Panic

FRIDAY, JULY 29

dodge

DODGE HAD BEEN HOPING NAT’S BIRTHDAY PARTY would be small, and he was disappointed when he pulled his bike up to Bishop’s house and saw a dozen cars fitted together like Tetris pieces in the only part of the yard not dominated by junk. There was music playing from somewhere, and lanterns had been placed all around the yard, perched on various objects like metallic fireflies settling down to rest.

“You came!” Nat weaved toward him, holding a paper cup. Beer sloshed on his shoe, and he realized she was already drunk. She was wearing lots of makeup and a tiny dress, and she looked frighteningly beautiful, like someone much older. Her eyes were bright, almost like she was on something. He was aware that she had just been talking to a group of guys he didn’t know—they, too, looked older, and were now staring at him—and felt suddenly uncomfortable.

She saw him looking and waved a hand. “Don’t worry about them,” she said. Her words were slurring together. “Some guys I know from a bar in Kingston. I only invited them because they brought the booze. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Dodge had Nat’s present wrapped in tissue paper in his pocket. He wanted to give it to her but not here, while people were watching. He wanted to tell her, too, that he was sorry about Panic. Nat had frozen up at the side of the highway and taken more than a minute to cross. Just like that, the game was over for her.

Everyone else would move on to the next challenge.

On the way home from the highway challenge, Nat had barely said a word, just sat stiffly next to him with tears running down her face. No one had spoken. Dodge had been annoyed at Bishop and Heather. They were her best friends. They were supposed to know what to say to make her feel better.

He had felt helpless, as frightened as he had while standing on that highway with the blindfold.

But Nat was already hauling him off toward the back of the house. “Come get a drink, okay? And say hi to everyone.”

At the back of the house a large grill was letting off thick clouds of smoke that smelled like meat and charcoal. An old dude was pushing around some burgers on it, holding a beer in one hand. Dodge thought it might have been Bishop’s dad—they had the same nose, the same floppy hair, although the man’s was gray—and was surprised. In school he’d always thought of Bishop as kind of a dork, well-meaning but just too nice to be interesting. He’d imagined Bishop’s family would be of the mom-dad-sister-older-brother-picket-fence variety. Not some guy with a beer grilling in the middle of towers of rusting junk.

But that was another thing you learned when playing Panic: people would surprise you. They would knock you on your ass. It was practically the only thing you could count on.

Kids from school were standing around in little groups, or using some of the old furniture and gutted car frames as makeshift chairs. They were all staring at Dodge, some with curiosity and some with open hostility, and it wasn’t until then that he realized none of the other Panic players had been invited, except for Heather. That’s when it hit him that there really weren’t many Panic players left. Just five.

And he was one of them.

The two things—Nat’s hand, and the fact that he was getting so close—sent a thrill up his spine.

“The keg’s over there, behind the old motorcycle.” Nat giggled. She gestured with her cup, sending another bit of beer sloshing over the rim, and he remembered suddenly the time she’d called him Dave at homecoming last year. His stomach tightened. He hated parties, never felt comfortable at them. “I’ll be back, okay? I have to circulate. It’s kinda my party, after all.”

She kissed him—on the cheek, he noticed, and of course then again on the other cheek—and quickly disappeared, blending into a knot of people standing around the keg. Without Nat next to him, he felt like he was back in the halls at school, except this time, instead of everyone ignoring him, everyone was staring. When he spotted Heather, he could have run up and kissed her.

She saw him at the same time and waved him over. She was sitting on the hood of what Dodge could only imagine was one of Bishop’s projects: a Pinto junker, wheel-less and propped up on cinder blocks. He could count a half-dozen cars, in various states of construction and deconstruction, just from where he was standing.

“Hey.” Heather was drinking a Coke. She looked tired. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

Dodge shrugged. He wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe Nat had only invited him at the last minute? “Didn’t want to miss the big birthday,” was all he said.

