Panic

Heather was saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” but she didn’t feel the words leave her mouth. Her lips were numb, her tongue was numb, her body was quivering like it was preparing to disintegrate. When Nat released her, Heather thudded into a chair.



It was over.



She was alive.



Someone pressed a drink into her hand, and she sipped gratefully before noticing it was warm beer. Then Diggin was in front of her, saying, “I didn’t think you’d do it. Wow. Holy shit.” She didn’t know whether Matt congratulated her; if he did, she didn’t register it. Vivian smiled at her but said nothing.



Even Dodge came over. “Look, Heather,” he said, kneeling so they were at eye level. For a second, his eyes searched hers, and she was sure he was going to tell her something important. Instead he just said, “Keep this safe, okay?” and pressed something into her hand. She slipped it mindlessly into her pocket.



Suddenly Heather wanted to get out of there more than anything. Away from the too-close smells of beer and old cigarettes and other people’s breath; far away from Fresh Pines, where she had never intended to return in the first place. She wanted to be back at Anne’s house, in the blue room, listening to the wind sing through the trees, listening to Lily’s sleep murmurs.



It took her two attempts to get to her feet. She felt like her body had been sewn together backward.



“Let’s go, okay?” Nat said. Her breath smelled a little like beer, and normally Heather would have been annoyed that she was drinking right before they were going to drive. But she didn’t have the strength to argue, or even to care.



“That was epic,” Nat said, as soon as they were in the car. “Seriously, Heather. Everyone will be talking about it—probably for years. I do think it’s kind of unfair, though. I mean, your challenge was, like, a billion times harder than Dodge’s. You could have died.”



“Can we not talk about this?” Heather said. She unrolled her window a little, inhaling the smell of pine and climber moss. Alive.



“Sure, yeah.” Nat looked over at her. “Are you okay?”



“I’m okay,” Heather said. She was thinking her way into the deepness of the woods, the soft spaces of growth and shadow. She shifted to lean her head against the window and felt something in her pocket. She remembered what Dodge had given her. She wondered whether he felt guilty about his earlier outburst.



She reached into her pocket. Just then they passed under a streetlamp, and as Heather uncurled her fingers, time seemed to stop for a second. Everything was perfectly still: Nat with both hands on the wheel, mouth open to speak; the trees outside, frozen in anticipation; Heather’s fingers half-uncurled.



And the bullet, resting in the fleshy middle of her palm.



SUNDAY, AUGUST 14



IT WAS ALREADY THE SECOND WEEK OF AUGUST. THE game was drawing to a close. Four players remained: Dodge, Heather, Nat, and Ray.



For the first time since the game began, people began to place bets that Heather would win, although Ray and Dodge were still evenly split for the favorite.



Heather heard that Ray passed his solo challenge: he’d broken into the county morgue in East Chatham and stayed locked up next to the corpses all night. Creepy, but not likely to kill him; Heather was still angry that her challenge had been the worst.



But then, of course, there was the fact that Dodge had ensured her challenge would be harmless too. Dodge, who had palmed a bullet while making a show of checking the gun for ammo.



Dodge, who now refused to pick up her phone calls. It was such a joke. Bishop called Heather incessantly. She called Dodge. Krista called Heather. No one picked up for anyone else. Like some mixed-up game of telephone.



Nat stayed out of it. She had still not been given her solo challenge. Every day, Nat grew paler and skinnier. For once, she wasn’t chattering endlessly about all the guys she was dating. She’d even announced, solemnly, that she thought she might try and stay away from guys for a while. Heather didn’t know if it was the game or whatever had happened on the night of Nat’s birthday, but Nat reminded Heather of a painting she’d once seen reproduced in a history textbook, of a noblewoman awaiting the guillotine.



A week after Heather’s challenge, the blade fell.



Heather and Nat had taken Lily to the mall to see a movie, mostly to get out of the heat—it had been a record ninety-five degrees for three straight days, and Heather felt as if she was moving through soup. The sky was a scorched, pale blue; the trees were motionless in the shimmering heat.



Afterward, they returned in Nat’s car to Anne’s house. Nat knew, at last, that Heather wasn’t living at home, and had offered to come sleep at Anne’s with her, even though she disliked the dogs and wouldn’t even get close to the tigers’ pen. But Anne had left town for the weekend to visit her sister-in-law on the coast, and Heather hated being in the big, old house without her. That was one good thing about the trailer: you always knew what was what, where the walls were, who was home. Anne’s house was different: full of wood that creaked and groaned, ghost sounds, mysterious thumps and scratching noises.



“Get it,” Nat said when her phone dinged between her legs.



“Ew. I’m not reaching for it,” Heather said.



Nat giggled and tossed the phone at her, taking her hand off the wheel only briefly. She swerved, and Lily yelped from the backseat.



“Sorry, Bill,” Nat said.



“Don’t call me that,” Lily said primly. Nat laughed. But Heather was sitting with the phone in her lap, ice running through her wrists, into her hands.



