Panic

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25

dodge

THE DAY OF JOUST WAS WET AND COLD. DODGE dressed in his favorite jeans and a worn T-shirt, emerged sockless into the den, ate cereal from a mixing bowl, and watched a few reality TV shows with Dayna, making some jokes about the douche bags who would let their whole lives get filmed. She seemed relieved that he was acting normal.

But the whole time, his mind was several miles away, on a dark straightaway, on engines gunning and tires screeching and the smell of smoke.

He was worried. Worried the fire would start too early, when Dodge was driving the car. And worried that Ray wouldn’t go for the switch.

He was counting on that, had rehearsed a speech in his head. “I want to change cars,” he’d say, after Heather let him win the first round. “So I know it’s fair. So I know he didn’t go turbo on his engine, or screw with my brakes.”

How could Ray say no? If Dodge drove carefully, no more than forty miles per hour, the engine shouldn’t heat up too much, and the explosion wouldn’t get triggered. Heather had to let him win even if he was going at a crawl. Ray would never suspect.

And then he’d get in the car, floor it, and the engine would start smoking and sparking and then . . .

Revenge.

If everything went according to plan. If, if, if. He hated that stupid word.

At three p.m. Bill Kelly came by to take Dayna to physical therapy. Dodge didn’t understand how Kelly had just wormed his way into their lives. Dayna was practically up his ass. Like they were suddenly all one big happy family unit, and Dodge was the only one who could remember: they weren’t family, would never be. It had always been Dodge and Dayna and no one else.

And now, he’d even lost her.

“You gonna be okay?” she asked. She was getting good with her chair, spinning herself around furniture, bumping up the place where the floor was slightly uneven. He hated that she’d had to get good at being crippled.

“Yeah, sure.” He deliberately didn’t look at her. “Just gonna watch some TV and stuff.”

“We’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she said. And then: “I think it’s really working, Dodge.”

“I’m happy for you,” he said. He was surprised to feel his throat getting tight. She was halfway out the door when he called her back. “Dayna,” he said. All for you.

She turned. “What?”

He managed to smile. “Love ya.”

“Don’t be a dick,” she said, and smiled back. Then she wheeled out of the house and closed the door behind her.

heather

WITH EVERY PASSING MINUTE, SHE WAS CLOSER TO THE END.

Heather should have felt a sense of relief, but instead she was gripped, all day, with dread. She told herself that all she had to do was lose. She’d have to trust that Dodge would keep his promise about the money.

He wasn’t playing for the money. She had always known that on some level. But she wished she’d really pushed him about what motivated him. Maybe that was making her jumpy: now, even at the very end of the game, she didn’t understand his end goal. It made her feel as though there were other games going on, secret rules and pacts and alliances, and she was just a pawn.

Around five o’clock, the storm passed, and the clouds started to shred apart. The air was thick with moisture and mosquitoes. The roads would be slick. But she reminded herself it wouldn’t matter. She could back out, even, if she wanted to; pretend to chicken out, or really chicken out, at the last second. Then Dodge and Ray could face off and she’d be done.

Still, the sick feeling—a weight in her stomach, an itch under her skin—wouldn’t leave her.

Joust had been moved. There had been no formal messages about it, no texts or emails. Bishop was lying low, just in case anyone was angry about the way the game had shaken out. Heather didn’t blame him. And presumably Vivian, too, was keeping her head down. For the first time in the history of the game, the final challenge would proceed with or without the judges.

But word had come back to Heather, as it always did in a town so small, with so little but talk to feed it. The cops were posted all around the runway where Joust traditionally occurred. So: a change in location. A spot not far from the gully and the old train tracks.

Heather wondered, with another pang, whether Nat would show up.

It was six o’clock when she left. Her hands were already shaking, and she worried that in another hour or so, she’d be too nervous to drive or she’d chicken out entirely. Anne had agreed to let Heather use the car for the night, and Heather hated herself for lying about why she needed it. But she told herself that this was it, the end—no more lies from here on out. And she would be extra careful, and pull the car off the road well before Dodge came anywhere close to her.

She didn’t say good-bye to Lily. She didn’t want to make a big deal of it. It wasn’t a big deal.

She’d be home in a few hours, tops.

She had just turned out of the driveway when she felt her phone buzz. She ignored it, but the calls started up again right away. And then a third time. She pulled over and fished her phone from her pocket.

Nat. As soon as she picked up, she knew something was very, very wrong.

“Heather, please,” Nat was saying, even before Heather said hello. “Something bad is going to happen. We have to stop it.”

“Hold on, hold on.” Heather could hear Nat sniffling. “Calm down. Start at the beginning.”

“It’s going to happen tonight,” Nat said. “We have to do something. He’ll end up dead. Or he’ll kill Ray.”

Heather could barely follow the thread of the conversation.

“Who?”

“Dodge,” Nat wailed. “Please, Heather. You have to help us.”

Heather sucked in a deep breath. The sun chose that moment to break through the clouds completely. The sky was streaked with fingers of red, the exact color of new blood.

“Who’s us?”

