Panic

Panic Page 34

“It is my fault.” She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and cried until she coughed, while he rubbed her back and her hair, touched her lightly on her cheek, murmured into the top of her head. Only Bishop could make her feel small. Only Bishop could make her feel protected.

She didn’t even hear the approach of Anne’s car, until a door was slamming and Anne’s voice, frantic, called, “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

Heather stepped away from Bishop and immediately, Anne seized her by the shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“It’s not me.” Heather swiped an arm across her nose. Her mouth was thick with the taste of phlegm, and she couldn’t look Anne in the eye. “I’m fine.” She tried to say it. The tigers are gone. The tigers are gone.

Lily was quiet, her mouth moving soundlessly.

It was Bishop who spoke. “The tigers got out,” he said.

Anne’s face turned colors, as though Heather was watching her on a screen and someone had just adjusted the contrast. “You’re . . . you’re joking.”

Heather managed to shake her head.

“How?” Anne said.

Before Heather could speak, Bishop cut in, “It was my fault.”

At last Heather found her voice. “No. Bishop had nothing to do with it. It was me. It was . . . the game.”

“The game?” Anne squinted at Heather like she’d never seen her before. “The game?”

“Panic,” Heather said. Her voice was hoarse. “I opened the gates.… I must have forgotten to lock them again.”

For a second, Anne was silent. Her face was awful to see: white and ghastly. Horrified.

“But I was the one who told her to do it,” Bishop said suddenly. “It’s my fault.”

“No.” Heather was embarrassed that Bishop felt he had to stand up for her, even as she was grateful to him. “He had nothing to do with it.”

“I did.” Bishop’s voice got louder. He was sweating. “I told her to do it. I told all of them to do it. I started the fire at the Graybill place. I’m the one . . .” His voice broke. He turned to Heather. His eyes were pleading, desperate. “I’m a judge. That’s what I wanted to tell you. That’s what I wanted to explain. What you saw the other day, with Vivian . . .”

He didn’t finish. Heather couldn’t speak either. She felt like time had stopped; they were all transformed to statues. Bishop’s words were sifting through her like a snow, freezing her insides, her ability to speak.

Impossible. Not Bishop. He hadn’t even wanted her to play.…

“I don’t believe it.” She heard the words, and only then realized she was speaking.

“It’s true.” Now he turned back to Anne. “It wasn’t Heather’s fault. You have to believe me.”

Anne brought her hand briefly to her forehead, as though pressing back pain. She closed her eyes. Lily was still standing several feet away, shifting her weight, anxious and silent. Anne opened her eyes again. “We need to call the police,” she said quietly. “They’ll need to put out the alert.”

Bishop nodded. But for a second no one moved. Heather wished Anne would yell—it would be so much easier.

And Bishop’s words kept swirling through her: I told her to do it. I told all of them to do it.

“Come on, Lily,” Anne said. “Come inside with me.”

Heather started to follow them into the house, but Anne stopped her. “You wait out here,” she said sharply. “We’ll talk in a bit.”

Her words brought little knife-aches of pain to Heather’s stomach. It was all over. Anne would hate her now.

Lily shot Heather a worried glance and then hurried after Anne. Bishop and Heather were left standing alone in the yard, as the sun pushed through the clouds and the day transformed into a microscope, focusing its heat.

“I’m sorry, Heather,” Bishop said. “I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to—you have to know that. But the rules—”

“The rules?” she repeated. The anger was bubbling up from a crack opening inside her. “You lied to me. About everything. You told me not to play, and all this time—”

“I was trying to keep you safe,” he said. “And when I knew you wouldn’t back down, I tried to help you. Whenever I could, I tried.” Bishop had moved closer and his arms were out—he was reaching for her. She took a step backward.

“You almost got me killed,” she said. “The gun—if it wasn’t for Dodge—”

“I told Dodge to do it,” Bishop cut in. “I made sure of it.”

Click-click-click. Memories slotted together: Bishop insisting on taking the shortcut that led past Trigger-Happy Jack’s house. The fireworks at the Graybill house on the Fourth of July, which Bishop made sure she would see. A clue: fire.

“You have to believe me, Heather. I never meant to lie to you.”

“So why did you do it, Bishop?” Heather crossed her arms. She didn’t want to listen to him. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to give in to the black tide, let it suck away all her other thoughts—about the tigers, about how badly she had disappointed Anne, about how she would be homeless again. “What did you need to prove so badly, huh?” More parts of her were flaking off. Crack. “That you’re better than us? Smarter than us? We get it, okay? You’re leaving.” Crack. “You’re getting out of here. That makes you smarter than the whole fucking rest of us put together.”

