“Her name was something like Stacie McDougald, and she. had run away two days earlier with another girl who returned home by bus after the first night. Stacie then hitched a ride with a boy who brought her down the back road.
‘He never said anything, but when he stopped by the lake I got scared and ran. He looked for me in the woods and stuff, but the mosquitoes were like real terrible, so he gave up.’
She had hidden in the trees all night, eaten a couple of Ho-Ho’s, and finally put her head in the knapsack to escape the very. mosquitoes that had saved her.
‘Sorry my clothes are so gross.’ She took a vial from her jacket. ‘Only three left.’ Vacantly she stared at the vial, shook out a pill, and swallowed it with a swig of Pepsi.
‘What’s the pill?’
‘Gotta take them. I’m hyperactive. They’re Ludes.’
The vial had no label. ‘Prescribed?’
‘Oh, sort of. Like they used to be. I took Ritalin when I was little.’
‘Have you eaten anything besides the kiddie junk and Quaaludes?’
‘If I eat too much I get gross and fat.’
East of Hayward we drove into resort country where billboards and small, tacky motels lined the highway. The pavement rose and dropped, up and down, and the van rode like a cockboat. The girl fell asleep. At Park Falls, I stopped for gas. She woke up and disappeared into the restroom with her backpack. She came out wearing clean clothes, her long blonde hair wet and tied behind. Except for the insect bites, her face was smooth and bland and of an unnatural pallor like the underside of an arm. I suggested she telephone her grandmother, but she refused. At Fifield we went east toward Minocqua. The Chequamegon Forest was trees and sandy soil blooming with trillium. ‘Can you tell me why you took off?’
— William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways