Panic

SATURDAY, JUNE 25

heather

HEATHER HAD ONCE READ AN ARTICLE ONLINE ABOUT how time was relative, and moved faster or slower depending on where you were and what you were doing. But she had never understood why it moved slower during the really awful stuff—math class, dentist appointments—and speeded up whenever you tried to make time go slow. Like when you were taking a test, or at your birthday party.

Or, in this case, dreading something.

Why did time have to be the wrong kind of relative?

She had never regretted anything as much as she regretted making the decision, on the beach, to enter the game. In the days that followed, it seemed to her like a kind of insanity. Maybe she’d inhaled too much booze-vapor on the beach. Maybe seeing Matt with Delaney had driven her temporarily psychotic. That happened, didn’t it? Weren’t whole defenses built on that kind of thing, when people went crazy and hacked their ex-wives to pieces with an ax?

But she was too proud to withdraw now. And the date of the first official challenge kept drawing nearer. Despite the fact that the breakup made her want to go into permanent hiding, despite the fact that she was doing her best to avoid everyone who knew her even vaguely, the news had reached her: the water towers near Copake had been defaced, painted over with a date. Saturday. Sundown.

A message and invitation to all the players.

Matt was gone. School was over. Not that she’d ever liked school, but still. It got her out of the house; it was something to do. Now everything was over and done. It occurred to her that this was her life: vast and empty, like a coin dropping down a bottomless well.

She moved as slowly as she could, spent her nights curled on the couch watching TV with her sister, Lily, turned off her phone when she wasn’t obsessively checking it for calls from Matt. She didn’t want to deal with Bishop, who would lecture her and tell her that Matt was an idiot anyway; and Nat spent three days giving her the cold shoulder before admitting, finally, that she wasn’t that mad anymore.

Time tumbled, cascaded on, as though life had been set to fast-forward.

Finally Saturday came, and she couldn’t avoid it anymore.

She didn’t even have to bother to sneak out. Earlier in the evening, her mom and her stepdad, Bo, had gone over to some bar in Ancram, which meant they wouldn’t be stumbling home until the early hours or, possibly, Sunday afternoon—bleary-eyed, reeking of smoke, probably starving and in a foul mood.

Heather made mac ’n’ cheese for Lily, who ate in sullen silence in front of the TV. Lily’s hair was parted exactly down the middle, combed straight, and fixed in a hard knot at the back of her head. Recently she had been wearing it like that, and it made her look like an old woman stuck in an eleven-year-old’s body.

Lily was giving her the silent treatment, and Heather didn’t know why, but she didn’t have enough energy to worry about it. Lily was like that: stormy one minute, smiley the next. Recently, she’d been more on the stormy side—more serious, too, very careful about what she wore and how she fixed her hair, quieter, less likely to laugh until she snorted milk, less likely to beg Heather for a story before she went to bed—but Heather figured she was just growing up. There wasn’t that much to smile about in Carp. There definitely wasn’t much to smile about in Fresh Pines Mobile Park.

Still, it made Heather’s chest ache a little. She missed the old Lily: sticky Dr Pepper hands, the smell of bubblegum breath, hair that was never combed, and glasses that were always smudgy. She missed Lily’s eyes, wide in the dark, as she rolled over and whispered, “Tell me a story, Heather.”

But that was the way it worked—evolution, she guessed; the order of things.

At seven thirty p.m., Bishop texted her to say that he was on his way. Lily had withdrawn to the Corner, which was what Heather called their bedroom: a narrow, cramped room with two beds squeezed practically side by side; a chest of drawers missing a leg, which rocked violently when it was opened; a chipped lamp and a varnish-spotted nightstand; clothes heaped everywhere, like snowdrifts.

Lily was lying in the dark, blankets drawn up to her chin. Heather assumed she was sleeping and was about to close the door, when Lily turned to her, sitting up on one elbow. In the moonlight coming through the dirty windowpane, her eyes were like polished marbles.

“Where are you going?” she said.

Heather navigated around a tangle of jeans and sweatshirts, underwear and balled-up socks. She sat down on Lily’s bed. She was glad that Lily wasn’t asleep. She was glad, too, that Lily had decided to talk to her after all.

“Bishop and Nat are picking me up,” she said, avoiding the question. “We’re going to hang out for a little while.”

Lily lay down again, huddling in her blankets. For a minute, she didn’t say anything. Then: “Are you coming back?”

