Panic

Panic Page 19

Dayna would never do it. The guy barely spoke any English, for Christ’s sake. And she would have told Dodge if she liked him. She’d always told Dodge everything.

“I just came in to get a drink,” Dodge said. “I’m going out again.”

In the kitchen, he filled a glass with water and kept the sink running while he drank, to drown out the sound of muffled conversation from the next room. What the hell were they talking about? What did they have in common? When he shut off the sink, the voices fell abruptly into silence again. Jesus. Dodge felt like he was trespassing in his own house. He left without saying good-bye. Almost as soon as he shut the door, he heard laughter again.

He checked his phone. He had a response from Heather, finally. He’d texted her earlier: Heard anything?

Her text read simply: Game over.

Dodge felt a surge of nausea riding up from his stomach to his throat. And he knew, then, what he had to do.

Dodge had been to the Hanrahans’ house only once before, two years earlier, when Dayna was still in the hospital—when, briefly, it had seemed like she might not wake up. Dodge hadn’t budged from the chair next to her bed except to pee and smoke cigarettes in the parking lot and get coffee from the cafeteria. Finally Dodge’s mom had convinced him to go home and get some rest.

He had gone home, but not to rest. He had stopped in only long enough to remove the butcher’s knife from the kitchen and the baseball bat from the closet, along with a pair of old ski gloves that had never, as far as he knew, been used by anyone in his family.

It took him a while to find Ray and Luke’s house on his bike, in the dark, half-delirious from the heat and no sleep and the rage that was strangling him, coiled like a snake around his gut and throat. But he did, finally: a two-story structure, all dark, that might have been nice one hundred years ago.

Now it looked like a person whose soul had been sucked out through his asshole: collapsed and desperate, wild and wide-eyed, sagging in the middle. Dodge felt a flash of pity. He thought of the tiny apartment behind Dot’s, how his mom put daffodils in old pickle jars on the windowsills and scrubbed the walls with bleach every Sunday.

Then he remembered what he had come to do. He left his bike on the side of the road, slipped on his gloves, removed the baseball bat and knife from his duffel bag.

He stood there, willing his feet to move. A swift kick to the door, the sound of screaming. The knife flashing in the dark, the whistle of the bat cutting through the air. He was after Luke, and Luke alone.

It would be easy. Quick.

But he hadn’t managed it. He’d stood there with his legs numb, heavy, useless, for what felt like hours, until he began to fear that he’d never move again—he’d be frozen in this position, in the darkness, forever.

At some point the porch light had clicked on, and Dodge had seen a heavy woman, with a face like a pulpy fruit, wearing a tentlike nightgown and no shoes, maneuver her bulk out onto the porch and light up a cigarette. Luke’s mother.

All at once, Dodge could move again. He had stumbled toward his bike. It wasn’t until he was four blocks away that he realized he was still holding the knife and he had dropped the baseball bat, probably on the lawn.

It had been two whole years, almost to the day. Ray’s house looked even more run-down in the daylight. The paint was shedding like gray dandruff. On the porch were two tires, a few smelly armchairs, and an old porch swing hanging on rusty chains, which looked like it would collapse under the slightest pressure.

There was a doorbell, but it was disconnected. Instead Dodge banged loudly on the frame of the screen door. In response, the TV inside was abruptly muted. For the first time, it occurred to Dodge that it might not be Ray who answered the door, but that pulpy woman from two years ago—or a father, or someone else entirely.

But it was Ray. He was wearing only basketball shorts. For a split second, he hesitated, obviously startled, just behind the screen.

Before Dodge could say anything, Ray kicked open the screen door. Dodge had to jump back to avoid it. He lost his footing.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

The sudden motion had screwed Dodge up. He was already off balance when Ray grabbed him by the shirt and then shoved him. Dodge stumbled down the porch stairs and landed in the dirt on his elbows. He bit down on his tongue.

And Ray was above him, in a rage, ready to pounce. “You must be out of your mind,” he spat out.

Dodge rolled away from him and scrambled to his feet. “I’m not here to fight.”

Ray let out a bark of laughter. “You don’t have a choice.”

He took a step forward, swinging; but Dodge had regained his balance and sidestepped him.

“Look.” Dodge held up a hand. “Just listen to me, okay? I came to talk.”

“Why the hell would I want to talk to you?” Ray said. His hands were still balled into fists, but he didn’t try and swing again.

“We both want the same thing,” Dodge said.

For a second, Ray said nothing. His hands uncurled. “What’s that?”

“Panic.” Dodge wet his lips. His throat was dry. “Both of us need it.”

There was an electric tension in the air, hot and dangerous. Ray took another quick step forward.

“Luke told me about your little threats,” Ray said. “What kind of game do you think you’re playing?”

