Panic

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.”

“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.