“What’s the matter?” Nat asked. Then her face got serious. “Is it—?” She cut herself off and glanced in the rearview at Lily, who was listening attentively.



Heather read the text again. Impossible. “Did you tell anyone you were sleeping over at Anne’s tonight?” she asked, in a low voice.



Nat shrugged. “My parents. And Bishop. I think I mentioned it to Joey, too.”



Heather slid Nat’s phone shut and chucked it into the glove compartment. Suddenly she wanted it as far from her as possible.



“What?” Nat asked.



“Someone knows that Anne’s gone,” Heather said. She turned the radio up so Lily couldn’t eavesdrop. “The judges know.” Who had Heather told? Dodge—she’d mentioned it to him in a text. Said he should come over so they could talk, so she could thank him. And of course, Anne had told some people, probably; it was Carp, and people talked because they had nothing else to do.



The implication of what Heather had just read—what Nat would have to do—sank in. She unrolled her window, but the blast of hot air gave her no relief. She shouldn’t have drunk so much soda at the movie theater. She was nauseous.



“What is it?” Nat said. She looked afraid. Unconsciously, she’d begun tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “What do I have to do?”



Heather looked at her. Her mouth tasted like ash, and she found she could not even speak a complete sentence. “The tigers,” she said.



dodge



THE CHALLENGES WERE ALWAYS POPULAR, BUT THIS year, many spectators had been staying away. It was too risky. The police had threatened to haul in anyone associated with Panic, and everyone was worried about taking the rap for the fire at the Graybill house. Rumor was Sadowski wanted someone—anyone—to take the fall. The roads, usually so empty, were infested with police cars, some from other counties.



But the word—tigers—was too much to resist. It had its own lift and momentum: it flitted through the woods, stole its way into houses barred up against the heat, spun into the rhythm of fans that cycled in bedrooms across Carp. By afternoon, all the players and ex-players and spectators and bettors and welshers and squealers—everyone who cared even remotely about the game and its outcome—had heard about the tigers of Mansfield Road.



Dodge was lying naked on his bed with two fans going at once when the text came in from Heather. For a second he wasn’t sure whether he was sleeping or awake. His room was dark and as hot as a mouth. He didn’t want to open the door, though. Ricky was over again and he’d brought food for Dayna, stuff he’d cooked himself at the diner, rice and beans and shrimp that smelled like burned garlic. They were watching a movie, and occasionally, despite the noise of the ancient fans and the closed door, he could hear the muffled sound of laughter.



The effort of sitting up made Dodge begin to sweat. He punched in Bishop’s number.



“What the hell?” he said, when Bishop picked up. No preamble. No bullshit. “How could you do it? How could you make her do it?”



Bishop sighed. “Rules of the game, Dodge. I’m not the only one in control of this shit.” He sounded exhausted. “If I don’t make it hard enough, I’ll get replaced. And then I won’t be able to help at all.”



Dodge ignored him. “She’ll never go through with it. She shouldn’t.”



“She doesn’t have to.”



Dodge felt like throwing his phone against the wall, even though he knew what Bishop said was true. In order for Dodge’s plan to succeed, Nat would have to drop out anyway, and soon. Still, it felt unfair. Too hard, too dangerous, like Heather’s challenge. But at least there, Bishop—and Dodge—had made sure she wouldn’t be in any real danger.



“Heather will find a way to help her,” Bishop said, as though he could read Dodge’s thoughts.



“You don’t know that,” Dodge said, and hung up. He didn’t know why he was so angry. He’d known the rules of Panic from the start. But somehow everything had gotten out of control. He wondered whether Bishop would show tonight, whether he could face it.



Poor Natalie. He thought about calling her and trying to convince her to drop out, to leave it, but then he thought about how she’d returned the necklace to him, and what he’d said to her that night—about opening her legs. It made him hot with shame. She had a right not to speak to him. She had a right to hate him, even.



But he would go tonight. And even if she did hate him, even if she ignored him completely, he wanted her to know that he was there. That he was sorry, too, for what he had said.



Time, for him, was running out.



heather



ONE OF HEATHER’S PROBLEMS—OUT OF ABOUT A HUNDRED big problems—was what to do about Lily. Anne had left them food for the weekend—mac ’n’ cheese, not from a box, but made with real cheese and milk and little spiral pasta, and tomato soup. Just heating it up made Heather feel like a criminal: Anne had invited them into her home, was taking care of them, and Heather was plotting behind her back.



Heather watched Lily polish off three portions. She didn’t know how Lily could eat in this heat. All the fans were going, all the windows were open, but it was still sweltering. She couldn’t have taken even a bite. She was sick with guilt and nerves. Outside, the sky was turning to milk, the shadows were yawning long on the ground. It wouldn’t be long before sundown, and game time. Heather wondered what Natalie was doing. She’d been locked in upstairs for the past three hours. Heather had heard the shuddering of pipes, the gush of water in the shower, three times.