dry the mess she’d made and then carried it to the washing machine, where she opened the lid and dumped it in with her clothes.
The next part was harder. Grabbing a cleaning bucket from the shelf in the little laundry room, she filled it with hot water from the sink, then poured a little liquid detergent into it until there was a good amount of foam. As she carried the bucket back to the closet, she slipped into the pantry to get a roll of paper towel.
The men were using the saw; she watched them working in the mist outside and actually felt sorry for them. Sorry that they were out there in the cold having to work. She cackled at the absurdity of the thought, then pressed a fist to her lips. She hadn’t meant to laugh so raucously. As she skirted out of the kitchen with the paper towel, glancing back once more, one of the men looked up from where he stood, briefly making eye contact with Juno. She felt a rush of blood to her head as she ducked out of view. Had he seen her? He was probably just looking at his own reflection in the window, she told herself. It didn’t matter, she knew now she had to just clean her mess and be gone from this house. She had her pack to see to—who knew how long it would be before someone else stumbled across it? Juno turned the light on in the closet and closed the door. She could leave it; she knew that. The Crouches would start smelling something foul in a few days. She could picture Winnie on her hands and knees, sniffing out the source of the stench. No, Juno had stayed in their home, and she was not a houseguest who left her dishes unwashed. She began the long process of soaking up the urine with wads of the paper towel.
It was when she was scrubbing the carpet with the T-shirt that she found the string of loose carpet—a run. Juno tried to break the piece off. Yanking on the string, she pulled up an edge of the carpet instead. She hissed a “dammit” under her breath. Today was the kind of day Kregger used to call a dumpshit. Instead of flattening the corner, Juno tugged on it. With some tugging, the carpet lifted away in a perfect rectangle. She turned it over to see a stiff board underneath, hidden by the carpet.
As Juno peered down at the wooden trapdoor, she could smell the laundry detergent, clean and floral. She could also smell something else, something closed and dank coming through the trapdoor. It wasn’t made of the hardwood that ran through the rest of the house; it was a thick slab of nicked oak that looked like it had been there for as long as the house had.
There were two metal latches holding it in place, old and corroded. She had to work them open, jiggling the latches before they would release. Standing up, she used the strength in her legs to yank it open. She felt the grinding in her joints and ignored it: something else had her attention now. A gust of old air hit her in the face, and she screwed up her nose against it. The closet’s lone light bulb hung above the trapdoor, and Juno could see dirt floor and rough pilings. She lay on her belly and peered into the hole. The dark swallowed up most of the space, allowing her to see only a portion of it, but it was clear that this was the house’s crawl space. She didn’t hesitate—sitting on the edge, she lowered her legs over the side.
Juno was on her hands and knees in dirt. Chunks of concrete rolled under her palms, making her flinch as she crawled. A grown man would have trouble fitting through parts of the crawl space, especially where the ground rose in lazy waves. The ceiling of the crawl space was made of wood and dusty with mold. It was like a cave, and it was almost cozy. Ten-year-old Juno would have been delighted at this discovery. The thought was so ludicrous she cackled aloud. It was the ugliest sound she’d ever heard, even uglier than the time an inmate had cut the tip of Rhionette Wicke’s pinkie with a sharpened rock, and she’d screamed like a hyena. Aside from the musty smell, which was probably coming from a few dead