“Nat’s trashed already,” Heather said with a short laugh. She looked away, squinting. Again he was struck by the change that had come over her this summer. She was thinning out, sharpening, and her beauty was becoming more pronounced. Like she’d been wearing an invisibility cloak her whole life, and now it was coming off.

Dodge leaned against the hood and fumbled in his pocket for his cigarettes. He didn’t even feel like smoking—he just wanted something to do with his hands. “How’s Lily?” he asked.

She looked at him sharply. “She’s fine,” she said slowly. Then: “She’s inside, watching TV.”

Dodge nodded. The day before he’d been smoking a cigarette in Meth Row when he’d heard the sound of someone singing behind the shed where he usually kept his bike. Curious, he circled around to the back.

And there was Heather.

Butt-naked.

She’d shouted and he’d turned quickly away, but not before he noticed she was washing herself with the hose from Dot’s Diner, the one the kitchen boys used to spray down the alley in the evenings. He saw a car, her car, with clothes drying on its hood; and a girl who must have been Heather’s sister, sitting in the grass, reading.

“Don’t tell,” Heather had said.

Dodge had kept his back to her. One of the pairs of underwear had blown off the hood and onto the ground; he kept his eyes fixed on it. It was full-butt underwear, patterned with strawberries, faded. Next to it, he’d seen two toothbrushes and a curled-up tube of toothpaste sitting on an overturned bucket, and several pairs of shoes lined up neatly in the dirt. He wondered how long they’d been camping out there.

“I won’t,” he had said without turning around.

And he wouldn’t. That was another thing Dodge liked about secrets: they bonded people together. “How long you think you can keep it up?” he asked now.

“As long as it takes to win,” she replied.

He looked at her—face so serious, so dead set—and felt a sudden surge of something like joy. Understanding. That’s what it was; he and Heather understood each other.

“I like you, Heather,” he said. “You’re all right.”

She briefly scanned his face, as if to verify that he wasn’t laughing at her. Then she smiled. “Right back at you, Dodge.”

Nat reappeared, carrying a bottle of tequila. “Take a shot with me, Heather.”

Heather made a face. “Tequila?”

“Come on,” Nat said, pouting. Her words were more slurred than ever, but her eyes kept their strange, unnatural brightness—like something not quite human. “It’s my birthday.”

Heather shook her head. Nat laughed.

“I don’t believe it.” Her voice was getting louder. “You’ll play Panic, but you’re afraid of taking a shot.”

“Shhhh.” Heather’s face turned red.

“She wasn’t even supposed to play,” Nat said, pointing the bottle at Heather, as though addressing an audience. And people were listening. Dodge saw that they were turning in Heather’s direction, smirking, whispering.

“Come on, Nat. You’re not supposed to talk about the game, remember?” he said, but Nat ignored him.

“I was gonna play,” Nat announced. “I did play. Not anymore. She—you—sabotaged me. You sabotaged me.” She turned to Heather.

Heather stared at her for a second. “You’re drunk,” she said matter-of-factly, then slid off the hood of the car.

Nat tried to grab her. “I was just kidding,” she said. But Heather kept walking. “Come on, Heath. I was just fucking around.”

“I’m going to find Bishop,” Heather said without turning.

Nat leaned up against the car, next to Dodge. She uncapped the bottle of tequila, took a sip, and made a face. “Some birthday,” she muttered.

Dodge could smell her skin, the alcohol on her breath and strawberry shampoo in her hair. He was aching to touch her. Instead he shoved his hands in his pocket and felt for the gift. He knew he had to give it to her now, before he chickened out or she got even drunker.

“Look, Nat. Is there somewhere we could go? I mean, to be alone for a minute?” Realizing she might think he was going to try to feel her up or something, he rushed on: “I have something for you.” And he showed her the little tissue-paper-wrapped box, hoping she wouldn’t care that it had gotten squashed in his pocket.

Her face changed. She smiled huge, showing off her perfect little white teeth, and set the bottle of tequila down. “Dodge, you didn’t have to,” she said. And then: “Come on, I know somewhere we can go.”