Heather felt her chest squeeze up. She leaned over to place a hand on Lily’s head. Lily jerked away. “Why would you say something like that, Billygoat?”

Lily didn’t answer. For several minutes Heather sat there, her heart raging in her chest, feeling helpless and alone in the dark. Then she heard Lily’s breathing and knew she had fallen asleep. Heather leaned over and kissed her sister’s head. Lily’s skin was hot and wet, and Heather had the urge to climb into bed with her, to wake her up and apologize for everything: for the ants in the kitchen and the water stains on the ceiling; for the smells of smoke and the shouting from outside; for their mom, Krista, and their stepdad, Bo; for the pathetic life they’d been thrust into, narrow as a tin can.

But she heard a light honk from outside, so instead she got up, closing the door behind her.

Heather could always tell Bishop was coming by the sound of his cars. His dad had owned a garage once, and Bishop was a car freak. He was good at building things; several years ago he’d made Heather a rose out of petals of copper, with a steel stem and little screws for thorns. He was always tinkering with rusted pieces of junk he picked up from God-knows-where. His newest was a Le Sabre with an engine that sounded like an old man trying to choke out a belt buckle.

Heather took shotgun. Natalie was sitting in the back. Weirdly, Natalie always insisted on sitting bitch, in the exact middle, even if there was no one else in the car. She’d told Heather that she didn’t like picking sides—left or right—because it always felt like she was betting with her life. Heather had explained to her a million times that it was more dangerous to sit in the middle, but Nat didn’t listen.

“I can’t believe you roped me into this,” Bishop said when Heather got in the car. It was raining—the kind of rain that didn’t so much fall as materialize, as though it was being exhaled by a giant mouth. There was no point in using an umbrella or rain jacket—it was coming from all directions at once, and got in collars and under shirtsleeves and down the back.

“Please.” She cinched her hoodie a bit tighter. “Cut the holier-than-thou crap. You’ve always watched the game.”

“Yeah, but that was before my two best friends decided to go batshit and join.”

“We get it, Bishop,” Nat said. “Turn on some music, will you?”

“No can do, my lady.” Bishop reached into the cup holder and handed Heather a Slurpee from 7-Eleven. Blue. Her favorite. She took a sip and felt a good freeze in her head. “Radio’s busted. I’m doing some work on the wiring—”

Nat cut him off, groaning exaggeratedly. “Not again.”

“What can I say? I love the fixer-uppers.”

He patted the steering wheel as he accelerated onto the highway. As if in response, the Le Sabre made a shrill whine of protest, followed by several emphatic bangs and a horrifying rattle, as if the engine were coming apart.

“I’m pretty sure the love is not mutual,” Nat said, and Heather laughed, and felt a little less nervous.

As Bishop angled the car off the road and bumped onto the narrow, packed-dirt one-laner that ran the periphery of the park, NO TRESPASSING signs were lit up intermittently in the mist of his headlights. Already, a few dozen cars were parked on the lane, most of them squeezed as close to the woods as possible, some almost entirely swallowed by the underbrush.

Heather spotted Matt’s car right away—the old used Jeep he’d inherited from an uncle, its rear bumper plastered with half-shredded stickers he’d tried desperately to key off, as though he had backed up into a massive spiderweb.

She remembered the first time they’d ever driven around together, to celebrate the fact that he had finally gotten his license after failing the test three times. He’d stopped and started so abruptly she’d felt like she might puke up the doughnuts he’d bought her, but he was so happy, she was happy too.

All day, all week, she’d been both desperately hoping to see him and praying that she would never see him again.

If Delaney was here, she really would puke. She shouldn’t have had the Slurpee.

“You okay?” Bishop asked her in a low voice as they got out of the car. He could always read her: she loved and hated that about him at the same time.

“I’m fine,” she said, too sharply.

“Why’d you do it, Heather?” he said, putting a hand on her elbow and stopping her. “Why’d you really do it?”

Heather noticed he was wearing the exact same outfit he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him, on the beach—the faded-blue Lucky Charms T-shirt, the jeans so long they looped underneath the heels of his Converse—and felt vaguely annoyed by it. His dirty-blond hair was sticking out at crazy angles underneath his ancient 49ers hat. He smelled good, though, a very Bishop smell: like the inside of a drawer full of old coins and Tic Tacs.

For a second, she thought of telling him the truth: that when Matt had dumped her, she had understood for the first time that she was a complete and total nobody.

But then he ruined it. “Please tell me this isn’t about Matthew Hepley,” he said. There it was. The eye roll.

