Mabel Ridge was in her seventies now, her hair white, her spine curved, her nose and cheeks spotted with rosacea. She was wearing a cardigan sweater and a long black rubber apron and a pair of plastic goggles were pushed back on her forehead.
“Well?”
Loo tried to smooth her ponytail. She was missing one of her hoop earrings. She thought of the dress her father had made her wear on her last visit. How the blood on Hawley’s shirt had taken days to scrub out.
“I’m Loo.”
Mabel Ridge put her palm against the doorframe, as if she might slam it shut at any moment. The skin of her hand was dyed blue, all the way to the wrist.
Loo tried again. “Your granddaughter.”
There was a change in the air between them then and Mabel sucked in her cheeks. Loo wondered if the woman was going to cry, but Mabel’s chin slid out and the moment passed. She checked the girl over. She took in all the mess. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
“I got lost in the woods.”
“You were at that party.” Mabel Ridge pulled a tissue from her sleeve, wiped her nose, then tucked it back up the same sleeve. “Your friends smashed my streetlight.”
“I don’t have any friends,” said Loo.
Mabel Ridge opened the door and took a step onto the porch. She glanced over the girl’s shoulder, and when she found no one waiting in the shadows, she scratched her chin with her blue fingers. “Well, I guess you’d better come inside, then.”
The house seemed smaller once Loo stepped into the living room. Set in one corner was a spinning wheel on three legs, and set in the other, between an overstuffed couch and an old television set, was a gigantic wooden loom. The loom stretched across the wall, taking up most of the space, a square frame of interlocking pieces of wood, a foot treadle and a small bench in front where the weaver could sit and work. It was an enormous machine, imported from another time, the comb holding the threads apart and grinning like a giant mouth.
Mabel Ridge shut the front door and locked it, then wiped her feet on the hallway rug. “You’re a little young to be going out to parties.”
Loo didn’t answer. She squeezed her flashlight tightly with both hands and tried not to stare. Mabel Ridge had the same green eyes as her mother. The same eyes that Loo saw when she looked into the mirror.
“You want to use the phone?” Mabel asked. “Call your father?”
“No,” said Loo.
The old woman snorted, then waved her down the hall. “I’ve got a sink in there. You can clean up.”
She led the girl to the kitchen. The counter was lined with jars stuffed with herbs. Four large pots were set on the stove, boiling and steaming. The room smelled of lavender and old potatoes.
“Careful,” Mabel said. “You don’t want to breathe this stuff.” She put the goggles over her eyes, grabbed a towel from the back of the chair and used it to lift one of the lids. She turned off the heat, checked the temperature with a gauge, then picked up a long wooden spoon and used it to dip a skein of blue wool into the pot. As she pulled the yarn out again, the color began to shift, until it had turned an even deeper shade of indigo. Loo peered inside. She expected the liquid to be dark but it was yellow, with a slight milky tinge.