Just beyond the back porch was an area dedicated to what looked like lawn decorations: towering limestone statues of various mythical figures Dodge should probably know but didn’t; limestone benches and birdbaths full of standing water, moss, and leaves. Because of the statues and the porch it was concealed from view, and as he entered the semicircular enclosure, Dodge’s stomach started going crazy. The music was muffled, and he and Nat were alone.

“Go ahead,” he said, passing her the box. “Open it.”

He thought he might puke. What if she hated it? Finally she got the wrapping off, and she opened the little box and stood there staring at it: a dark cord of velvet and a small, crystal butterfly charm, light dazzling from its wings, resting neatly on a bunch of cotton.

She stared at it for so long, he thought she must hate it, and then he thought he really would be sick. The necklace had cost him three full days of the cash he got stocking shelves.

“If you want to return it . . .,” he started to say. But then she looked up and he saw that she was crying.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I love it.” And before he knew what was happening, she reached for him and drew him down to her and kissed him. Her lips tasted like salt and tequila.

When she pulled back, he felt dizzy. He’d kissed girls before but not like that. Usually he was too stressed about what their tongue was doing or whether he was using too much pressure or too little. But with Nat he forgot to think, or even breathe, and now his vision was clouded with black spots. “Listen,” he blurted out. “I want you to know I’ll still honor the split. If I win, I mean. You can still take your share of the money.”

She stiffened suddenly, almost as if he’d slapped her. For a second she stood there, rigid. Then she shoved the jewelry box back at him. “I can’t take this,” she said. “I can’t accept it.”

Dodge felt like he’d just inhaled a bowling ball. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t want it,” she said, and forced the box into his hand. “We’re not together, okay? I mean, I like you and all but . . . I’m seeing someone else. It isn’t right.”

Cold, cold: washing through his whole body. He was freezing, confused and furious. He didn’t feel like himself, didn’t sound like himself either, as he heard himself say, “Who is it?”

She had turned away from him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “No one you know.”

“You kissed me,” he said. “You kissed me, you made me think—”

She shook her head. She still wouldn’t look at him. “It was for the game. Okay? I wanted you to help me win. That’s all.”

That voice he didn’t recognize came out of his mouth again. “I don’t believe you.” The words sounded thin and flimsy.

She kept speaking, almost as if he wasn’t there. “But I don’t need Panic. I don’t need you. I don’t need Heather. Kevin says I’ve got potential in front of the camera. He says—”

“Kevin?” Something clicked in Dodge’s brain, and his stomach opened up. “That scumbag you met at the mall?”

“He’s not a scumbag.” Now she whirled around to face him. She was shaking. Her fists were balled and her eyes were bright and there was wetness on her cheeks and it broke his heart. He still wanted to kiss her. He hated her. “He’s legit. He believes in me. He said he would help me.…”

The cold in Dodge’s chest had turned into a hard fist. He could feel it beating against his ribs, threatening to explode out through his skin. “I’m sure he did,” he said, practically spitting. “Let me guess. All you had to do was show him your tits—”

“Shut up,” she whispered.

“Maybe let him feel you up for a while. Or did you have to spread your legs, too?” As soon as he said it, he wished the words back into his mouth.

Nat stiffened as though a shock had run through her. And he could tell from her face—the guilt and the sadness and the sorrow—that she did, she had.

“Nat.” He could barely say her name. He wanted to say he was sorry, and he was sorry for her too, for what she’d done. He wanted to tell her that he believed in her and thought she was beautiful.

“Go away,” she whispered.

“Please.” He started to reach for her.

She stumbled backward, nearly tripping on the grass. “Go,” she said. Her eyes locked on his for a minute. He saw two dark holes, like wounds; then she whirled around and was gone.

heather

BISHOP HAD A TRAMPOLINE; OR AT LEAST, HE HAD A trampoline frame. The nylon had long ago disintegrated and been replaced with a heavy canvas tarp, stretched taut. Heather wasn’t surprised to find him there, hiding out from the rest of the guests. He’d never been super social. She wasn’t either. It was one of the things that bonded them.

