Panic

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.”

She brought Lily to the car. There was an old T-shirt in the back—Krista’s, reeking of smoke—but it was dry, at least. She helped Lily wriggle out of her wet shirt. She untied Lily’s shoes for her, and peeled off her wet socks, then made Lily press her feet up to the vents where the heat had begun to blow. The whole time Lily was limp, obedient, as if all the life had been washed out of her. Heather moved mechanically.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Lily. She felt detached from the words, as though she wasn’t the one speaking. The anger was drumming out the knowledge of everything else.

Boom, boom, boom.

There was music coming from the trailer, practically shaking the walls. The lights were on too, although the blinds were down; she could see a figure swaying in silhouette, maybe dancing. She hadn’t noticed before because she’d been too worried about Lily. She kept seeing the little figure huddled underneath the pathetic birch, practically the single tree that Fresh Pines boasted.

Mom told me to go away. She told me to play outside.

Boom, boom, boom.

She was at the door. Locked. From inside, she heard a shriek of laughter. Somehow she fit the key in the lock; that must mean she wasn’t shaking. Strange, she thought, and also: Maybe I could have won Panic after all.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

There were three of them: Krista, Bo, and Maureen, from Lot 99. They froze, and Heather froze too. She was seized momentarily by the sense that she’d entered a play and had forgotten all her lines—she couldn’t breathe, didn’t know what to do. The lights were high, bright. They looked like actors, all three of them—actors you see too close. They were too made up. But the makeup was horrible. It looked as though it was beginning to melt, slowly deforming their faces. Their eyes were bright, glittering: doll eyes.

Heather took in everything at once: the blue haze of smoke. The empty beer bottles, the overflowing cups used as ashtrays, the single bottle of Georgi vodka, half empty.

And the small blue plastic plate on the table, still faintly outlined with the imprint of the Sesame Street characters—Lily’s old plate—now covered with thin lines of fine white powder.

All of it hit Heather like a physical blow, a quick sock to the stomach. Her world went black for a second. The plate. Lily’s plate.

Then the moment passed. Krista brought a cigarette unsteadily to her lips, nearly missing. “Heather Lynn,” she slurred. She patted her shirt, her breasts, as though expecting to find a lighter there. “What are you doing, baby? Why are you staring at me like I’m a—”

Heather lunged. Before her mother finished speaking, before she could think about what she was doing, all of the rage traveled down into her arms and legs and she picked up the blue plate, crisscrossed with powder like it had been scarred by something, and threw.

Maureen screamed and Bo shouted. Krista barely managed to duck. She tried to right herself and, staggering backward, managed to land on Maureen’s lap, in the armchair. This made Maureen scream even louder. The plate collided against the wall with a thud, and the air was momentarily full of white powder, like an indoor snow. It would have been funny if it weren’t so horrible.

“What the hell?” Bo took two steps toward Heather and for a moment, she thought he might hit her. But he just stood there, fists clenched, red-faced and enraged. “What the hell?”

Krista fought to her feet. “Who in the goddamn do you think you are?”

Heather was glad that they were separated by the coffee table. Otherwise, she wasn’t sure what she would do. She wanted to kill Krista. Really kill her. “You’re disgusting.” Her voice sounded mangled, like something had wrapped around her vocal cords.

“Get out.” The color was rising in Krista’s face. Her voice, too, was rising, and she was shaking as though something awful was going to detonate inside her. “Get out! Do you hear me? Get out!” She reached for the vodka bottle and threw it. Fortunately, she was slow. Heather sidestepped it easily. She heard shattering glass and felt the splash of liquid. Bo got his arms around Krista. He managed to restrain her. She was still shrieking, writhing like an animal, face red and twisted and awful.

And suddenly all the anger, the writhing snake in Heather’s stomach, released. She felt absolutely nothing. No pain. No anger. No fear. Nothing but disgust. She felt, weirdly, as if she were floating above the scene, hovering in her own body.

She turned and went to her bedroom. She checked her top drawer first, in the plastic jewelry box where she kept her earnings. Everything was gone but forty dollars. Of course. Her mom had stolen it.

