Panic

“He was in the basement,” Bishop said. His voice broke. “Nobody knew. You couldn’t have known.”



Heather closed her eyes. Color bloomed behind her eyelids. Fireworks. Fire. Smoke in the darkness. She opened her eyes again.



Mr. Velez had gone into the hall. The door was partly open. She heard murmured voices, the squeak of someone’s shoes on the tile floor.



He poked his head back in the room. He looked almost apologetic. “The police are here, Heather,” he said. “It’s time.”



MONDAY, JULY 11



dodge



“CAN I HAVE SOME WATER, PLEASE?”



Dodge wasn’t really thirsty, but he wanted a second to sit, catch his breath, and look around.



“Sure thing.” The cop who had greeted Dodge and ushered him into a small, windowless office—OFFICER SADOWSKI, read his name tag—hadn’t stopped smiling, like he was a teacher and Dodge was his favorite student. “You just sit tight. I’ll be right back.”



Dodge sat very still while he waited, just in case someone was watching. He didn’t have to turn his head to take in nearly everything: the desk, piled high with manila file folders; the shelves stacked with more papers; an ancient telephone, unplugged; photographs of several fat, smiling babies; a desk fan. It was a good thing, he thought, that Sadowski hadn’t brought him into an interrogation room.



Sadowski was back in only a minute, carrying a Styrofoam cup full of water. He was on a mission to seem friendly. “You comfortable? Happy with the water? You don’t want a soda or anything?”



“I’m fine.” Dodge took a sip of the water and nearly choked. It was piss-warm.



Sadowski either didn’t notice, or pretended not to. “Really glad you decided to come down and talk to us. Dan, right?”



“Dodge,” Dodge said. “Dodge Mason.”



Sadowski had taken a seat behind his desk. He made a big show of shuffling around some papers, grinning like an idiot, twirling a pen and leaning back in his chair. All casual. But Dodge noticed that he had Dodge’s name written down on a piece of white paper.



“Right. Right. Dodge. Hard to forget. So what can I do you for, Dodge?”



Dodge wasn’t buying the village idiot act, not for a second. Officer Sadowski’s eyes were narrow and smart. His jaw was like a right triangle. He’d be a mean old bastard when he felt like it.



“I’m here to talk about the fire,” Dodge said. “I figured you’d want to talk to me eventually.”



It had been two days since Dodge had woken up in the hospital. Two days of waiting for the knock on the door, for the cops to show up and start grilling him. The waiting, the ticking feeling of anxiety, was worse than anything.



So earlier that morning he’d woken with a resolution: he wouldn’t wait anymore.



“You’re the young man who left the hospital on Saturday morning, aren’t you?” Right. As though he’d forgotten. “We just missed talking to you. Why’d you run off in such a hurry?”



“My sister . . . needs help.” He realized, belatedly, he shouldn’t have mentioned his sister. It would only lead to bad places.



But Sadowski seized on it. “What kind of help?”



“She’s in a wheelchair,” Dodge said, with some effort. He hated saying the words out loud. It made them seem more real, and final.



Sadowski nodded sympathetically. “That’s right. She was in a car accident a few years ago, wasn’t she?”



Dick. So the village idiot thing was a trick. He’d done his homework. “Yup,” Dodge said.



He thought Sadowski would ask him more about it, but he just shook his head and muttered, “Shame.”



Dodge started to relax. He took a sip of water. He was glad he’d come. It probably made him look confident. He was confident.



Then Sadowski said, abruptly, “You ever heard of a game called Panic, Dodge?”



Dodge was glad he’d already finished swallowing, so he couldn’t choke. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never had too many friends around here.”



“You have a few friends,” Sadowski said. Dodge didn’t know what he was getting at. He consulted his page of notes again. “Heather Nill. Natalie Velez. Someone must have invited you to that party.”



That was the story that had gone around: a party in the Graybill House. A bunch of kids getting together to smoke weed, drink booze, freak one another out. Then: a stray spark. An accident. The blame was spread around that way, couldn’t be pinned to anyone specific.



Of course, Dodge knew it was all bullshit. Someone had lit the place up, deliberately. It was part of the challenge.



“Well, yeah. Them. But they’re not friends friends.” Dodge felt himself blushing. He wasn’t sure whether he’d been caught in a lie.



Sadowski made a noise in the back of his throat Dodge didn’t know how to interpret. “Why don’t you tell me all about it? In your own words, at your own pace.”



Dodge told him, speaking slowly, so he wouldn’t screw it up, but not too slowly, so he wouldn’t seem nervous. He told Sadowski he’d been invited by Heather; there’d been rumors of a keg party, but when he got there he found out it was pretty lame, and there was hardly any booze at all. He definitely hadn’t been drinking. (He congratulated himself on thinking of this—he wouldn’t get busted for anything, period.)



Sadowski interrupted him only once. “So why the closed room?”



Dodge was startled. “What?”



