Or the way the blood sizzled, smoked, then was sucked into that scarred earth.

Fox set the boom box on the rock, so they set up camp with Madonna and U2 and the Boss. Following Cal ’s advice, they built the fire, but didn’t set it to light while they had the sun.

Sweaty and filthy, they sat on the ground and tore into the picnic basket with grubby hands and huge appetites. As the food, the familiar flavors filled his belly and soothed his system, Cal decided it had been worth hauling the basket for a couple of hours.

Replete, they stretched out on their backs, faces to the sky.

“Do you really think all those people died right here?” Gage wondered.

“There are books about it in the library,” Cal told him. “About a fire of, like, ‘unknown origin’ breaking out and these people burned up.”

“Kind of a weird place for them to be.”

“We’re here.”

Gage only grunted at that.

“My mom said how the first white people to settle here were Puritans.” Fox blew a huge pink bubble with the Bazooka he’d bought at the market. “A sort of radical Puritan or something. How they came over here looking for religious freedom, but really only meant it was free if it was, you know, their way. Mom says lots of people are like that about religion. I don’t get it.”

Gage thought he knew, or knew part. “A lot of people are mean, and even if they’re not, a lot more people think they’re better than you.” He saw it all the time, in the way people looked at him.

“But do you think they were witches, and the people from the Hollow back then burned them at the stake or something?” Fox rolled over on his belly. “My mom says that being a witch is like a religion, too.”

“Your mom’s whacked.”

Because it was Gage, and because it was said jokingly, Fox grinned. “We’re all whacked.”