Panic

Panic Page 20

“Jesus.” Bishop sat down heavily, rubbing his eyes, as though Heather saying the words had made them real.

“Why did you play, Heather?” Nat stood up when Bishop sat down. Her arms were crossed, and she made little clicking noises with her tongue. Rhythmic. A pattern. “If you didn’t want the risk, if you couldn’t handle it, why did you play? Because Matt stupid Hepley dumped you? Because he was sick of getting blue-balled by his girlfriend?”

Heather lost her breath. She was conscious of the air going out of her at once, escaping in a short hiss.

Bishop looked up and spoke sharply: “Nat.”

Even Natalie looked surprised, and immediately guilty. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, avoiding Heather’s eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

“What did I miss?”

Heather turned. Dodge had just appeared, emerging from the glittering maze of junk and scrap metal. She wondered what they looked like to him: Nat flushed and guilty, Bishop awful-white, wild-eyed; and Heather blinking back tears, still sweaty from the stables.

And all of them angry: you could feel it in the air, a physical force among them.

Suddenly Heather realized that this, too, was a result of the game. That it was part of it.

Only Dodge seemed unaware of the tension. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked Bishop. Bishop shook his head.

Heather broke in. “I’m out. I said I was out and I meant it. The game should have ended—”

“The game never ends,” Dodge said. Nat turned away from him and for a moment, just a moment, he looked uncertain. Heather was relieved. Dodge had changed this summer. He wasn’t the slope-shouldered weirdo, the outsider, who had sat for three years in silence. It was as though the game was feeding him somehow—like he was growing on it. “You heard about Zev?” He exhaled a straight stream of smoke. “That was me.”

Nat had turned back to him. “You?”

“Me, and Ray Hanrahan.”

There was a moment of silence.

Heather finally managed to speak. “What?”

“We did it.” Dodge took a final drag and ground out the cigarette butt underneath the heel of his cowboy boot.

“That’s against the rules,” Heather said. “The judges set the challenges.”

Dodge shook his head. “It’s Panic,” he said. “There are no rules.”

“Why?” Bishop tugged at his left ear. He was furious and trying not to show it; that was his tell.

“To send a message to the judges. The players, too. The game will go on, one way or another. It has to.”

“You don’t have the right,” Bishop said.

Dodge shrugged. “What’s right?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“What about the cops? And the fire? What about Bill?”

No one said anything. Heather realized she was shaking.

“I’m done,” she said. She spun around and nearly collided with a rust-spotted furnace, which, along with an overturned bike, marked the beginning of the narrow path that wound through the landscape of litter and junk to the house, and around to the front yard. Bishop called out to her, but she ignored him.

She found Lily crouching in a bit of yard uncluttered by junk, marking the bare grass with bright-blue spray paint she had unearthed somewhere.

“Lily.” Heather spoke sharply.

Lily dropped the paint and stood up, looking guilty.

“We’re going,” Heather said.

Lily’s frown reappeared, as did the small pucker between her eyebrows. Immediately, she seemed to shrink and age. Heather thought of the night she had whispered, “Are you going to die?” and felt a fist of guilt hit her hard in the stomach. She didn’t know whether she was doing the right thing. She felt like nothing she did was right.

But what had happened to Bill Kelly was wrong. And pretending it hadn’t happened was wrong too. That, she knew.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lily said, sticking out her lower lip.

“Nothing.” Heather seized her wrist. “Come on.”

“I didn’t get to say hi to Bishop,” Lily whined.

“Next time,” Heather said. She practically dragged Lily to the car. She couldn’t hear Nat or Bishop or Dodge anymore; she wondered whether they were talking about her. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. She drove in silence, gripping the wheel as though it was in danger of slipping suddenly from her hands.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20

heather

THE WEATHER TURNED FOUL, COLD AND WET, AND THE ground turned to sludge. For two days, Heather heard nothing from Nat. She refused to be the one to call first. She texted back and forth with Bishop but avoided seeing him, which meant that to go to work she had to bus it to the 7-Eleven and walk three quarters of a mile in the driving rain, arriving wet and miserable just to stand for more hours in the rain, chucking the chickens soggy feed and hauling equipment into the sheds so it wouldn’t rust.

Only the tigers seemed more miserable than she was; she wondered, as they huddled underneath a canopy of maple trees, watching her work, whether they dreamed of other places as much as she did. Africa, burnt grasses, a vast round sun. For the first time it struck her as selfish that Anne kept them here, in this craptastic climate of blistering heat, followed by rain, followed by snow and sleet and ice.

There were rumors that the police had turned up evidence of arson at the Graybill House. For a whole day, Heather waited in agony, certain that the evidence had to do with her duffel bag, positive that the police would haul her off to jail. What would happen to her, if she were accused of murder? She was eighteen. That meant she would go to real jail, not juvie.