This didn’t bring a fresh wave of anger, only a new kind of disgust. Animals. They were animals, and Krista was the worst of them.

She pocketed the twenties and moved quickly through the room, stuffing things in Lily’s backpack: shoes, pants, shirts, underwear. When the backpack was full, she bundled things up in one of the comforters. They would need a blanket, anyway. And toothbrushes. She remembered reading in a magazine once that toothbrushes were the number one item travelers forgot to pack. But she wouldn’t forget. She was calm, thinking straight. She had it all together.

She slid the backpack onto one of her shoulders—it was so small, she couldn’t fit it correctly. Poor Lily. She wanted to get food from the kitchen, but that would mean walking past her mom and Bo and Maureen. She’d have to skip it. There probably wasn’t much she could use, anyway.

At the last second she took the rose off her dresser, the one Bishop had made her from metal and wire. It would be good luck.

She hefted the blanket in her arms, now heavy with all the clothing and shoes it contained, and shuffled sideways out of the bedroom door. She’d been worried her mom would try and stop her, but she shouldn’t have been. Krista was sitting on the couch, crying, with Maureen’s arms around her. Her hair was a stringy mess. Heather heard her say, “… did everything . . . on my own.” Only half the words were audible. She was too messed up to speak clearly. Bo was gone. He’d probably split, since the drugs were nothing but carpet crumbs now. Maybe he’d left to get more.

Heather pushed out the door. It didn’t matter. She’d never see Bo again. She’d never see her mother, or Maureen, or the inside of that trailer again. For one second, she could have sobbed, going down the porch steps. Never again—the idea filled her with a relief so strong, it almost turned her knees to water and made her trip.

But she couldn’t cry, not yet. She had to be strong for Lily.

Lily had fallen asleep in the front seat, her mouth open, her hair feathering slightly in the heat. Finally her lips weren’t blue anymore, and she was no longer shivering.

She didn’t open her eyes until they were just bouncing out of the entrance to the Pines and onto Route 22.

“Heather?” she said in a small voice.

“What’s up, Billy?” Heather tried to smile and couldn’t.

“I don’t want to go back there.” Lily turned and rested her forehead against the window. In the glass’s reflection, her face was narrow and pale, like a tapered flame.

Heather tightened her fingers on the wheel. “We’re not going back there,” she said. Weirdly, the words made the taste of sick come up. “We’re never going back, okay? I promise.”

“Where will we go?” Lily asked.

Heather reached over and squeezed Lily’s knee. Her jeans had finally dried. “We’ll figure something out. Okay? We’re going to be just fine.” The rain was still coming down in sheets; the car carved waves in the road, sending liquid rivers sloshing toward the gutters. “You trust me, right?” Heather asked.

Lily nodded without turning her face away from the window.

“We’re going to be fine,” Heather repeated, and returned both hands to the wheel, gripping tightly.

They couldn’t, she realized, go to Bishop’s or Nat’s. She’d taken her mom’s car and had no intention of returning it, which counted as stealing. And her friends’ houses would be the first place her mom would think of looking when she sobered up and realized what had happened.

Would she call the police? Would they track Heather down? Maybe her mom would convince them that Heather was a delinquent, and they would try to pin the fire on her.

But there was no point in worrying about that yet.

No one could know. It came down to that. She and Lily would have to be very, very careful for the next few weeks. As soon as they had enough money to leave Carp, they would. And until then, they had to hide. They’d have to hide the car, too, and use it only at night.

The idea came to her suddenly: Meth Row. The whole road was cluttered with old cars and abandoned houses. No one would notice one more shitty car parked there.

Lily had fallen asleep again and was snoring quietly. Meth Row looked even bleaker than usual. The rain had turned the pitted road to sludge, and Heather had trouble just keeping the wheel from jerking under her hands. It was hard to tell which houses were occupied and which weren’t, but she finally found a spot next to a storage shed and an old Buick, stripped nearly to its metal frame, where she could angle the car so it was mostly unseen from the road.