“Having a good time?” she asked, as she maneuvered onto the canvas next to him. Bishop smelled like cinnamon, and a little like butter.

He shrugged. When he smiled, his nose crinkled. “So-so. You?”

“So-so,” she admitted. “How’s Lily doing?” Heather had had no choice but to bring her. They’d installed her in the den, and Bishop had volunteered to check in on her when he went inside for more plastic cups.

“She’s fine. Watching a marathon of some celebrity show. I made her popcorn.” He leaned back, so he was staring at the sky, and motioned for Heather to do the same.

When they were little, they had sometimes slept out here, side by side in sleeping bags, surrounded by empty packages of chips and cookies. One time, she had woken up and found a raccoon sitting on her chest. Bishop had yelled to startle it away—but not before getting a picture. It was one of her favorite memories from childhood.

She could still remember what it felt like to wake up next to him, with dew covering their sleeping bags and soaking the canvas, their breath steaming in the air—they were so warm next to each other. Like they were in the only safe, good place in the world.

Now she unconsciously moved her head onto the hollow space between his chest and shoulder, and he wrapped one arm around her. His fingers grazed her bare arms, and her body felt suddenly fizzy and warm. She wondered how they must look from above: like two pieces of a puzzle, fitted neatly together.

“Are you going to miss me?” Bishop asked suddenly.

Heather’s heart gave a huge, awful thump, like it wanted to leap out of her throat.

She’d been trying all summer to ignore the fact that Bishop was going away to college. Now they had less than a month left. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said, nudging him.

“I’m serious.” He shifted, withdrawing his arm from under her head, rolling over onto one elbow to face her. Casually, he slung his other arm over her waist. Her shirt was riding up and his hand was on her stomach—his tan skin against her pale, freckled belly—and her lungs were having trouble working properly.

It’s Bishop, she reminded herself. It’s just Bishop.

“I’m gonna miss you so bad, Heather,” he said. They were so close, she could see a bit of fuzz clinging to one of his eyelashes; she could see individual spirals of color in his eyes. And his lips. Soft-looking. The perfect imperfectness of his teeth.

“What about Avery?” Heather blurted. She didn’t know where the words came from. “Are you going to miss her, too?”

He drew back an inch, frowning. Then he sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. As soon as he wasn’t touching Heather anymore, she would have given anything to have his touch back. “I’m not with Avery anymore,” he said carefully. “We broke up.”

Heather stared. “Since when?”

“Does it matter?” Bishop looked annoyed. “Look, it was never a real thing, okay?”

“You just liked hooking up with her,” Heather said. She suddenly felt angry, and cold, and exposed. She sat up, tugging down her shirt. Bishop was leaving her behind. He would find new girls—pretty, tiny girls like Avery—and he would forget all about her. It happened all the time.

“Hey.” Bishop sat up too. Heather wouldn’t look at him, so he reached out and forced her chin in his direction. “I’m trying to talk to you, okay? I . . . I had to break up with Avery. I like . . . someone else. There’s someone else. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But it’s complicated.…”

He was staring at her so intensely; Heather could feel the warmth between them.

She didn’t think. She just leaned in and closed her eyes and kissed him.

It was like taking a bite of ice cream that’s been sitting out just long enough: sweet, easy, perfect. She wasn’t worried about whether she was doing it right, as she had been all those years ago in the movie theater, when she could only think of the popcorn in her teeth. She was simply there, inhaling the smell of him, of his lips, while the music thudded softly in the background and the cicadas swelled an accompaniment. Heather felt little bursts of happiness in her chest, as though someone had set off sparklers there.

Then, abruptly, he pulled away. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

And instantly, the sparklers in her chest were extinguished, leaving only a smoking black place. Just that one word, and she knew: she’d made a mistake.

“I can’t . . .” Suddenly he looked different—older, full of regret, like someone she barely knew. “I don’t want to lie to you, Heather.”