But when several more days passed and no one came looking for her, she relaxed again. She hadn’t been the one to light the stupid match. Really, when you thought about it, this was all Matt Hepley’s fault. He should be arrested. And Delaney, too.

About Panic, there was not a single whisper. Dodge’s move had, apparently, failed to rouse the judges to action. Heather wondered whether he would try again, then reminded herself it was no longer her business.

Still, it rained: this was mid-July in upstate New York, lush and green and wet as a rain forest.

Krista got sick from the humidity and the wet in the air, saying it made her lungs feel clotty. Heather refrained from pointing out that her lungs might feel better if she stopped smoking a pack of menthol cigarettes a day. Krista called in sick to work and instead lay on the couch in a daze of cold medicine, like something dead and bloated dragged up by the ocean.

At least Heather could use the car. The library had reopened. She dropped Lily there.

“Want me to pick you up later?” she asked.

Lily was back to being snotty. “I’m not a baby,” she said as she slid out of the car, not even bothering with the umbrella Heather had brought for her. “I’ll bus it.”

“What about—?” Before Heather could remind her to take the umbrella, Lily had slammed the door and was dashing for the library entrance through a slow ooze of dark puddles.

Despite the rain, Heather was in a decent mood. Lily was almost twelve. It was normal for her to be a brat. It was maybe even a good thing. It showed she was growing up okay, the way that everyone else did—that maybe she wouldn’t be messed up just because she’d grown up in Fresh Pines with ants parading all over the spoons and Krista fumigating the house.

And there were still no police knocking on her door, still not a single, solitary breath about Panic.

Work was hard: Anne wanted her to muck the stables, and afterward they had to re-caulk a portion of the basement, where the rain was coming in and the walls were speckled with mold. Heather was shocked when Anne stopped her for the day. It was nearly five p.m., but Heather hadn’t noticed time passing, had barely looked up. The rain was worse than ever. It came down in whole sheets, like the quivering blades of a giant guillotine.

While Anne was preparing her a cup of tea, Heather checked her phone for the first time in hours, and her stomach went to liquid and pooled straight down to her feet. She’d missed twelve calls from Lily.

Her throat squeezed up so tight she could hardly breathe. She punched Lily’s number immediately. Her cell phone went straight to voice mail.

“What’s the matter, Heather?” Anne was standing at the oven, her gray hair frizzing around her face, like a strange halo.

Heather said, “I have to go.”

Afterward, she didn’t remember getting into the car or backing it down the driveway; she didn’t remember the drive to the library, but suddenly she was there. She parked the car but left the door open. Some of the puddles were ankle deep, but she hardly noticed. She sprinted to the entrance; the library had been closed for an hour.

She called Lily’s name, circled the parking lot, searching for her. She scanned the streets as she drove, imagining all the terrible things that might have happened to Lily—she’d been hurt, snatched, killed—and trying to stop herself from losing it, throwing up or breaking down.

Finally, she had no choice but to go home. She’d have to call the police.

Heather fought back another wave of panic. This was it, the real thing.

The road leading to Fresh Pines was full of ruts, sucking black mud, deep water. Heather bumped through it, tires spinning and grinding. The place looked sadder than usual: the rain was beating fists on the trailers, pulling down wind chimes and overflowing outdoor fire pits.

Heather hadn’t even stopped the car when she spotted Lily: huddled underneath a skinny birch tree missing most of its leaves, only fifteen feet away from the trailer steps, arms wrapped around her legs, shivering. Heather must have parked because all of a sudden she was rocketing out of the car, splashing through the water, taking Lily in her arms.

“Lily!” Heather couldn’t hug her sister tight enough. Here, here, here. Safe. “Are you okay? Are you all right? What happened?”

“I’m cold.” Lily’s voice was muffled. She spoke into Heather’s left shoulder. Heather’s heart seized up; she would have spun the world in reverse for a blanket.

“Come on,” she said, pulling away. “Let’s get you inside.”

Lily reared back, like a bucking horse. Her eyes went huge, wild. “I won’t go in there,” she said. “I don’t want to go in there!”

“Lily.” Heather blinked rain out of her eyes, crouching down so she was eye level with her sister. Lily’s lips were ringed with blue. God. How long had she been out here? “What’s going on?”

“Mom told me to go away,” Lily said. Her voice had turned small, broken. “She—she told me to play outside.”

Something inside Heather cracked, and in that moment she was conscious that all her life she had been building up walls and defenses in preparation for something like this; behind them, the pressure had been mounting, mounting. Now the dam broke, and she was flooded, drowning in rage and hate.

“Come on,” she said. She was surprised she still sounded the same, when inside of her was a sucking blackness, a furious noise. She took Lily’s hand. “You can sit in the car, okay? I’ll turn on the heat. You’ll be nice and dry.”