She turned off the engine. No point in wasting gas. They’d have to be careful about wasting anything now.

They’d be more comfortable in the backseat, but since Lily was already asleep and Heather doubted she would sleep at all—it wasn’t even six o’clock—she reached into the back and shook out all the things from the comforter. Stuff that had only an hour ago been littering their beds, the floor of their bedroom. Their home.

Homeless. It was the first time the word occurred to her, and she pushed it out of her mind. It was an ugly word, a word that smelled.

Runaways was better, a little more glam.

She spread the comforter over Lily, careful not to wake her. She found a hoodie in the back and put it on over her shirt, pulled up the hood, cinched the drawstrings tight. Thankfully it was summer and wouldn’t get too cold.

It occurred to her that she should turn her cell phone off too, to conserve battery power. But before she did, she typed out a text to Nat and Dodge. She included Bishop too. Like he’d said, he was in it, one way or another.

Changed my mind, she wrote. I’m back in.

She was playing for keeps now. For Lily. Forget the promise she’d made to Nat. The money would be hers, and hers alone.

That night, long after Heather had finally drifted off, head back in the front seat of the Taurus—when Nat was curled up in bed with her computer, searching for funny videos—when even the bars were shutting down and the people who wanted to drink were forced to do it outside, or in the parking lot of 7-Eleven—Ellie Hayes was woken up by two masked figures. They hauled her roughly to her feet and handcuffed her wrists in front of her body, as if she were a convict.

Her parents were gone for the weekend—the players knew what they were doing. Her older brother, Roger, heard the noise and the scuffling and burst into the hall, holding a baseball bat. But Ellie managed to cry out to him.

“It’s Panic!” she said.

Roger lowered the baseball bat, shook his head, returned to his room. He, too, had played.

Ellie’s biggest fear, other than floods, was enclosure, and she was relieved when instead of being packed in the trunk, she was guided roughly into the backseat of a car she didn’t recognize.

They drove for what seemed like forever—long enough that she began to get bored and fell asleep. Then the car stopped, and she saw a vast, empty parking lot, and a fence enclosed by barbed wire. Before the headlights cut, she saw a weathered sign tacked to a sad, saggy-looking building.

WELCOME TO THE DENNY SWIMMING POOL. HOURS 9 A.M.–DUSK, MEMORIAL DAY TO LABOR DAY.

The padlock on the gates had been left undone. Ellie remembered, as they passed through it, that Ray Hanrahan had done maintenance at the Denny Swimming Pool last summer. Could he be in on this?

Across the wet grass, the squelching mud, to the edge of the pool, which sat glimmering slickly in the moonlight, faintly lit up from below, electric and improbable.

The fear came rushing back all at once. “You have to be kidding me.” She was at the edge of the deep end, trying to backpedal. But she couldn’t move. They had her tightly. Something metal bit into the palm of her hands, and she curled her fingers instinctively around it, too frightened to think or wonder what it was. “How do you expect me to—?”

She didn’t get to finish before she was pushed, roughly, headfirst into the water.

Flood. A flood of water everywhere: mouth, eyes, nose.

She was underwater for a little more than a minute before she was hauled roughly to the surface, but she would afterward swear it was at least five, or seven. Endless seconds of her heartbeat thudding in her ears, her lungs screaming for air, her legs kicking for purchase. So many seconds of panic—so complete, so all-consuming, it wasn’t until she was once again in the open air, taking deep, grateful breaths, she realized that all along she had been clutching tightly to the small metal key that fitted her handcuffs.

Dodge’s gamble at last paid off. In the morning, the story of Ellie spread, and by noon the betting slips had once again appeared. This time, they were passed from hand to hand, secretively, cautiously. Zev Keller and Ellie Hayes had both failed their individual challenges. They were out of the game. Colin Akinson, too. He’d been the first to flee the Graybill house—rumor was he hadn’t stopped running until he was almost to Massachusetts.

Dodge, Ray, Heather, and Nat were still in. So were Harold Lee, Kim Hollister, and Derek Klieg.

Only seven players left.