Panic

SATURDAY, JULY 30

heather

HEATHER WAS WOKEN BY SOMEONE RAPPING ON THE window. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, startled and momentarily disoriented. Sun was streaming through the windows of the Taurus. Dodge was watching her through the windshield.

Now that she was awake, everything came into sudden focus: the kiss with Bishop and its botched end; Natalie crying in the bathroom; and now Dodge watching her, taking in the rumpled sheet and beaten-up cups from Dairy Queen in the passenger seat, the chip bags and the flip-flops and the scattered clothing in the backseat.

Outside, Lily was barefoot and dressed in a bathing suit.

Heather opened the door and got out of the car. “What are you doing here?” She was furious with him. He had violated an unspoken agreement. When she had said, Don’t tell, she had also meant Don’t come back.

“I tried calling you. Your phone was off.” If he could tell she was angry, he didn’t seem to care.

Her phone. She’d been powering down her phone as much as she could, since she could only charge it when she worked at Anne’s house. Besides, she didn’t need to see the texts from her mom. But she realized she’d brought it into Bishop’s kitchen last night to charge, and never retrieved it. Shit. That meant going back for it.

Heather had slept in her clothes—the same clothes she’d worn to Nat’s party, including a tank top with sequins. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s up?”

He passed her a folded piece of paper. The newest betting slip. “Nat’s back on. Derek was disqualified.”

“Disqualified?” Heather repeated. She’d only heard of someone being disqualified from Panic once before, years earlier—one of the players was sleeping with a judge. It later turned out that the guy, Mickey Barnes, wasn’t a judge, just pretending to be one so he could get laid. But it was too late. The player was replaced.

Dodge shrugged. Behind him, Lily had overturned their bucket of water and was making rivers out of the dirt. Heather was glad she wasn’t listening.

“Are you gonna tell her?” he asked.

“You can,” she said.

He looked at her again. Something shifted in his eyes. “No, I can’t.”

They stood there for a second. Heather wanted to ask him what had happened, but she felt too weird. She and Dodge weren’t exactly close—not like that, anyway. She didn’t know what they were. Maybe she wasn’t close with anyone.

“The deal’s off,” he said after a minute. “No splits.”

“What?” Heather was shocked to hear Dodge say it. That meant he knew she knew about his deal with Nat. Did he know about the deal she and Nat had made?

His eyes were almost gray, like a storm sky.

“We play the game how it was meant,” he said, and for the first time she was almost afraid of him. “Winner takes the pot.”

“Why can’t I come in and see Bishop?” Lily was in a bad mood. She’d been whining since she got up. She was too hot. She was dirty. The food that Heather had for her—more tinned stuff, and a sandwich she’d bought at the 7-Eleven—was gross. Heather guessed that the adventure of being without a home (she couldn’t bring herself to think the word homeless), the newness of it, was wearing off.

Heather gripped the wheel, squeezing out her frustration through her palms. “I’m just running in for a second, Lilybelle,” she said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. She wouldn’t snap, she wouldn’t scream. She would keep it together—all for Lily. “And Bishop’s busy.” She didn’t know if this was true—she hadn’t been able to call and see whether Bishop was even home, and part of her was hoping he wasn’t. She kept flashing back to the kiss, the moment of warmth and rightness . . . and then the way he had pulled away, like the kiss had physically hurt him. I don’t want to lie to you, Heather.

Never had she been so humiliated in her life. What on earth had possessed her? Thinking about it made her stomach hurt, made her want to drive all the way to the ocean and keep gunning straight into it.

But she needed her phone. She was going to have to suck it up and risk seeing him. Maybe she could even do damage control, explain that she hadn’t meant to kiss him—so he wouldn’t think she was in love with him or something.

Her stomach gave another lurch into her throat. She wasn’t in love with Bishop.

Was she?

“I’ll be back in ten,” she said. She’d parked a little ways down the driveway, so if Bishop was outside, he wouldn’t see her car and all the evidence that she was living inside it. The last thing she wanted was more pity from him.

There was still evidence of the party in the yard: a few plastic cups, cigarette butts, a pair of cheap sunglasses swimming in a birdbath filled with mossy water. But everything was quiet. Maybe he wasn’t home.

But before she could even make it to the front door, Bishop appeared, carrying a trash bag. He froze when he saw her, and Heather felt the last flicker of hope—that things would be normal, that they could pretend last night had never happened—fizzle out.

“What are you doing here?” he blurted out.

“I just came to get my phone.” Her voice sounded weird, like it was being replayed on a bad sound system. “Don’t worry, I’m not staying.”

She started to move past him, into the house.

He caught her arm. “Wait.” There was something desperate about the way he was looking at her. He licked his lips. “Wait—you don’t—I have to explain.”

“Forget about it,” Heather said.

“No. I can’t—you have to trust me—” Bishop pushed a hand through his hair, so it stood up straight. Heather felt like she could cry. His clown-hair; his faded Rangers T-shirt and sweatpants spotted with paint; his smell. She had thought it was hers—she’d thought he was hers—but all this time he’d been growing up and hooking up and having secret crushes and becoming someone she didn’t know.

And she knew, looking at him holding a stupid bag of trash, that she was in love with him and always had been. Probably since the kiss freshman year. Maybe even before that.

“You don’t have to explain,” she said, and pushed past him into the house. It had been bright outside, and she was temporarily disoriented by the dark, and she took two unsteady steps toward the living room, where she could hear the fan going, as Bishop flung open the door behind her.

“Heather,” he said.

Before she could respond, another voice called out. A girl’s voice. “Bishop?”

Time stopped. Heather froze, and Bishop froze, and nothing moved except the black spots across Heather’s eyes as her vision slowly adjusted; as she saw a girl float up out of the shadow, emerging from the darkness of the living room. Weirdly, although they’d gone to school together forever, Heather didn’t immediately recognize Vivian Travin. Maybe it was the shock of seeing her there, in Bishop’s house, barefooted, holding a mug from Bishop’s kitchen. As though she belonged.

“Hey, Heather,” Vivian said, taking a sip from her mug. Over the rim, her eyes connected with Bishop’s, and Heather saw a warning there.

Heather turned to Bishop. All she saw was guilt: guilt all over him, like a physical force, like something sticky.

“What are you doing here?” Vivian asked, still casual.

“Leaving,” Heather said. She threw herself forward, down the hall and into the kitchen. She was fighting the feeling that she was going to be sick, fighting the memories threatening to drown her: the times she’d drunk cocoa from that mug, her lips where Vivian’s now were, her lips on Bishop’s—Vivian’s Bishop.

Her phone was still plugged into an outlet near the microwave. Her fingers felt swollen and useless. It took her several tries before she could unplug it.

She couldn’t face passing Bishop and Vivian again, so she just hurtled out the back door, across the porch, and down into the yard. Idiot. She was such an idiot. She tasted tears before she knew she was crying.

Why would Bishop go for her, Heather? He was smart. He was leaving for college. Heather was a nobody. Nill. As in zero. That’s why Matt had dumped her too.

No one had ever told her this basic fact: not everyone got to be loved. It was like those stupid bell curves they’d had to study in math class. There was the big, swollen, happy middle, a whale hump full of blissful couples and families eating around a big dining room table and laughing. And then, at the tapered ends, there were the abnormal people, the weirdos and freaks and zeros like her.

She wiped away the tears with her forearm and took a few seconds to breathe and calm down before she returned to the car. Lily was picking at a mosquito bite on her big toe. She stared at Heather suspiciously when Heather got in the car.

“Did you see Bishop?” Lily asked.

“No,” Heather said, and put the car in drive.