“Come on, Bishop.” She could have hit him. Even hearing the name made her throat squeeze up in a knot.

“Give me a reason, then. You said yourself, a million times, that Panic is stupid.”

“Nat entered, didn’t she? How come you aren’t lecturing her?”

“Nat’s an idiot,” Bishop said. He took off his hat and rubbed his head, and his hair responded as though it had been electrified, and it promptly stood straight up. Bishop claimed that his superpower was electromagnetic hair; Heather’s only superpower seemed to be the amazing ability to have one angry red pimple at any given time.

“She’s one of your best friends,” Heather pointed out.

“So? She’s still an idiot. I have an open-door idiot policy on friendship.”

Heather couldn’t help it; she laughed. Bishop smiled too, so wide she could see the small overlap in his two front teeth.

Bishop shoved on his baseball hat again, smothering the disaster of his hair. He was one of the few boys she knew who was taller than she was—even Matt had been exactly her height, five-eleven. Sometimes she was grateful; sometimes she resented him for it, like he was trying to prove a point by being taller. Up until the time they were twelve years old, they’d been exactly the same height, to the centimeter. In Bishop’s bedroom was a ladder of old pencil marks on the wall to prove it.

“I’m betting on you, Nill,” he said in a low voice. “I want you to know that. I don’t want you to play. I think it’s totally idiotic. But I’m betting on you.” He put an arm over her shoulder and gave her a squeeze, and something in his tone of voice reminded her that once—ages and ages ago, it felt like—she had been briefly head-over-heels in love with him.

Freshman year, they’d had one fumbling kiss in the back of the Hudson Movieplex, even though she’d had popcorn stuck in her teeth, and for two days they’d held hands loosely, suddenly incapable of conversation even though they’d been friends since elementary school. And then he had broken it off, and Heather had said she understood, even though she didn’t.

She didn’t know what made her think of it. She couldn’t imagine being in love with Bishop now. He was like a brother—an annoying brother who always felt the need to point out when you had a pimple. Which you did, always. But just one.

Already, she could hear faint music through the trees, and the crackle and boom of Diggin’s voice, amplified by the megaphone. The water towers, scrawled with graffiti and imprinted faintly with the words COLUMBIA COUNTY, were lit starkly from below. Perched on rail-thin legs, they looked like overgrown insects.

No—like a single insect, with two rounded steel joints. Because Heather could see, even from a distance, that a narrow wooden plank had been set between them, fifty feet in the air.

The challenge, this time, was clear.

By the time Heather, Nat, and Bishop had arrived at the place where the crowd was assembled, directly under the towers, her face was slick. As usual, the atmosphere was celebratory—the crowd was keyed up, antsy, although everyone was speaking in whispers. Someone had managed to maneuver a truck through the woods. A floodlight, hooked up to its engine, illuminated the towers and the single wooden plank running between them, and lit up the mist of rain. Cigarettes flared intermittently, and the truck radio was going—an old rock song thudded quietly under the rhythm of conversation. They had to be quieter tonight; they weren’t far from the road.

“Promise not to ditch me, okay?” Nat said. Heather was glad she’d said it; even though these were her classmates, people she’d known forever, Heather had a sudden terror of getting lost in the crowd.

“No way,” Heather said. She tried to avoid looking up, and she found herself unconsciously scanning the crowd for Matt. She could make out a group of sophomores huddled nearby, giggling, and Shayna Lambert, who was wrapped in a blanket and had a thermos of something hot, as though she was at a football game.

Heather was surprised to see Vivian Travin, standing by herself, a little ways apart from the rest of the crowd. Her hair was knotted into dreadlocks, and in the moonlight, her various piercings glinted dully. Heather had never seen Viv at a single social event—she’d never seen her doing much of anything besides cutting classes and waiting tables at Dot’s. For some reason, the fact that even Viv had showed made her even more anxious.

“Bishop!”

Avery Wallace pushed her way through the crowd and promptly catapulted herself into Bishop’s arms, as though he’d just rescued her from a major catastrophe. Heather looked away as Bishop leaned down to kiss her. Avery was only five foot one, and standing next to her made Heather feel like the Jolly Green Giant on a can of corn.

“I missed you,” Avery said, when Bishop pulled away. She still hadn’t even acknowledged Heather; she’d once overheard Heather call her “shrimp-faced” and had obviously never forgiven her. Avery did, however, look somewhat shrimplike, all tight and pink, so Heather didn’t feel that bad about it.