She felt like she’d swallowed something spoiled: there was a bad taste in her mouth, and her stomach was lashing. She felt her face begin to burn. It wasn’t her. He was in love with someone else. And she’d just shoved her tongue down his throat like a lunatic.

She had to crab-walk backward, away from him, to the edge of the trampoline. “Stupid,” she said. “It was stupid. Just forget it, okay? I don’t know what I was thinking.”

For a second, he looked hurt. But she was too embarrassed to care. And then he frowned, and he just looked tired and a little irritated, like she was an unruly child and he was a patient father. She realized suddenly that that was how Bishop saw her: like a kid. A kid sister.

“Will you just sit down?” he said in his tired-dad voice. His hair was sticking straight up—the hair equivalent of a scream.

“It’s getting late,” Heather said, which it wasn’t. “I have to take Lily home. Mom will get worried.” Lie on top of lie. She didn’t know why she said it. Maybe because in that moment she really wished for it—wished that she was heading back to a real home with a normal mom who cared, instead of back to the car and the parking spot on Meth Row. Wished that she was small and delicate, like a special Christmas ornament that needed to be handled correctly. Wished that she was someone else.

“Heather, please,” he said.

The world was breaking up, shattering into colors—and she knew if she didn’t get out of there, she would start to cry. “Forget about it,” she said. “Seriously. Would you? Just forget it ever happened.”

She only made it a few steps away before the tears started. She swiped them away quickly with the heel of a hand; she had to pass through a dozen old classmates to get to the house, including Matt’s best friend, and she would rather die than be the girl crying at her best friend’s birthday party. Everyone would probably think she was wasted. Funny how people could be around you for so many years, and be so off the mark.

She went in through the back door, taking a second inside to stand, inhaling, trying to get control of herself. Weirdly, although Bishop’s whole property was a junkyard, the house was clean, sparsely furnished, and always smelled like carpet cleaner. Heather knew that Mr. Marks’s longtime girlfriend, Carol, considered the yard a lost cause. But the home was her place, and she was always scrubbing and straightening and yelling at Bishop to take his dirty feet off the coffee table, for God’s sake. Even though the house hadn’t been remodeled since the seventies, and still sported shag carpet and weird orange-and-white-checkered linoleum in the kitchen, it looked spotless.

Heather’s throat tightened again. Everything was so familiar here: the Formica dining room table; the crack running along the kitchen countertop; the curled photographs stuck to the fridge with magnets advertising dentists’ offices and hardware stores. They were as familiar to her as any she had ever called her own.

They were hers, and Bishop had been hers, once.

But no more.

She could hear running water, and muffled TV sounds from the den, where Lily was watching. She stepped into the darkened hall and noticed the bathroom door was partly open. A wedge of light lay thickly on the carpet. Now she could hear crying, over the sound of the water. She saw a curtain of dark hair appear and disappear quickly.

“Nat?” Heather swung the door open carefully.

Water gushed from the faucet, and steam was drumming up from the porcelain bowl. The water must have been scalding, but Nat was still scrubbing her hands, and sniffling. Her skin was raw and red and shiny, like it had been burned.

“Hey.” Heather forgot, for the moment, about her own problems. She took a step into the bathroom. Instinctively, she reached out and shut off the faucet. Even the taps were hot. “Hey. Are you okay?”

It was a stupid thing to say. Nat was obviously not okay.

She turned to Heather. Her eyes were puffy, and her whole face looked weird and swollen, like bread that was rising wrong. “It’s not working anymore,” she said in a whisper.

“What isn’t?” Heather asked. She felt suddenly on hyperalert. She noticed the drip-drip-drip of the faucet, and Nat’s monstrously red hands, hanging like deflated balloons by her side. She thought of the way that Nat always liked things even, straight down the middle. How sometimes she showered more than once a day. The taps and tongue clicks. Stuff she’d mostly ignored, because she was so used to it. Another blind spot between people.

