Jojo comforts Kayla, making up stories until they arrive at the home of Michael’s lawyer, Al, where they plan to stay the night. Al greets the group warmly as Leonie hands over the bag of meth. 

Leonie is reluctant to accept Al’s offer of dinner, but lets Jojo eat while she boils the blackberry roots and leaves into a tea. Jojo watches anxiously as she forces Kayla to drink the mixture, remembering a concoction she once prepared for him: “Leonie must have picked the wrong plant, or prepared it wrong, because whatever she gave me made me even sicker. She poured the gritty, bitter mess by the back steps, and a few days afterward, when I had worked whatever she gave me and the bug out of my system, I found a stray cat dead, carbuncular and rotting, by the steps” (116). Misty and Al convince Leonie that Kayla is just carsick, and the three of them disappear into the kitchen to get high; Jojo then makes Kayla throw the mixture. 

Lying next to Kayla that night, Jojo recalls Pop talking about the day Richie was whipped for breaking his hoe, and the way Pop nursed him afterwards.