“Just come,” Nat said. “Please. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”

dodge

DODGE DROVE PAST THE GULLY JUST AFTER SIX O’CLOCK. The car Bishop had lent him—a Le Sabre that Dodge knew could never be returned—was old and temperamental, and drifted to the left whenever he didn’t correct it. It didn’t matter. Dodge didn’t need it for very long.

He parked on the side of the road on one side of the straightaway that had been selected for the challenge. The road was pretty dead—maybe people were discouraged by the bad weather. Dodge was glad. He couldn’t risk being spotted.

It didn’t take long. It was surprisingly easy—kid stuff, which was ironic, especially considering that Dodge had failed chemistry three times and wasn’t exactly a science guy. Funny how easily you could look this shit up online. Explosives, bombs, Molotov cocktails, IEDs . . . anything you wanted. Learning how to blow someone up was easier than buying a frigging beer.

Earlier, he’d dissolved a bit of an old Styrofoam cooler in some gasoline and poured the whole mixture into a mason jar. Homemade napalm—easy as making salad dressing. Now he carefully duct-taped a firecracker to the outside of the jar and nestled the whole thing down into the engine bay. Not too close to the exhaust manifold—he needed to get through the challenge with Heather first. And he would drive carefully, make sure the engine didn’t get too hot.

Then the car would go to Ray. Ray would gun it, and the firecracker would ignite, and the jar would shatter, discharging the explosives.

Kaboom.

All he had to do now was wait.

But almost immediately, he got a text from Heather. Need to pick u up. Emergency. We have to talk.

And then: Now.

Dodge cursed out loud. Then he had a sudden fear: she was going to back out. That would ruin everything. He wrote her back quickly. Corner of Wolf Hill and Pheasant. Pick me up.

Coming, she wrote back.

He walked circles while he waited for her, smoking cigarettes. He had been calm before, but now he was filled with anxiety, a crawling, itching sensation, as though spiders were scurrying under his skin.

He thought of Dayna in the hospital bed as he’d first seen her after the accident—wide-eyed, a little blood and snot crusted above her mouth, saying, “I can’t feel my legs. What happened to my legs?” Getting hysterical in the hospital room, trying to stand, and landing instead in Dodge’s lap.

He thought of Luke Hanrahan, driving off with fifty grand; and the night Dodge had stood outside the Hanrahans’ house with a baseball bat and been too afraid to act.

And by the time Heather pulled up, he felt a little better.

Heather wouldn’t tell him anything in the car. “What’s this about?” he asked her.

But she just kept repeating, “Just hold on. Okay? She’ll want to tell you herself.”

“She?” His stomach flipped.

“Nat,” she said.

“Is she okay?” he asked. But Heather just shook her head, indicating she would say no more. He was getting annoyed now. This was a bad time; he needed to focus. His stomach was tight with nerves. But at the same time he was flattered that Heather needed him—flattered, too, that Nat might have asked to see him. And they still had two hours before full dark. More than enough time.

There were two cars in Nat’s driveway, one of them a battered Chevy truck he didn’t recognize. He wondered if this was some kind of intervention for her and got that crawling feeling under his skin again.

“What’s going on?” he asked again.

“I told you,” Heather said. “She’ll want to explain it herself.”

The door was unlocked. Weirdly, although the light was rapidly fading outside, there were no lamps on in the house. The air was dull and gray, lying like a textured blanket over everything, smudging out details. Walking into Nat’s house, Dodge had the feeling he used to get in church: like he was trespassing on sacred ground. There was wood everywhere, lots of nice-looking furniture, things that screamed money to him. But not a sound.

“Is she even here?” he asked. His voice sounded overloud.

“Downstairs.” Heather moved ahead of him. She opened a door just to the right of the living room. A set of unfinished stairs led down into what was obviously a basement. Dodge thought he heard movement, maybe a whisper, but then it stopped.

“Go ahead,” Heather said. He was going to tell her to go first, but he didn’t want her to think he was afraid. Which he was, for whatever reason. Something about this place—the silence, maybe—was freaking him out. As if sensing his hesitation, Heather said, “Look, we’ll be able to talk down there. She’ll tell you everything.” Heather paused. “Nat?” she called out.

“Down here!” Nat’s voice came from the basement.

Reassured, he headed down the stairs, into the musty, humid, underground air. The basement was large and filled with discarded furniture. He had just reached the bottom of the stairs and turned around to look for Nat when the lights went off. He froze, confused.

“What the—,” he started to say, but then he felt himself roughly seized, heard an explosion of voices. He thought for one second this must be part of the game, a challenge he hadn’t anticipated.

“Over here, over here!” Nat was saying. Dodge struck out, struggling, but whoever was holding him was big, fleshy, and strong. A guy. Dodge could tell by his size, and by the smell, too—menthol, beer, aftershave. Dodge kicked out; the guy cursed, and something toppled over. There was the sound of breaking glass. Natalie said, “Shit. Here. Here.”

Dodge was forced into a chair. His hands were twisted behind him, tied up with something. Duct tape. His legs, too.

