All the Colors of the Dark

Chief Nix organizes a search of the woods and surrounding areas. Saint stops sleeping and pores over maps, roaming town on her bicycle and looking for her friend. She stops by the Meyer and Macauley homes but finds no comfort or clues. During one of the searches, they find an eyepatch but nothing else of note.

As she roams, she remembers getting her beehive. She saved all her money to order books about bees and begged her grandmother for months until she relented. She has made a little money off the honey but feels pride over her hive. She tried to issue invitations to girls in her class to meet the bees, but instead, Patch showed up. He stole someone else’s invite and ate a lot of her honey. Norma threw him out, but Saint is pleased that someone came.

In the present, Norma forces her to attend church. Afterward, Saint talks to Misty, who is distraught and feels guilty that she is safe and Patch isn’t. She tells Saint that she wasn’t in school because she was helping Dr. Tooms find his lost dog.

Saint is suspicious of Tooms and tells Nix that Tooms does not have a dog. She decides to investigate herself and hears someone screaming at his house. She calls Patch’s name and is terrified when she sees Tooms, covered with blood. She calls Nix, who later tells her nothing is wrong.

Though this is not revealed until later in the book, Tooms and Nix are lovers. Tooms illegally performs abortions to help girls who need them, and this is what Saint overheard.

Another girl named Callie Montrose goes missing. A policeman’s daughter, she came to town before and spoke to Nix. Months go by and winter begins. Neither she nor Patch are found. It is later revealed that she died of a hemorrhage in Tooms’s home and was pregnant because her father molested her. Nix helps Tooms bury her, and they hide what happened.

In between current events, Saint remembers her friendship with Patch. She bought him a flea market flintlock pistol for his birthday, and he stole a brooch for her. They talked of beehives and pirates, and she was in awe of his courage but also afraid for him. He protected her from bullies, and together, they formed a small team against the world.

Saint attends a vigil for Callie and speaks briefly with her father. Another girl, a classmate of Callie’s, tells her Tooms is a creep and waits outside school for girls.

Norma buys Saint a camera and one roll of film. She begins photographing wildlife. A boy from church, Jimmy Walters, tries to befriend her, but she is uninterested. Her grandmother encourages her to be kind to him, but she says that she already has a friend. By spring, she has filled her camera roll, and they drive to a town to develop it. On the bulletin board, she sees a photo of Misty in an ad for modeling. The photographer’s name is Eli Aaron. The shopkeeper sees her eyeing it and warns her against Aaron, telling her he wouldn’t let his daughter near him. He also says Aaron is a school photographer.

At home, she searches her school photos and sees Aaron’s stamp on them. She realizes he was the photographer at their school and must have chosen Misty then. She calls Nix, but he tells her to drop the case. She heads out on her own with Patch’s pistol and a slingshot, passing Jimmy en route to church. She tells him she is going to Aaron’s house to kill him and save Patch.

Saint rides a bus to Aaron’s house. When he appears, she tells him she wants her photo taken. She is quickly terrified and realizes that she is out of her depth. Aaron is huge and monstrous. He quotes scripture while he photographs her. When she asks him if he took the girls, he says he did. She tries to shoot him, but he takes the gun, and then she runs into his darkroom, trying to load the slingshot.

In the darkroom, she sees photos of many girls, including Misty, with halos scratched above them. Crawling through the rooms in the back of Aaron’s yard, she finds a dark room filled with caged snakes. Terrified, she lights a match and starts a fire. She thinks that she is going to die, but Nix saves her, breaking a window to get to her. He takes her to an ambulance but tells her Patch is not inside. She curses and runs away, stumbling over an unconscious Patch and finding him still breathing.

Patch awakens in captivity with a fever in total darkness. His stab wound has been stitched up, but he is in pain and frightened. Though he can’t see anything, a mysterious girl appears and gives him a pill and some water, telling him to sleep. Slowly he gets better, and the girl continues to visit. The room he is kept in is dark, and he can see nothing, but she tells him stories and tries to teach him things, following a rough school schedule. She describes things so vividly that Patch refers to it as “painting.” She tells him her name is Grace but doesn’t talk about her past otherwise. He tells her about Saint, his mother, and his life. Any time they hear footsteps approaching, she leads Patch in praying loudly, telling him it is the only way to survive. Though this is not revealed until the end of the book, Grace is Aaron’s daughter, and she begs him not to kill Patch, hoping to save at least one person from her father’s violence.

Months pass, and Patch secretly frees a brick from the wall. One day when Aaron enters, he hits the man with it. Aaron beats him, causing a rib to puncture his lung. His escape is foiled. Patch develops a fever from his injury and gets sicker. Grace sits with him and tells him that one day they will go to New York together and dance under the winter sky. He loses consciousness and does not remember the fire, his rescue, or Grace disappearing. Later, it is revealed that Grace dragged him out of the burning building to safety but was forced to leave with her father as he fled the police.