September 1976
Blue was thirsty. Her feet were sore and cut from walking barefoot through the brush, and the bag on her shoulder was heavy.
She considered resting but it was too dangerous to stop. She couldn’t go to Ellenville; they’d be looking for her there. Instead,
she cut through the edge of the Witch’s Hole State Forest. Every noise tore through her—every bird cry, every broken twig.
All she could see was Star on the floor. Star on the ceiling . . .
There was no time for thinking. She pressed on to the edge of Kerhonkson, where she spotted two guys and a girl in a pickup
truck. She put out her thumb and hitched a ride, lying down in their flatbed so she couldn’t be seen. She gave them five dollars
for gas and another three for the girl’s flip-flops. They got her as far as New Paltz, where she hitched another ride to Poughkeepsie.
It was evening when she wandered into a McDonald’s and marveled at the menu, ordering two hamburgers and a vanilla shake, which she ate outside on the curb.
There was a Kmart, a grand temple to plastic and capitalism.
She walked around the massive discount store, feeling like an alien.
Everything had a dead brightness under the fluorescent lights, and the air-conditioned air stung her skin.
People looked at her, the dirty hippie girl with the oozing scratches, who stank.
Security made a beeline for her, but she lied and said she fell off her bike on the way.
She washed herself off a bit in the bathroom—cleaned the cuts, wiped under her arms, swished water around her mouth.
A mother came in with a child, took one look at Blue washing her pits with pink hand soap, and left at once.
Blue did the best she could and walked back into the strange, glowing world of the store.
There was so much here in comparison with what they had at the mountain.
She purchased a flared midi skirt, two wide-collared blouses, some
plasticky shoes, underwear, and a large sun hat. She bought sunglasses and scissors and hair dye. There was food as well.
Rows of chips in brightly colored bags. Piles of soda cans. She got some of each of those, along with a bag full of candy
bars.
With this bounty, she walked to a Holiday Inn.
The front desk clerk looked at her suspiciously until she produced some cash.
Once in her room, Blue locked and chained the door, then shoved a chair under the knob.
She pulled the curtains and poured out the contents of the canvas bag onto the orange bedspread—the rolls of fives and tens and twenties, even fifties and hundreds, tightly wound into fist-sized bunches and bound with rubber bands.
As she counted it, placing it in piles of hundreds, then thousands, her mind began to spiral.
It took her three hours to count and process what was in front of her.
Forty-nine thousand, four hundred and thirty-five dollars. It really was enough for a house.
She dyed her blond hair dark brown, staining the bathroom towels in the process. She looked at her reflection in the mirror
for a long time, regarding this dark-haired stranger, then she grasped her hair in two fistfuls at neck height and chopped
them off, giving herself a rough shag cut.
The next morning, she bought doughnuts and coffee across the street for breakfast, grabbed two newspapers from the lobby of
the hotel, and locked herself back in to read. It was only then, as she combed through newspapers to see what, if anything,
was reported of the disappearance of Star, that she saw the headline:
VAN DRIVES OVER SIDE OF ROAD OUTSIDE ELLENVILLE, MULTIPLE DEATHS