She rolled over. For now, she needed to get a handle on her current accommodations. “Stickin’ your nose in,” Gran would call it when she’d catch Ivy reading a note taped to a neighbor’s car or listening out the window to an argument in the street. Ivy knew Gran hated her curiosity. “Keep to yourself and don’t borrow trouble,” she always said. But Ivy couldn’t hear sirens without looking to see which way they were going; she couldn’t sit on the bus without trying to figure out who was going to see their parole officer and who was going to family court. That tired-looking lady nodding off while a baby played with her hair—was that the ma, or the grandma? That guy sitting in a nest of empty soda bottles and plastic bags inside his car—was he living there, or just messy? And that girl with the busted-looking weave and stoned half smile—what the hell was she doing with a brand-new iPhone?
The bedroom drawers held shorts, T-shirts, and lightweight cargo pants in colors from beige to gray to off-white. Gap, Banana Republic—rich people’s bumming-around clothes, as soft as baby blankets. There weren’t any men’s clothes to be found, or kids’. The bathroom was stocked with shampoos and soaps and lotions Ivy had never heard of: Aromatherapy Almond-Sage Rinse. Sea Salt–Orange Peel Scrub. Kelp Butter. There was a guitar in the downstairs sitting room, and a basket holding a tangle of cords and adapters for charging just about any device ever made. But as far as she could tell, there was no TV. Anywhere.
It was weird—not just the absence of a TV, but the lack of anything tied to an actual person with a beating heart. Newspapers, ashtrays, embroidered pillows, grocery lists, Hallmark cards, dried-up pens, commemorative shot glasses—none of it. The place was as bare as a rock.
Even the basement was empty, except for a cabinet holding paintbrushes and tubes of paint. Leaning against the wall, under a sheet, were some small and medium-size canvases. Ivy tipped a few of them forward, browsing the pile only long enough to decide that whoever had painted them had a sick sense of humor. It was the kind of stuff Asa would probably like—crazy modern art, not even trying to be good, just trying to be as ugly and in your face as possible. A colorful fuck you to the world. She shook her head, wondering what kind of person would be so hard-edged and reserved upstairs, and so pissed off down here in the basement.
She let the sheet drop back over the paintings, then went up to the kitchen. She took all the boxes and cans of food out of the cabinets and spread them on the counter. She pushed the packages around, grouping them, thinking them over. She could probably do okay for a month, getting by on pasta and beans and a couple of crackers a day, with a little of that chocolate spread to take the edge off. There were two granola bars per packet; she could eat half a bar for breakfast every other day, and they’d last her for twenty days. Just enough time for them to call off the search.
She walked along the windows, scanning the woods in all directions. No other houses to be seen; no roads either. She went downstairs and rummaged through the clothes, pulling out the warmest outfit she could find. Everything was too big, but she rolled up the pants and tucked the shirt in the waistband. She tugged on her hoodie, then her jean jacket, still damp, on top of that. Upstairs, she put on a pair of rain boots.
Outside, she tucked her hands under her armpits and circled the house, then walked into the woods for a bit, scanning for signs of neighbors. There weren’t any other houses around, but NO TRESPASSING signs seemed to form some kind of boundary around the house. After passing the signs, she caught sight of something square, wooden, and man-made through the hemlocks. It was some kind of platform with plywood walls, nailed into the crotch of a tree. Ivy wondered if it had been put there by kids living nearby, but when she climbed into the wooden box, she found crushed beer cans, an empty shotgun-shell box, and a jerk-off magazine. Hunters.
She jumped out of the tree house and went back the way she’d come. When she got to the Dumpster house, she headed up the driveway, which switched back and forth a few times up the steep hill—long detours that Ivy avoided by cutting straight up the slope. She stopped a few times to catch her breath, looking down toward the house, which was disappearing among the pines. After twenty or thirty minutes, as she was starting to wonder how long a driveway could be before you had to just call it a road, she heard what sounded like a car. She climbed some more, and soon she was sure of the sound: tires on asphalt.
The spot where the driveway joined the road was steep and hidden in the brush. A large tree off to one side was studded with red reflectors and a house number, 1465. Ivy stepped behind the tree and peeked out at the road, which had a narrow shoulder and only one middle line. As she stood there, two pickup trucks passed. Their breeze washed over her warm face, and she felt some of the worry lift from her shoulders. This was a road that was going somewhere. It led to dollar stores and soup kitchens, to gas stations and pay phones, to a place where she could get in touch with Asa, just to let him know she was okay and find out what everyone was saying.
Ivy ran her hand over the tree trunk. It was craggier than a pine tree, the bark deeply creviced and glazed with pale-green flakes.