Bishop mumbled something in return. Heather felt nauseous, and heartbroken all over again. No one should be allowed to be happy when you were so miserable—especially not your best friends. It should be a law.

Avery giggled and squeezed Bishop’s hand. “Let me get my beer, okay? I’ll be back. Stay right here.” Then she turned and vanished.

Immediately, Bishop raised his eyebrows at Heather. “Don’t say it.”

“What?” Heather held up both hands.

Bishop stuck a finger in her face. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, and then jabbed at Nat. “You too.”

Nat did her best innocent face. “Unfair, Marks. I was just thinking what a lovely accessory she makes. So small and convenient.”

“The perfect pocket liner,” Heather agreed.

“All right, all right.” Bishop was doing a pretty good job of pretending to be angry. “Enough.”

“It’s a compliment,” Nat protested.

“I said, enough.” But after a minute, Bishop leaned over and whispered, “I can’t keep her in my pocket, you know. She bites.” His lips bumped against Heather’s ear—by accident, she was sure—and she laughed.

The weight of nerves in her stomach eased up a little. But then someone cut the music, and the crowd got still and very quiet, and she knew it was about to begin. Just like that, she felt a numbing cold all over, as though all of the rain had solidified and frozen on her skin.

“Welcome to the second challenge,” Diggin boomed out.

“Suck it, Rodgers,” a guy yelled, and there were whoops and scattered laughs. Someone else said, “Shhh.”

Diggin pretended he hadn’t heard: “This is a test of bravery and balance—”

“And sobriety!”

“Dude, I’m gonna fall.”

More laughter. Heather couldn’t even smile. Next to her, Natalie was fidgeting—turning to the right and left, touching her hip bones. Heather couldn’t even ask what she was doing.

Diggin kept plowing on: “A test of speed, too, since all the contestants will be timed—”

“Jesus Christ, get on with it.”

Diggin finally lost it. He wrenched the megaphone from his mouth. “Shut the hell up, Lee.”

This provoked a new round of laughter. To Heather it all felt off, like she was watching a movie and the sound was a few seconds too late. She couldn’t stop herself from looking up now—at that single beam, a few bare inches of wood, stretched fifty feet above the ground. The Jump was a tradition, more for fun than for anything else, a plunge into water. This would be a plunge to hard earth, packed ground. No chance of surviving it.

There was a momentary stutter when the truck engine gave out, and everything went dark. There were shouts of protest; and when, a few seconds later, the engine gunned on again, Heather saw Matt: standing in the beam of the headlights, laughing, one hand in the back of Delaney’s jeans.

Her stomach rolled over. Weirdly, it was that fact—the way he had his hand shoved up against her butt—more than even seeing them together, that made her sick. He had never once touched her in that way, had even complained that couples who stood like that, hand-to-butt, should be shot.

Maybe he’d thought she wasn’t cute enough. Maybe he’d been embarrassed by her.

Maybe he had just been lying then, to spare her feelings.

Maybe she’d never really known him.

This thought struck her with terror. If she didn’t know Matt Hepley—the boy who’d once applauded after she burped the alphabet, who’d even, once, noticed that she had a little period blood on the outside of her white shorts and not made a big deal of it, and pretended not to be grossed out—then she couldn’t count on knowing any of these people, or what they were capable of.

Suddenly she was aware of a stillness, a pause in the flow of laughter and conversation, as though everyone had drawn a breath at once. And she realized that Kim Hollister was inching out onto the plank, high above their heads, her face stark-white and terrified, and that the challenge had started.

It took Kim forty-seven seconds to inch her way across, shuffling, keeping her right foot always in front of her left. When she reached the second water tower safely, she briefly embraced it with both arms, and the crowd exhaled as one.

Then came Felix Harte: he made it even faster, taking the short, clipped steps of a tightrope walker. And then Merl Tracey. Even before he’d crossed to safety, Diggin lifted the megaphone and trumpeted the next name.

“Heather Nill! Heather Nill, to the stage!”

“Good luck, Heathbar,” Natalie said. “Don’t look down.”

“Thanks,” Heather said automatically, even as she registered it as ridiculous advice. When you’re fifty feet in the air, where else do you look but down?

She felt as though she were moving in silence, although she knew, too, that that was unlikely—Diggin couldn’t keep his mouth off that stupid megaphone for anything. It was just because she was afraid; afraid and still thinking, stupidly, miserably, about Matt, and wondering whether he was watching her with his hand still shoved down the back of Delaney’s pants.