“That’s why I froze on the highway, you know,” Nat went on. “I just . . . glitched.” Her eyes were watery again. “Nothing’s working.” Her voice wavered. “I don’t feel safe, you know?”

“Come here,” Heather said. She drew Nat into a hug and Nat continued crying, drunk, against her chest. She gripped Heather tightly as if she worried she might fall. “Shhh,” Heather murmured, again and again. “Shhh. It’s your birthday.”

But she didn’t say it would be okay. How could she? She knew that Nat was right.

None of them was safe.

No more. Never again.

dodge

DODGE HEARD VOICES IN THE LIVING ROOM AS SOON as he opened the door and immediately regretted coming home directly. It was just after eleven, and his first thought was that Ricky was over again. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with Ricky grinning like an idiot and Dayna blushing and trying to make things not awkward and all the time shooting Dodge dagger eyes, like he was the one intruding.

But then his mom called, “Come in here, Dodge!”

A man was sitting on the couch. His hair was graying, and he was wearing a rumpled suit, which matched his rumpled face.

“What?” Dodge said, barely looking at his mom. He didn’t even try to be polite. He wasn’t going to play nice with one of his mom’s dates.

His mom frowned.

“Dodge,” she said, drawing out his name, like a warning bell. “You know Bill Kelly, don’t you? Bill came over for a little bit of company.” She was watching Dodge closely, and he read a dozen messages in her eyes at once: Bill Kelly just lost his son, so if you’re rude to him, I swear you’ll be sleeping on the streets.…

Dodge felt suddenly like his whole body was made of angles and spikes, and he couldn’t remember how to move it correctly. He turned jerkily to the man on the couch: Big Bill Kelly. Now he could see the resemblance to his son. The straw-colored hair running, in the father’s case, to gray; the piercing blue eyes and the heavy jaw.

“Hi,” Dodge said. His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat. “I was—am—I mean, we’re all sorry to hear—”

“Thank you, son.” Mr. Kelly’s voice was surprisingly clear. Dodge was glad he’d been interrupted, because he didn’t know what else he would have said. He was so hot he felt like his face was about to explode. He had the sudden, hysterical impulse to shout out: I was there. I was there when your son died. I could have saved him.

He took a deep breath. The game was wearing on him. He was starting to crack.

After what seemed like forever, Mr. Kelly’s eyes passed away from Dodge, back to his mother. “I should go, Sheila.” He stood up slowly. He was so tall he nearly grazed the ceiling with his head. “I’m going to Albany tomorrow. Autopsy’s done. I don’t expect any surprises, but . . .” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “I want to know everything. I will know everything.”

Sweat was pricking up underneath Dodge’s collar. It might have been his imagination, but he was sure Mr. Kelly’s words were directed at him. He thought of all the Panic betting slips he’d been collecting this summer. Where were they? Had he put them in his underwear drawer? Or left them out on his bedside table? Jesus. He had to get rid of them.

“Of course.” Dodge’s mom stood too. Now all three of them were standing, awkwardly, like they were in a play and had forgotten their lines. “Say good night to Mr. Kelly, Dodge.”

Dodge coughed. “Yeah. Sure. Look, I’m sorry again—”

Mr. Kelly stuck out his hand. “God’s works,” he said quietly. But Dodge felt that when Mr. Kelly shook his hand, he squeezed just a little too hard.

That was the night Diggin went to a party down at the gully and ended up with a cracked rib, two black eyes, and one of his teeth knocked out. Derek Klieg was drunk; that was the excuse he gave afterward, but everyone knew it was deeper than that, and once the swelling in Diggin’s face went down, he told anyone who would listen how Derek had jumped him, threatened him, tried to get him to cough up the names and identities of the judges, and wouldn’t listen when Diggin insisted he didn’t know.

It was an obvious violation of one of Panic’s many unspoken rules. The announcer was off-limits. So were the judges.

Derek Klieg was immediately disqualified. He had forfeited his spot in the game, and his name was struck from the betting slips by morning.

And Natalie, the last player eliminated, was back on.