“Beer!” Instinctively, Cal sent a look over his shoulder, just in case his mother had magically appeared. “You got beer?”
“Three cans of suds,” Gage confirmed, strutting. “Smokes, too.”
“Is this far-out or what?” Fox gave Cal a punch in the arm. “It’s the best birthday ever.”
“Ever,” Cal agreed, secretly terrified. Beer, cigarettes, and pictures of naked women. If his mother ever found out, he’d be grounded until he was thirty. That didn’t even count the fact he’d lied. Or that he was hiking his way through Hawkins Wood to camp out at the expressly forbidden Pagan Stone.
He’d be grounded until he died of old age.
“Stop worrying.” Gage shifted his pack from one arm to the other, with a wicked glint of what-the-hell in his eyes. “It’s all cool.”
“I’m not worried.” Still, Cal jolted when a fat jay zoomed out of the trees and let out an irritated call.
Two
HESTER’S POOL WAS ALSO FORBIDDEN IN CAL’S world, which was only one of the reasons it was irresistible.
The scoop of brown water, fed by the winding Antietam Creek and hidden in the thick woods, was supposed to be haunted by some weird Pilgrim girl who’d drowned in it way back whenever.
He’d heard his mother talk about a boy who’d drowned there when she’d been a kid, which in Mom Logic was the number one reason Cal was never allowed to swim there. The kid’s ghost was supposed to be there, too, lurking under the water, just waiting to grab another kid’s ankle and drag him down to the bottom so he’d have somebody to hang out with.
Cal had swum there twice that summer, giddy with fear and excitement. And both times he’d sworn he’d felt bony fingers brush over his ankle.
A dense army of cattails trooped along the edges, and around the slippery bank grew bunches of the wild orange lilies his mother liked. Fans of ferns climbed up the rocky slope, along with brambles of wild berries, which when ripe would stain the fingers a kind of reddish purple that looked a little like blood.