Panic

Panic Page 27

Her cell phone rang in the middle of dinner. Dodge’s mom stood up. “Speak of the devil,” she said. “It’s Bill. He might have news.…”

“What kind of news?” Dodge asked when she had stepped outside. He could see her pacing the parking lot. Under the glare of the lights, she looked old. Tired, kind of saggy. More momlike than usual.

Dayna shrugged.

“Are they screwing or something?” Dodge pressed.

Dayna sighed and wiped her fingers carefully on her napkin. She’d been picking apart her burger, layer by layer. This was something she’d always done: deconstruct her food, put it back together in a way that pleased her. With burgers it was lettuce and tomato on the bottom, then ketchup, then burger, then bun. “They’re friends, Dodge,” she said, and he felt a flicker of irritation. She was speaking to him in her grown-up voice, a voice that had always grated on him. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“Mom doesn’t have friends,” he said, even though he knew it was kind of mean.

Dayna set down her napkin—hard, in her fist, so that the water cups jumped. “What is up with you?”

Dodge stared at her. “What’s up with me?”

“Why do you have to give Mom such a hard time? That doctor isn’t cheap. She’s trying.” Dayna shook her head. “Ricky had to leave, like, his whole family to come here—”

“Please don’t bring Ricky into this.”

“I’m just saying, we should feel lucky.”

“Lucky?” Dodge barked a laugh. “Since when did you become such a guru?”

“Since when did you become such a brat?” Dayna fired back.

Dodge suddenly felt lost. He didn’t know where the feeling came from, and he struggled to get out from underneath it. “Mom’s clueless. That’s all I’m saying.” He stabbed at his mac ’n’ cheese to avoid meeting Dayna’s eyes. “Besides, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.…”

Now it was Dayna’s turn to stare. “You’re unbelievable.” She spoke in a low voice, and somehow that was worse than if she’d been screaming. “All this time you’ve been telling me to keep trying, keep believing. And then I actually make progress—”

“And what about what I’ve been doing?” Dodge knew he was being a brat, but he couldn’t help it. Dayna had been on his side—she was the only one on his side—and now, suddenly, she wasn’t.

“You mean the game?” Dayna shook her head. “Look, Dodge. I’ve been thinking. I don’t want you to play anymore.”

“You what?” Dodge exploded; several people at a neighboring table turned to stare.

“Keep your voice down.” Dayna was looking at him the way she used to when he was a little kid and didn’t understand the rules of a game she wanted to play: disappointed, a little impatient. “After what happened to Bill Kelly . . . it’s not worth it. It’s not right.”

Dodge took a sip of his water and found he could barely work it down his throat. “You wanted me to play,” he said. “You asked me to.”

“I changed my mind,” she said.

“Well, that’s not how the game works,” he said. His voice was rising again. He couldn’t help it. “Or did you forget?”

Her mouth got thin: a straight pink scar in the face. “Listen to me, Dodge. This is for you—for your own good.”

“I played for you.” Dodge no longer cared about being overheard. The anger, the sense of loss, ate away the rest of the world, made him careless. Who did he have? He had no friends. He’d never stayed in a place long enough to make them or trust them. With Heather he’d thought he’d gotten close; with Natalie, too. He’d been wrong; and now even Dayna was turning on him. “Did you forget that, too? This is all for you. So that things can go back.”

He hadn’t intended to say the last part—hadn’t even thought the words until they were out of his mouth. For a second there was silence. Dayna was staring at him, openmouthed, and the words sat between them like something detonated: everything had been blown wide open.

“Dodge,” she said. He was horrified to see that she looked like she felt sorry for him. “Things can never go back. You know that, right? That’s not how it works. Nothing you do will change what happened.”

Dodge pushed his plate away. He stood up from the table. “I’m going home,” he said. He couldn’t even think. Dayna’s words were making a storm inside his head. Things can never go back.

What the hell had he been playing for, all this time?

“Come on, Dodge,” Dayna said. “Sit down.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her: those patient eyes, the thin, dissatisfied set of her mouth. Like he was a little kid. A dumb kid. “Tell mom I said good-bye.”

“We’re miles from home,” Dayna said.

“I could use the walk,” Dodge said. He shoved a cigarette in his mouth, even though he didn’t feel like smoking, and hoped it wouldn’t rain.

heather

HEATHER DIDN’T RETURN TO METH ROW. IT WAS CONVENIENT, in some ways, but there was no privacy in it, now that Dodge knew where she was. She didn’t want him to be spying on her, seeing how she was living, maybe running his mouth about it.

