Panic

She decided she liked the tigers, too—from a distance, anyway. She was mesmerized by the way they moved, muscles rippling like the surface of water, and by their eyes, which looked so wise—so bleak, too, as though they had stared into the center of the universe and found it disappointing, a feeling Heather completely understood.



But she was happy to let Anne do the feeding. She couldn’t believe the balls on the woman. It was a good thing Anne was too old for Panic. She would have nailed it. Anne actually went inside the pen, got within three feet of the tigers as they circled her, eyeing the bucket of meat hungrily—although Heather was sure they’d be just as happy to take a chomp of Anne’s head. Anne insisted they wouldn’t harm her, though. “As long as I’m doing the feeding,” she said, “they won’t use me for feed.”



Maybe—just maybe—things would actually be okay.



The only bad part of the day was the fact that Bishop was constantly checking his phone, Heather assumed for texts from Avery. This reminded her that Matt hadn’t texted her once since their breakup. Meanwhile, Bishop had Avery (Heather wouldn’t think of her as a girlfriend), and Nat had Dodge hanging on her every word and was also still seeing a bartender over in Kingston, some sleazy guy who rode a Vespa, which Nat insisted was just as cool as a motorcycle. Right.



But after they dropped off Dodge, Nat asked, “Is Avery coming tonight, Bishop?” and when Bishop said no, almost too quickly, Heather felt at peace with the world.



Nat made them detour so she could get a six-pack; then they headed to 7-Eleven and bought junky Fourth of July food: Doritos and dip, powdered doughnuts, and even a bag of pork cracklings, because it was funny and Bishop had bravely volunteered to eat some.



They headed to the gully: a steep, barren slope of gravel and broken-up concrete that bottomed out in the old train tracks, now red with rust and littered with trash. The sun was just starting to set. They picked their way carefully down the slope and across the tracks, and Bishop scouted the best place to light off the sparklers.



This was tradition. Two years ago, Bishop had even surprised Heather by buying two fifty-pound bags of mixed sand from Home Depot and making a beach. He’d even bought loopy straws and those paper umbrellas to put in their drinks, so she would feel they were somewhere tropical.



Today, Heather wouldn’t have chosen to be anywhere else in the whole world. Not even the Caribbean.



Nat was already on her second beer, and she was getting wobbly. Heather had a beer too, and even though she didn’t usually like to drink, she felt warm and happy. She stumbled over a loose slat in the tracks and Bishop caught her, looped an arm around her waist. She was surprised that he felt so solid, so strong. So warm, too.



“You okay there, Heathbar?” When he smiled, both of his dimples appeared, and Heather had the craziest thought: she wanted to kiss them. She banished the idea quickly. That was why she didn’t drink.



“I’m fine.” She tried to pull away. He moved his arm to her shoulders. She could smell beer on his breath. She wondered if he, too, was a little drunk. “Come on, get off me.” She said it jokingly, but she didn’t feel like joking.



Nat was wandering up ahead of them, kicking at stones. Darkness was falling and her heart was beating hard in her chest and for a moment, she felt like she and Bishop were alone. He was staring at her with an expression she couldn’t identify. She felt heat spreading through her stomach—she was nervous for no reason.



“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” she said, and gave him a push.



The moment passed. Bishop laughed and charged; she dodged him.



“Children, children. Stop fighting!” Nat called back to them.



They found a place to set off the sparklers. Nat’s fizzled and sputtered out before they could get properly lit. Heather tried next. When she stepped forward with the lighter, there was a series of cracking sounds, and Heather jumped back, thinking confusedly she’d messed up. But then she realized that she hadn’t even gotten the sparkler lit.



“Look, look!” Nat was bouncing up and down excitedly.



Heather turned just as a series of fireworks—green, red, a shower of golden sparks—exploded in the east, just above the tree line. Nat was laughing like a maniac.



“What the hell?” Heather felt dizzy with happiness and confusion. It wasn’t even all-the-way dark yet, and there were never any fireworks in Carp. The nearest fireworks were in Poughkeepsie, fifty minutes away, at Waryas Park—where Lily would be with their mom and Bo right now.



Only Bishop didn’t seem excited. His arms were crossed and he was shaking his head as they kept going: more gold, and now blue and red again, blooming and fading, sucked back into the sky, leaving tentacle-traces of smoke. And just as Nat started running, half limping but still laughing, calling, “Come on, come on!” like they could race straight through to the source, it hit Heather too: this wasn’t a celebration.



It was a sign.



In the distance, sirens began to wail. The show stopped abruptly: ghostly fingers of smoke crept silently across the sky. At last Nat stopped running. Whipping around to face Heather and Bishop, she said, “What? What is it?”



Heather shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. The air smelled like smoke, and the wail of the fire trucks cut through her head, sharp and hot.



“It’s the next challenge,” she said. “It’s Panic.”