As she began to climb the ladder that ran up one leg of the eastern water tower, her fingers numb on the cold, slick metal, it occurred to her that he’d be staring at her butt, and feeling Delaney’s butt, and that was really sick.

Then it occurred to her that everyone could see her butt, and she had a brief moment of panic, wondering if her underwear lines were visible through her jeans, since she just couldn’t stomach thongs and didn’t understand girls who could.

She was already halfway up the ladder by then, and it further occurred to her that if she was stressing so hard about underwear lines, she couldn’t truly be afraid of the height. For the first time, she began to feel more confident.

But the rain was a problem. It made the rungs of the ladder slick under her fingers. It blurred her vision and made the treads of her sneakers slip. When she finally reached the small metal ledge that ran along the circumference of the water tank and hauled herself to her feet, the fear came swinging back. There was nothing to hold on to, only smooth, wet metal behind her back, and air everywhere. Only a few inches’ difference between being alive and not.

A tingle worked its way from her feet to her legs and up into her palms, and for a second she was afraid not of falling but of jumping, leaping out into the dark air.

She shuffled sideways toward the wooden beam, pressing her back as hard as she could against the tank, praying that from below she didn’t look as frightened as she felt.

Crying out, hesitating—it would all be counted against her.

“Time!” Diggin’s voice boomed out from below. Heather knew she had to move if she wanted to stay in the game.

Heather forced herself away from the tank and inched forward onto the wooden plank, which had been barely secured to the ledge by means of several twisted screws. She had a sudden image of wood snapping under her weight, a wild hurtle through space. But the wood held.

She raised her arms unconsciously for balance, no longer thinking of Matt or Delaney or Bishop staring up at her, or anything other than all that thin air, the horrible prickling in her feet and legs, an itch to jump.

She could move faster if she paced normally, one foot in front of the other, but she couldn’t bring herself to break contact with the board; if she lifted a foot, a heel, a toe, she would collapse, she would swing to one side and die. She was conscious of a deep silence, a quiet so heavy she could hear the fizz of the rain, could hear her own breathing, shallow and quick.

Beneath her was blinding light, the kind of light you’d see just before you died. All the people had merged with shadow, and for a second she was afraid she had died, that she was all alone on a tiny, bare surface, with an endless fall into the dark on either side of her.

Inch by inch, going as fast as she could without lifting her feet.

And then, all at once, she was done—she had reached the second water tower and found herself hugging the tank, like Kim had done, pressing flat against it, letting her sweatshirt get soaked. A cheer went up, even as another name was announced: Ray Hanrahan.

Her head was ringing, and her mouth tasted like metal. Over. It was over. Her arms felt suddenly useless, her muscles weak with relief, as she made her way clumsily down the ladder, dropping the last few feet and taking two stumbling steps before righting herself. People reached out, squeezed her shoulders, patted her on the back. She didn’t know if she smiled or not.

“You were amazing!” Nat barreled to her through the crowd. Heather barely registered the feel of Nat’s arms around her neck. “Is it scary? Were you freaked?”

Heather shook her head, conscious of people still watching her. “It went quick,” she said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt better. It was over. She was standing in the middle of a crowd: the air smelled like damp fleece and cigarette smoke. Solid. Real.

“Forty-two seconds,” Nat said proudly. Heather hadn’t even heard her time be announced.

“Where’s Bishop?” Heather asked. Now she was starting to feel good. A bubbly feeling was working its way through her. Forty-two seconds. Not bad.

“He was right behind me.…” Nat turned to scan the crowd, but the truck’s headlights turned everyone into silhouettes, dark brushstroke-people.

Another cheer erupted. Heather looked up and saw that Ray had crossed already. Diggin’s voice echoed out hollowly: “Twenty-two seconds! A record so far!”

Heather swallowed back a sour taste. She hated Ray Hanrahan. In seventh grade, when she still hadn’t developed boobs, he stuck a training bra to the outside of her locker and spread a rumor that she was taking medicine to turn into a boy. “Got any chin hairs yet?” he’d say when he passed her in the halls. He only left her alone once Bishop threatened to tell the cops that Luke Hanrahan was selling weed from Pepe’s, where he worked, slipping bags of pot under the slice if patrons asked for “extra oregano.” Which he was.