Bishop’s mouth was as thin as a line. “You know what your problem is?” he said quietly. “You want everything to be shitty. You have a sister who loves you. Friends who love you. I love you, Heather.” He said it fast, in a mumble, and she could not even be happy, because he kept going. “You’ve outlasted almost everyone in Panic. But all you see is the crap. So you don’t have to believe in anything. So you’ll have an excuse to fail.”

Crack. Heather turned around, so if she started crying again, he wouldn’t see. But she realized she had nowhere to go. There was the house, the high bowl of the sky, the sun like a laser. And she, Heather, had no place in any of it. The last bits of her broke apart, opened like a wound: she was all hurt and anger. “You know what I wish? I wish you were gone already.”

She thought he might start yelling. She was almost hoping he would. But instead he just sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Look, Heather. I don’t want to fight with you. I want you to understand—”

“Didn’t you hear me? Just go. Leave. Get out of here.” She swiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand. His voice was screaming through her head. You want everything to be shitty . . . so you’ll have an excuse to fail.

“Heather.” Bishop put a hand on her shoulder, and she shook him off.

“I don’t know how many other ways I can say it.”

Bishop hesitated. She felt him close to her, felt the warmth of his body, like a comforting force, like a blanket. For one wild second, she thought he would refuse, he would turn around and hug her and tell her he was never ever leaving. For one wild second, it was what she wanted more than anything.

Instead she felt his fingers just graze her elbow. “I did it for you,” he said in a low voice. “I was planning to give you the money.” His voice cracked a little. “Everything I’ve ever done is for you, Heather.”

Then he was gone. He turned around, and by the time she couldn’t stand it anymore and her legs were about to give out and the anger had turned to eight different tides pulling her to pieces, and she thought to turn around and call out for him—by then he was in the car, and couldn’t hear her.

It was an upside-down day for Carp. Bishop Marks turned himself in to the police for the murder of Little Kelly—even though, as it turned out, Little Kelly hadn’t been killed in the fire at the Graybill house. Still, no one could believe it: Bishop Marks, that nice kid from down the way, whose dad had a frame shop over in Hudson. Shy kid. One of the good ones.

At the police station, Bishop denied the fire had anything to do with Panic. A prank, he said.

Upside down and inside out. Sign of the messed-up times we’re living in.

That night, Kirk Finnegan came outside when his dogs began to go crazy. He was carrying a rifle, suspecting drunk kids or maybe his piece-of-shit neighbor, who’d recently started parking on Kirk’s property and couldn’t be convinced that it wasn’t his right.

Instead he saw a tiger.

A fucking tiger, right there in his yard, with its enormous mouth around one of Kirk’s cocker spaniels.

He thought he was dreaming, hallucinating, drunk. He was so scared he peed in his boxer shorts and didn’t notice until later. He acted without thinking, swung the rifle up, fired four shots straight into the tiger’s flank, kept firing, even after it collapsed, even after by some grace-of-God miracle its jaws went slack and his spaniel got to his feet and started barking again—kept firing, because those eyes kept staring at him, dark as an accusation or a lie.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 16

heather

HEATHER HAD SUCCESSFULLY MANAGED TO AVOID talking to Anne for a whole day. After her fight with Bishop, she had walked two miles to the gully and spent the afternoon cursing and throwing rocks at random things (street signs, when there were any; fences; and abandoned cars).

His words played on endless repeat in her head. You want everything to be shitty . . . so you’ll have an excuse to fail.

Unfair, she wanted to scream.

But a second, smaller voice in her head said, True. Those two words—unfair and true—pinged back and forth in her head, like her mind was a giant Ping-Pong table.

By the time she returned from the gully it was evening, and both Anne and Lily were gone. She was seized with a sudden and irrational fear that Anne had taken Lily back to Fresh Pines. Then she saw a note on the kitchen table.

Grocery store, it said simply.

It was only seven thirty, but Heather curled up in bed, under the covers, despite the stifling heat, and waited for sleep to put a stop to the Ping-Pong game in her mind.

But when she woke up—early, when the sun was still making its first, tentative entry into the room, poking like an exploratory animal through the blinds—she knew there was no avoiding it anymore. Overnight, the Ping-Pong game had been resolved. And the word true had emerged victorious.

What Bishop had said was true. She felt even worse than she had the day before, which she had not believed was possible.

Already, she could hear Anne noises from downstairs: the clink-clink-clink of dishes coming out of the dishwasher, the squeak of the old wooden floorboards. When waking up in Fresh Pines to the usual explosion of sounds—cars backfiring, people yelling, doors banging and dogs barking and loud music—she had dreamed of just this kind of home, where mornings were quiet and mothers did dishes and got up early and then yelled at you to get up.

Funny how in such a short time, Anne’s house had become more like home than Fresh Pines had ever been.