Ray was so close, Dodge could smell cornflakes and sour milk on his breath. But he didn’t step back. “There’s only one game that matters,” he said. “You know it. Luke knew it too. That’s why he did what he did, isn’t it?”

For the first time, Ray looked afraid. “It was an accident,” he said. “He never meant—”

“Don’t.”

Ray shook his head. “I didn’t know,” he said. Dodge knew he was lying.

“Are you going to help me, or not?” Dodge asked.

Ray laughed again: an explosive, humorless sound. “Why should I help you?” he asked. “You want me dead.”

Dodge smiled. “Not like this,” he said. And he meant it, 100 percent. “Not yet.”

Sometime around midnight, when Carp was quiet, dazzling in a light sheen of rain, Zev Keller woke in the dark to rough hands grabbing him. Before he could scream, he was gagging on the taste of cotton in his mouth. A sock. And then he was lifted, carried out of bed and into the night.

His first, confused, thought was that the cops had come to take him away. If he’d been thinking clearly, he would have realized that his assailants were wearing ski masks. He would have noticed that the trunk they forced him into belonged to a navy-blue Taurus, like the kind his brother drove. That it was his brother’s car, parked in its usual spot.

But he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was panicked.

Kicking out, watching the sky narrow to a sliver as the trunk closed over him, Zev felt something wet and realized that, for the first time since he was five years old, he’d peed himself.

At last he realized too that despite everything, the game was ongoing. And that he had just lost.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 13

heather

THE WAR MEETING TOOK PLACE AT BISHOP’S HOUSE. IT had to. Heather’s trailer was too small, Dodge wouldn’t have invited them to his place, and Nat’s parents were home all day doing a garage-clean. Heather had to bring Lily. Lily had nothing to do now that school was over, and most days took the bus by herself a half hour to Hudson, where the library was.

But the library was understaffed, and closed for a week while the director was on vacation. For once, Lily was in a good mood, even though she was dirty and sweaty and stank like horses; in the morning, she’d helped Heather at Anne’s. She sang a song about tigers all the way to Bishop’s house, and made waves with her arm out the window.

Bishop lived in the woods. His father had once owned an antique store and pawnshop, and Bishop liked to say his dad “collected” things. Heather always threatened to sign them up for that TV show about hoarders. The house, and the yard around it, was littered with stuff, from junky to bizarre: at least two to three old cars at all times, in various states of repair; crates of spray paint; rusted slides; stacks of timber; old furniture, half-embedded in the soil. Lily ran off, yelling, weaving through the old piles.

Heather found Nat and Bishop behind the house, sitting on an old merry-go-round, which no longer turned. Bishop looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. He pulled Heather into a hug as soon as he saw her, which was weird.

She tensed up; she probably smelled like stables.

“What’s up with you?” Heather said when he pulled away. The circles under his eyes were as dark as a bruise.

“Just glad to see you,” he said.

“You look like crap.” She reached out to smooth down his hair, an old habit. But he caught her wrist. He was staring at her intensely, like he wanted to memorize her face.

“Heather—,” he started to say.

“Heather!” Nat called out at the same time. She, at least, seemed unaffected by Bill Kelly’s death. “I mean, it’s not like we knew him,” she’d said days earlier, when Heather had told her how guilty she felt.

Heather didn’t wait for Nat to speak, although Nat had called the meeting. “I’m out,” she said. “I’m not playing anymore.”

“We have to wait for Dodge,” Nat said.

“I don’t have to wait for anyone,” Heather said. She was annoyed by Nat’s calm. She was blinking happily, sleepily, in the sun—as though nothing had happened. “I’m not playing anymore. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s sick,” Bishop said fiercely. “Sick. Anyone in their right minds—”

“The judges aren’t in their right minds, though, are they?” Nat said, turning to him. “I mean, they can’t be. You heard about Zev?”

“That wasn’t—” Bishop abruptly stopped speaking, shaking his head.

“I, for one, don’t plan on losing my chance at sixty-seven thousand dollars,” Nat said, still with that infuriating calm. Then she shook her head. “It isn’t right to start without Dodge.”

“Why?” Heather fired back. “Why are you so worried about Dodge? I made the deal with you, remember?”

Nat looked away, and then Heather knew. A bitter taste rushed into her throat. “You made a deal with him, too,” she said. “You lied to me.”

“No.” Nat looked at her, eyes wide, pleading. “No. Heather. I never planned on cutting him in.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Bishop asked. “What do you mean, ‘cutting him in’?”

“Stay out of it, Bishop,” Heather said.

“I’m in it,” he said. He dragged a hand through his hair, and in that instant, Heather felt they would never get back to normal: to making fun of Bishop’s hair, to loading it with gel and twisting to make it stick straight up. “You’re at my house, remember?”

“This isn’t a game anymore,” Heather said. Everything was spiraling out of control. “Don’t you get it? Someone’s dead.”