It was Zev Keller’s turn next. Heather forgot about looking for Bishop. She watched, transfixed, as Zev moved out onto the plank. From the safety of the ground, it looked almost beautiful: the soft haze of rain, Zev’s arms extended, a dark black shape against the clouds. Ray hadn’t come down the ladder. He must have been watching too, although he had moved behind the water tank, so he was invisible.

It happened in a split second; Zev jerked to one side, lost his footing, and was falling. Heather heard herself cry out. She felt her heart rocket into the roof of her mouth, and in that second, as his arms pinwheeled wildly and his mouth contorted in a scream, she thought, Nothing and none of us will ever be the same.

And then, just as quickly, he caught himself. He got his left foot back onto the board, and his body stopped swaying wildly from right to left, like a loose pendulum. He straightened up.

Someone screamed Zev’s name. And then the applause began, turning thunderous as he made his way, haltingly, the remaining few feet. No one heard the time that Diggin shouted. No one paid any attention to Ray as he came down the ladder.

But as soon as Zev was on the ground, he flew at Ray. Zev was smaller than Ray, and skinnier, but he tackled him from behind and the move was unexpected. Ray was on the ground, face in the dirt, in a second.

“You fucking asshole. You threw something at me.”

Zev raised his fist; Ray twisted, bucking Zev off him.

“What are you talking about?” Ray staggered to his feet, so his face was lit in the glare of the spotlight. He must have cut his lip on a rock. He was bleeding. He looked mean and ugly.

Zev got up too. His eyes were wild—black and full of hatred. The crowd was still, frozen, and Heather once again thought she could hear the rain, the dissolution of a hundred thousand different drops at once. Everything hung in the air, ready to fall.

“Don’t lie,” Zev spat out. “You hit me in the chest. You wanted me to fall.”

“You’re crazy.” Ray started to turn away.

Zev charged him. And then they were down again, and all at once the crowd surged forward, everyone shouting, some pushing for a better view, some jumping in to pull the boys off each other. Heather was squeezed from all sides. She felt a hand on her back and she barely stopped herself from falling. She reached for Nat’s hand instinctively.

“Heather!” Nat’s face was white, frightened. Their hands were wrenched apart, and Nat went down among the blur of bodies.

“Nat!” Heather shoved through the crowd, using her elbows, thankful now to be so big. Nat was trying to get up, and when Heather reached her, she let out a scream of pain.

“My ankle!” Nat was saying, panicked, grabbing her leg. “Someone stepped on my ankle.”

Heather reached for her, then felt a hand on her back: this time deliberate, forceful. She tried to twist around to see who had pushed her but she was on the ground, face in the mud, before she could. Feet churned up the dirt, splattered her face with moisture. For just one moment, Heather wondered whether this—the seething crowd, the surge—was part of the challenge.

She felt a break in the crowd, a fractional release.

“Come on.” She managed to stand up and hook Nat under the arm.

“It hurts,” Nat said, blinking back tears. But Heather got her to her feet.

Then a voice came blaring, suddenly, through the woods, huge and distorted.

“Freeze where you are, all of you.…”

Cops.

Everything was chaos. Beams of light swept across the crowd, turning faces white, frozen; people were running, pushing to get out, disappearing into the woods. Heather counted four cops—one of them had wrestled someone to the ground, she couldn’t see who. Her mouth was dry, chalky, and her thoughts disjointed. Her hoodie was smeared with mud, and cold seeped into her chest.

Bishop was gone. Bishop had the car.

Car. They needed to get out—or hide.

She kept a hand on Nat’s arm and tried to pull her forward, but Nat stumbled. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I can’t,” she said.

“You have to.” Heather felt desperate. Where the hell was Bishop? She bent down to loop an arm around Nat’s waist. “Lean on me.”

“I can’t,” Nat repeated. “It hurts too bad.”

Then Dodge Mason came out of nowhere. He was suddenly next to them, and without pausing or asking permission, he put one of his arms around Nat’s waist as well, so that she could be carried between them. Nat gave a short cry of surprise, but she didn’t resist. Heather felt like she could kiss him.

“Come on,” he said.

They passed into the woods, stumbling, going as quickly as possible, moving away from the booming megaphone-voices, the screaming and the lights. It was dark. Dodge kept his cell phone out; it cast a weak blue light on the sodden leaves underneath them, the wet ferns and the shaggy, moss-covered trees.

“Where are we going?” Heather whispered. Her heart was pounding. Nat could barely put any weight on her left leg, so every other step, she leaned heavily into Heather.

