Dark River by Mary Jane Beaufrand

Author:Mary Jane Beaufrand [BEAUFRAND, MARY JANE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
ISBN: 9780316072144
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2010-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

Hoodoo High stood on the banks of Detroit Lake, the body of water that the Santiam bled into. Beneath the lake was a series of dams, and beneath that the Willamette River, which fed into the Columbia. Or the “Mighty Columbia” if you’re a victim of educational films about the Landscape of the American West, blah blah blah. If you bought into that kind of regional-speak, the whole state was Mighty. Mt. Hood was Mighty, Smith Rock was Mighty, the winds that whipped through the gorge were Mighty. The only thing in the state of Oregon that wasn’t Mighty was the Hoodoo High mascot, the Hodag.

At one point in its evolution the Hodag was probably Mighty, too. He was a frontier tall tale, a lot like sasquatch. He was supposed to be a giant furry dragon, a menacing demon who lived on Hoodoo Butte, lying in wait to trip skiers and shred their rotator cuffs. Alas, the Hodag depicted on our Hoodoo High walls was too cuddly to be fierce. He looked like some character from a preschool cartoon: Nonthreatening Animals from Mythology Who Eat Cupcakes and Make Macaroni Art.

Gretchen and I shared a locker but our schedules were so different we rarely saw each other until our last class, chemistry, which I sucked at. Wrong side of the brain; too much memorization.

Still, chemistry was my favorite subject at Hoodoo High because of Keith Spady. And after my embarrassing breakdown in front of him, I was hoping to make up for it. The least I could do was wear a low-cut T-shirt. I wasn’t sure that would help, though. I’d had mosquito bites bigger than my breasts.

When I pulled up a stool in chem on Monday, Keith wasn’t there yet, but Gretchen was, sitting kitty-corner from me at our workstation. Her head was on her desk. She was power napping again.

“Gretch?” I ventured quietly as I sat down.

She bolted up, as though she’d been zapped by something. “Oh hey,” she said. There was no Snoopy bandage on her nose today, so her pirate-style nostril hoop was clearly visible. She gave her scalp a good scratch.

I remembered Sheriff McGarry’s warning about her being on the brink of something. I wished I knew what. It was there, in the itchiness and the napping and the blankness of her stare. They were a formula I couldn’t quite make out.

“Do you need an antihistamine? I bet the nurse has some.”

She ogled me as though I were speaking another language. “You’re itching a lot,” I said.

She brought her hand down and examined her fingernails. “Oh yeah, that,” she said. “I’ve got a hot spot. Good thing it’s not in my nose. God forbid I should be unsanitary.” She smiled and I smiled along with her, but I was unsatisfied. Her eyes were bright, and her words had a polish to them, as though they were scripted. It was almost as though she were expecting me to ask her about it.

Then Gretchen’s eyes focused and she stared over my shoulder at the door.

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