Heather had been careful, thus far, to move the car only in the middle of the night, from parking lot to empty road to parking lot, when there was less danger of being spotted. She’d developed a routine: on work days, she set her alarm for four a.m., and, while Lily was still sleeping, headed through the ink-black to Anne’s house. She had found a break in the trees just off the driveway where she could park. Sometimes she slept again. Sometimes she waited, watching the black begin to blur and change, turning first to smudgy dark, then sharpening and splitting, peeling off into vivid purple shadows and triangles of light.

She tried very hard not to think about the past, or what was going to happen in the future, or anything at all. Later, when it was almost nine, she’d walk up to the house, telling Anne that Bishop had dropped her off. Sometimes Lily came with her. Sometimes she stayed in the car, or played in the woods.

Twice, Heather had arrived early and chosen to bathe, sneaking through the woods to the outdoor shower. Then she’d stripped, shivering in the cool air, and stepped gratefully under the stream of hot water, letting it run in her mouth and eyes and over her body. Otherwise, she’d been making do with a hose.

Heather had to stop herself from fantasizing about running water, microwaves, air conditioners and refrigerators and toilets. Definitely toilets. It had been two weeks since she’d left her mom’s, and she’d gotten two mosquito bites on her butt while peeing at six a.m. and eaten more cold canned ravioli than she could stomach.

What she wanted to do was make it to Malden Plaza, where they’d crossed the highway—to that vast, impersonal parking lot with only a few streetlamps. Truckers came on and off the highway all the time, and cars stayed in the lot overnight. There was a McDonald’s, and public restrooms, with showers for the truckers who passed through.

First they needed gas. It wasn’t yet dark, and she didn’t want to stop in Carp. But she’d been running on fumes for almost twenty-four hours, and she didn’t want to break down, either. So she pulled into the Citgo on Main Street, which was the least popular of the three gas stations in town because it was the most expensive and didn’t sell beer.

“Stay in the car,” she told Lily.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lily mumbled.

“I’m serious, Billy.” Heather wasn’t sure how long she could take this: the sniping, the back-and-forth. She was losing it. Cracking up. Grief had its hands around her neck; she was being choked. She kept seeing Vivian sipping from Bishop’s mug, her black hair hanging in wisps around a pretty, moon-white face. “And don’t talk to anybody, okay?”

She scanned the parking lot: no police cars, no cars she recognized. That was a good sign.

Inside, she put down twenty dollars for gas and took the opportunity to stock up on whatever she could: packages of ramen soup, which they would eat dissolved in cold water; chips and salsa; beef jerky; and two fresh-ish sandwiches. The man behind the counter, with a dark, flat face and thinning hair slicked to one side, like weeds strapped to his forehead, made her wait for change. While he counted singles into the register, she went to the bathroom. She didn’t like standing under the bright lights of the store, and she didn’t like the way the man was looking at her either—like he could see through to all her secrets.

While she was washing her hands, she dimly registered the jangle of the bell above the door, the low murmur of conversation. Another customer. When she left the bathroom, he was blocked from view by a big display of cheap sunglasses, and she was almost at the counter before she noticed his uniform, the gun strapped to his hip.

A cop.

“How’s that Kelly business going?” the man behind the counter was saying.

The cop—with a big belly pushing out over his belt—shrugged. “Autopsy came in. Turns out Little Kelly didn’t die in that fire.”

Heather felt like something had hit her in the chest. She tugged her hood up and pretended to be looking for chips. She picked up a package of pretzels, squinted at it hard.

“That right?”

“Sad story. Looks like OD. He’d been taking pills since he came back from the war. Probably just went to that Graybill house for a nice warm place to get high.”

Heather exhaled. She felt an insane, immediate sense of relief. She hadn’t realized, until now, that she had held herself accountable, at least a little bit, for his murder.

But it wasn’t murder. It hadn’t been.

“Still, someone started that fire,” the cop said, and Heather realized she’d been staring at the same package of pretzels for several seconds too long, and now the cop was staring at her. She shoved the pretzels back on their rack, ducked her head, and headed for the door.

“Hey! Hey, miss!”

She froze.

“You forgot your groceries. I got change for you too.”

If she bolted, it would look suspicious. Then the cop might wonder why she’d freaked. She turned slowly back to the counter, keeping her eyes trained on the ground. She could feel both men staring at her as she collected the bag of food. Her cheeks were hot, and her mouth felt dry as sand.

She was almost at the door again, almost in the clear, when the cop called out to her.

“Hey.” He was watching her closely. “Look at me.”

She forced her eyes up to his. He had a pudgy, doughlike face. But his eyes were big and round, like a small kid’s, or an animal’s.

“What’s your name?” he said.

She said the first name that came to her: “Vivian.”

He moved gum around in his mouth. “How old are you, Vivian? You in high school?”

“Graduated,” she said. Her palms were itching. She wanted to turn and run. His eyes were traveling her face quickly, like he was memorizing it.