“We have to wait until the cops clear out,” Dodge replied. He was short of breath.

A few hundred feet beyond the water towers, nestled in the trees, was a narrow pump house. Heather could hear mechanical equipment going inside it, humming through the walls, when they stopped so Dodge could shoulder the door open. It wasn’t locked.

Inside, it smelled like mildew and metal. The single room was dominated by two large tanks and various pieces of rusted electrical equipment; the air was filled with a constant, mechanical thrush, like the noise of a thousand crickets. They could no longer hear shouting from the woods.

“Jesus.” Nat exhaled heavily and maneuvered onto the ground, extending her left leg in front of her, wincing. “It hurts.”

“Probably sprained,” Dodge said. He sat down as well, but not too close.

“I swear I felt someone crack it.” Nat leaned forward and began touching the skin around her ankle. She inhaled sharply.

“Leave it, Nat,” Heather said. “We’ll get some ice on it as soon as we can.”

She was cold, and suddenly exhausted. The rush she’d felt from completing the challenge was gone. She was wet and hungry, and the last thing she wanted to do was sit in a stupid pump house for half the night. She pulled out her phone and texted Bishop. Where r u?

“How’d you know about this place?” Nat asked Dodge.

“Found it the other day,” Dodge said. “I was scouting. Mind if I smoke?”

“Kind of,” Heather said.

He shrugged and replaced the cigarettes in his jacket. He kept his cell phone out, on the floor, so his silhouette was touched with blue.

“Thank you,” Nat blurted out. “For helping me. That was really . . . I mean, you didn’t have to.”

“No problem,” Dodge said. Heather couldn’t see his face, but there was a weird quality to his voice, like he was being choked.

“I mean, we’ve never even spoken before.…” Maybe realizing she sounded rude, Nat trailed off.

For a minute, there was silence. Heather sent another text to Bishop. WTF?

Then Dodge said abruptly, “We spoke before. Once. At the pep rally last year. You called me David.”

“I did?” Nat giggled nervously. “Stupid. I was probably drunk. Remember, Heather? We took those disgusting shots.”

“Mmmm.” Heather was still standing. She leaned up against the door, listening to the sound of the rain, which was drumming a little harder now. She strained to hear, underneath it, the continued sounds of shouting. She couldn’t believe Bishop still hadn’t texted her back. Bishop always responded to her messages right away.

“Anyway, I’m an idiot,” Nat was saying. “Anyone will tell you that. But I couldn’t very well forget a name like Dodge, could I? I wish I had a cool name.”

“I like your name,” Dodge said quietly.

Heather felt a sharp pain go through her. She had heard in Dodge’s voice a familiar longing, a hollowness—and she knew then, immediately and without doubt, that Dodge liked Natalie.

For a second she had a blind moment of envy, a feeling that gripped her from all sides. Of course. Of course Dodge liked Nat. She was pretty and giggly and small and cute, like an animal you’d find in someone’s purse. Like Avery.

The association arrived unexpectedly, and she dismissed it quickly. She didn’t care about Avery, and she didn’t care whether Dodge liked Nat, either. It wasn’t her business.

Still, the idea continued to drum through her, like the constant patter of the rain: that no one would ever love her.

“How long do you think we should wait?” Nat asked.

“Not too much longer,” Dodge said.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Heather knew she should make conversation, but she was too tired.

“I wish it wasn’t so dark,” Nat said after a few minutes, rustling. Heather could tell from her voice she was getting impatient.

Dodge stood up. “Wait here,” he said, and slipped outside.

For a while there was silence except for a tinny banging—something moving through the pipes—and the hiss of water on the roof.

“I’m going to go to L.A.,” Nat blurted out suddenly. “If I win.”

Heather turned to her. Nat looked defiant, as though she expected Heather to start making fun of her. “What for?” Heather asked.

“The surfers,” Nat said. Then she rolled her eyes. “Hollywood, bean brain. What do you think for?”

Heather went over to her and crouched. Nat always said she wanted to be an actress, but Heather had never thought she was serious—not serious enough to do it, definitely not serious enough to play Panic for it.

But Heather just nudged her with a shoulder. “Promise me that when you’re rich and famous, you won’t forget the bean brains you knew back when.”

“I promise,” Nat said. The air smelled faintly like charcoal.

“What about you? What will you do if you win?”

Heather shook her head. She wanted to say: Run until I burst. Build miles and miles and miles between me and Carp. Leave the old Heather behind, burn her to dust. Instead, she shrugged. “Go somewhere, I guess. Sixty-seven grand buys a lot of gas.”