Sadowski only pretended to glance down at the report. “The fire chiefs had to break down the door to get to you and the girl—Heather. Why’d you go off with her if the party was raging somewhere else?”



Dodge kept his hands on his thighs. He didn’t even blink. “I told you, the party was lame. Besides, I was kind of hoping . . .” He trailed off suggestively, raising his eyebrows.



Sadowski got it. “Ah. I see. Go on.”



There wasn’t much else to tell; Dodge told him he must have fallen asleep next to Heather. The next thing he knew, they heard people running and smelled smoke. He didn’t mention Nat. No need to explain how she’d known to direct the firemen to the back of the house, unless he was asked.



For a while after Dodge finished talking, they sat in silence. Sadowski appeared to be doodling, but Dodge knew this, too, was an act. He’d heard everything.



Finally Officer Sadowski sighed, set down his pen, and rubbed his eyes. “It’s tough shit, Dodge. Tough shit.”



Dodge said nothing.



Sadowski went on. “Bill Kelly was—is—a friend. He was on the force. Little Kelly went to Iraq. Do you know what I’m saying?”



“Not really,” Dodge said.



Sadowski stared at him. “I’m saying we’re going to figure out exactly what happened that night. And if we find out the fire was started on purpose . . .” He shook his head. “That’s homicide, Dodge.”



Dodge’s throat was dry. But he forced himself not to look away. “It was an accident,” he said. “Wrong place, wrong time.”



Sadowski smiled. But there was no humor in it. “I hope so.”



Dodge decided to walk home. He was out of cigarettes and in a bad mood. Now he wasn’t so sure that going to the cops had been a good idea. The way Sadowski looked at him made him feel like the cops thought he’d started the damn fire.



It was the judges—had to be, whoever they were. Any one of the players could squeal about the game, and that would be the end of that.



If Panic ended . . .



Dodge had no plans beyond winning Panic—beating Ray in the final round of Joust, and making sure it was a hard, bloody win. He hadn’t thought of his life beyond that moment at all. Maybe he’d be arrested. Maybe he’d go out in a blaze. He didn’t care either way.



Dayna, his Dayna, had been destroyed, ruined forever, and someone had to pay.



But for the first time he was seized with the fear that the game would actually end, and he would never get his chance. And then he would just have to live with the new Dayna on her plant-stalk legs, live with the knowledge that he’d been unable to save her. Live with knowing Ray and Luke were fine, going through the world, breathing and grinning and shitting and probably crapping on other people’s lives too.



And that was impossible. Unimaginable.



The sun was bright and high. Everything was still, gripped in the hard light. There was a bad taste in Dodge’s mouth; he hadn’t eaten yet today. He checked his phone, hoping Nat might have called: nothing. They’d spoken the day before, a halting conversation, full of pauses. When Nat said her dad needed her downstairs and she had to get off the phone, he was sure she’d been lying.



Dodge circumnavigated Dot’s Diner, checking instinctively to see whether he could spot his mom behind the smudgy glass windows. But the sun was too bright and turned everyone to shadow.



He heard a burst of laughter from inside the house. He paused with his hand on the door. If his mom was home, he wasn’t sure he could deal. She’d been practically hysterical when he came home with a hospital bracelet, and since then she’d been giving him the fish-eye and grilling him every .5 seconds about how he was feeling, like she couldn’t trust him even to pee without risking death. Plus, the news about Little Kelly was all over Dot’s Diner, and when she wasn’t demanding whether Dodge thought he had a fever, she was gossiping about the tragedy.



But then the laughter sounded again, and he realized it wasn’t his mom laughing—it was Dayna.



She was sitting on the couch, a blanket draped over her legs. Ricky was sitting in a folding chair across from her; the chessboard was positioned on the coffee table. When Dodge entered, there were only a few inches between them.



“No, no,” she was saying, between fits of giggling. “The knight moves diagonally.”



“Diag-on-ally,” Ricky repeated, in his heavily accented English, and knocked over one of Dayna’s pawns.



“It’s not your turn!” She snatched her pawn back and let out another burst of laughter.



Dodge cleared his throat. Dayna looked up.



“Dodge!” she cried. Both she and Ricky jerked backward several inches.



“Hey.” He didn’t know why they both looked so guilty. He didn’t know why he felt so awkward, either—like he’d interrupted them in the middle of something far more intense than a game of chess.



“I was just teaching Ricky how to play,” Dayna blurted. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. She looked better, prettier, than she had in a while. Dodge thought she might even be wearing makeup.



He suddenly felt angry. He was out busting his ass for Dayna, almost dying, and she was at home playing chess with Ricky on the old marble board his mom had bought on Dodge’s eleventh birthday, and that Dodge had schlepped everywhere they’d moved since then.



Like she didn’t even care. Like he wasn’t playing Panic just for her.



“Want to play, Dodge?” she asked. But he could tell she didn’t mean it. For the first time Dodge looked, really looked, at Ricky. Could he be serious about marrying Dayna? He was probably twenty-one, twenty-two, tops.