It was just after eleven p.m. by the time Bishop dropped Heather off in front of the trailer. Now she wished she hadn’t had the beer—she felt exhausted. Bishop had been quiet since Natalie got out of the car.



Now he turned to her and said, abruptly, “I still think you should quit, you know.”



Heather pretended not to know what he was talking about. “Quit what?”



“Don’t play dumb.” Bishop rubbed his forehead. The light shining into the car from the porch lit up his profile: the straight slope of his nose, the set of his jaw. Heather realized that he really wasn’t a boy anymore. Somehow, when she wasn’t looking, he had become a guy—tall and strong, with a stubborn chin and a girlfriend and opinions she didn’t share. She felt an ache in her stomach, a sense of loss and a sense of wanting. “The game’s just going to get more dangerous, Heather. I don’t want you to get hurt. I’d never forgive myself if . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.



Heather thought of that awful text message she’d received. Quit now, before you get hurt. Anger sparked in her chest. Why the hell was everyone trying to make sure she didn’t compete? “I thought you were rooting for me.”



“I am.” Bishop turned to face her. They were very close together in the dark. “Just not like that.”



For a second, they continued staring at each other. His eyes were dark moons. His lips were a few inches away from hers. Heather realized that she was still thinking about kissing him.



“Good night, Bishop,” she said, and got out of the car.



Inside, the TV was on. Krista and Bo were lying on the couch, watching an old black-and-white movie. Bo was shirtless, and Krista was smoking. The coffee table was packed with empty beer bottles—Heather counted ten of them.



“Heya, Heather Lynn.” Krista stubbed out her cigarette. She missed the ashtray on her first try. She was glassy-eyed. Heather could barely look at her. She better not have been messed up and driving with Lily in the car; Heather would kill her. “Where you been?”



“Nowhere,” Heather said. She knew her mom didn’t really care. “Where’s Lily?”



“Sleeping.” Krista stuck a hand down her shirt, scratching. She kept her eyes on the TV. “Big day. We saw fireworks.”



“Piss-packed with people,” Bo put in. “There was a line for the goddamn porta-potties.”



“I’m going to sleep,” Heather said. She didn’t bother trying to be nice; Krista was too drunk to lecture her. “Keep the TV down, okay?”



She had trouble getting the door to the bedroom open; she realized that Lily had balled up one of her sweatshirts and shoved it in the crack between the door and the warped floorboards, to help keep out the noise and the smoke. Heather had taught her that trick. It was hot in the room, even though the window was open and a small portable fan was whirring rhythmically on the dresser.



She didn’t turn on the light. There was a little moonlight coming through the window, and she could have navigated the room by touch, anyway. She undressed, piling her clothes on the floor, and climbed into bed, pushing her blankets all the way to the footboard, using only the sheet as cover.



She had assumed Lily was sleeping, but suddenly she heard rustling from the other twin bed.



“Heather?” she whispered.



“Uh-huh?”



“Can you tell me a story?”



“What kind of story?”



“A happy kind.”



It had been a long time since Lily had asked for a story. Now Heather told a version of one of her favorites, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” except instead of princesses, she made the girls normal sisters, who lived in a falling-down castle with a queen and king too vain and stupid to look after them. But then they found a trapdoor that led down to a secret world, where they were princesses, and where everyone fawned over them.



By the time she was done, Lily was breathing slowly, deeply. Heather rolled over and closed her eyes.



“Heather?”



Lily’s voice was thick with sleep. Heather opened her eyes again, surprised.



“You should be sleeping, Billy.”



“Are you going to die?”



The question was so unexpected, Heather didn’t answer for a few seconds. “Of course not, Lily,” she said sharply.



Lily’s face was half-mashed into her pillow. “Kyla Anderson says you’re going to die. Because of Panic.”



Heather felt a current of fear go through her—fear, and something else, something deeper and more painful. “How did you hear about Panic?” she asked.



Lily mumbled something. Heather prompted her again.



“Who told you about Panic, Lily?” she asked.



But Lily was asleep.



The Graybill house was haunted. Everyone in Carp knew it, had been saying it for half a century, since the last of the Graybills had hanged himself from its rafters, just like his father and grandfather before him.



The Graybill curse.



No one had lived in the house officially in more than forty years, although occasionally there were squatters and runaways who risked it. No one would live there. At night, lights flickered on and off in the windows. Voices whispered in the mouse-infested walls, and ghosts of children ran down dust-covered hallways. Sometimes, locals claimed they heard a woman screaming in the attic.



Those were the rumors, at least.



And now, the fireworks: some of the old-timers, the ones who claimed they could still remember the day the last Graybill was found swinging by the neck, swore that the fireworks weren’t set off by kids at all. They might not even be fireworks. Who knew what sort of forces leached out of that tumbledown house, what kind of bad juju, sizzling the night into fire and flame?