Nat shook her head. “Come on, Heather,” she said quietly. “Why’d you really enter?”

Just like that, Heather thought of Matt, and the hopelessness of everything, and felt like she would cry. She swallowed back the feeling. “Did you know?” she said finally. “About Matt, I mean, and Delaney.”

“I heard a rumor,” Nat said carefully. “But I didn’t believe it.”

“I heard she . . . with him . . .” Heather couldn’t actually say the words. She knew she was probably a little prude, especially compared to Nat. She was embarrassed about it and proud of it at the same time: she just didn’t see what was so great about fooling around. “At the frigging Arboretum.”

“She’s a whore,” Nat said matter-of-factly. “Bet she gives him herpes. Or worse.”

“Worse than herpes?” Heather said doubtfully.

“Syphilis. Turns you into a nutter. Puts holes in the brain, swiss-cheese-style.”

Heather sometimes forgot that Nat could always make her laugh. “I hope not,” she said. She managed to smile. “He wasn’t that smart to begin with. I don’t think he has a lot of brain to spare.”

“You hope so, you mean.” Nat mimed holding up a glass. “To Delaney’s syphilis.”

“You’re crazy,” Heather said, but she was laughing full-on now.

Nat ignored her. “May it turn Matt Hepley’s brain to delicious, gooey cheese.”

“Amen,” Heather said, and raised her arm.

“Amen.” They pretended to clink.

Heather stood up again and moved to the door. Dodge was still not back; she wondered what he was doing.

“Do you think—” Heather took a deep breath. “Do you think anyone will ever love me?”

“I love you,” Nat said. “Bishop loves you. Your mom loves you.” Heather made a face, and Nat said, “She does, Heathbar, in her own way. And Lily loves you too.”

“You guys don’t count,” Heather said. Then, realizing how that sounded, she giggled. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Nat said.

After a pause, Heather said, “I love you, too, you know. I’d be a basket case without you. I mean it. I’d be carted off and, I don’t know, drawing aliens in my mashed potatoes by now.”

“I know,” Nat said.

Heather felt as if all the years of their lives together, their friendship, were welling up there, in the dark: the time they’d practiced kissing on Nat’s mom’s sofa cushions; the first time they’d ever smoked a cigarette and Heather had puked; all the secret texts in classes, fingers moving under the desk and behind their textbooks. All of it was hers, hers and Nat’s, and all those years were nestled inside them like one of those Russian dolls, holding dozens of tiny selves inside it.

Heather turned to Nat, suddenly breathless.

“Let’s split the money,” she blurted out.

“What?” Nat blinked.

“If one of us wins, let’s split it.” Heather realized, as soon as she said it, that she was right. “Fifty-fifty. Thirty grand can still buy a lot of gas, you know.”

For a second, Nat just stared at her. Then she said, “All right. Fifty-fifty.” Nat laughed. “Should we shake on it? Or pinkie swear?”

“I trust you,” Heather said.

Dodge returned at last. “It’s clear,” he said.

Heather and Dodge supported Nat between them, and together they made their way underneath the water towers and into the clearing that had so recently been packed with people. Now the only evidence of the crowd was the trash left behind: stamped-out cigarette butts and joints, crushed beer cans, towels, a few umbrellas. The truck was still parked in the mud, but its engine was cut. Heather imagined the cops would bring out a tow for it later. The quiet was strange, and the whole scene felt weirdly creepy. It made Heather think that everyone had been spirited away into thin air.

Dodge gave a sudden shout. “Hold on a second,” he said, and left Nat leaning on Heather. He moved several feet away and scooped something up from the ground—a portable cooler. Heather saw, when he angled his cell phone light onto it, that it still contained ice and beer.

“Jackpot,” Dodge said. He smiled for the first time all night.

He took the cooler with them, and when they reached Route 22, made a makeshift ice pack for Nat’s ankle. There were three beers left, one for each of them, and they drank together on the side of the road, in the rain, while they waited for the bus to come. Nat got giggly after just a few sips, and she and Dodge joked about smoking a cigarette to make the bus come faster, and Heather knew she should be happy.

But Bishop’s phone was still going straight to voice mail. Matt and Delaney were probably cozy and warm and dry somewhere together. And she kept remembering being high in the air, teetering on the flimsy wooden plank, and the itch in the soles of her feet, telling her to jump.