“What the fuck?” He was yelling now. “Get the fuck off me.”

“Shhh. Dodge. It’s okay.”

Even now, here, Dodge was paralyzed by the sound of Natalie’s voice. He couldn’t even struggle. “What the hell is this?” he said. “What are you doing?” His eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark. He could just make her out, the wide contours of her eyes, two sad, dark holes.

“It’s for you,” she said. “For your own good.”

“What are you talking about?” He thought, suddenly, of the car parked on Pheasant Lane, the mason jar of gasoline and Styrofoam, nestled in the engine like a secret heart. He strained against the duct tape binding him. “Let me go.”

“Dodge, listen to me.” Nat’s voice broke, and he realized she’d been crying. “I know—I know you blame Luke for what happened to your sister. For the accident, right?”

Dodge felt something ice-cold move through him. He couldn’t speak.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re planning, but I won’t let you go through with it,” Nat said. “This has to stop.”

“Let me go.” His voice was rising. He was fighting a panicked feeling, a sense of dull dread in his whole body, the same feeling he’d had two years earlier, standing on the lawn in front of the Hanrahans’ house, trying to get his feet to move.

“Dodge, listen to me.” Her hands were on his shoulders. He wanted to push her off, but he couldn’t. And another part of him wanted her and hated her at the same time. “This is for you. This is because I care.”

“You don’t know anything,” he said. He could smell her skin, a combination of vanilla and bubblegum, and it made him ache. “Let me go, Natalie. This is insane.”

“No. I’m sorry, but no.” Her fingers grazed his cheek. “I won’t let you do anything stupid. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She leaned even closer, until her lips were nearly touching his. He thought she might be leaning in to kiss him, and he was unable to turn away, unable to resist. Then he felt her hands moving along his thighs, groping.

“What are you—?” he started to say. But just then she found his pocket and extracted his keys and phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said, straightening up. And she did truly sound sorry. “But believe me, it’s for the best.”

A wave of helplessness overtook him. He made a final, futile attempt to free himself. The chair jumped forward a few inches on the concrete floor. “Please,” he said. “Natalie.”

“I’m sorry, Dodge,” Nat said. “I’ll be back as soon as the challenge is over. I swear.”

She was fumbling with his phone, and the screen lit up temporarily, casting her face in brightness, showing the deep, mournful hollows of her eyes, her expression of pity and regret. And lighting up, too, the guy behind her. The one who’d wrestled Dodge into the chair.

He’d gained weight—at least thirty pounds—and he’d let his hair get long. Fifty grand wasn’t sitting too well on him. But there was no mistaking his eyes, the hard set of his jaw, and the scar, like a small white worm, cutting straight through his left eyebrow.

Dodge felt a fist of shock plunge straight through him. He could no longer speak, or even breathe.

Luke Hanrahan.

heather

HEATHER WAITED IN THE CAR WHILE NATALIE AND LUKE did whatever they had to do. She was trying to breathe normally, but her lungs weren’t obeying and kept fluttering weirdly in her chest. She would have to go up against Ray Hanrahan now. There was no giving in or weaseling out.

She wondered what Dodge had had planned for tonight. Luke hadn’t exactly known either, although he’d shown Nat and Heather some of the threatening messages that had come from Dodge. It was surreal, sitting in Nat’s kitchen with Luke Hanrahan, football star Luke Hanrahan, the homecoming king who’d gotten kicked out of homecoming for smoking weed in the locker room during the announcement of the court. Winner of Panic. Who’d once assaulted a cashier at the 7-Eleven in Hudson when the guy wouldn’t sell him cigarettes.

He looked like shit. Two years away from Carp hadn’t done him any good, which was shocking to Heather. She thought all you needed to do—all any of them needed—was to get out. But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

He’d found Nat, he said, because of a betting slip that had reached him all the way in Buffalo. And because of that stupid video—the one filmed at the water towers, which showed Dodge with his arm slung around Nat. Nat had been the easiest of the remaining players to locate, and he was hoping he could talk her into helping him convince Dodge to bow out.

Nat emerged from the house at last. Heather watched her talking with Luke on the front porch; he was nearly double her size. Crazy how several years ago, Nat would have freaked at the idea that Luke might ever look in her direction or know who she was. It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities. She supposed if you could predict or foresee everything that was going to happen, you’d lose the motivation to go through it all.

The promise was always in the possibility.

“Is Dodge okay?” Heather asked when Nat slid into the car.

“He’s mad,” Nat said.

“You did kidnap him,” Heather pointed out.

“For his own good,” Nat said, and for a minute she looked angry. But then she smiled. “I’ve never kidnapped someone before.”

“Don’t make a habit of it.” They both seemed to have resolved not to mention their fight, and Heather was glad. She nodded at Luke, who was getting into his truck. “Is he coming to watch?”

Nat shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She paused, and said in a low voice, “It’s awful, what he did to Dayna. I think he must hate himself.”

“He seems like he does,” Heather said. But she didn’t want to think about Luke, or Dodge’s sister, or legs buried beneath a ton of metal, rendered useless. She was already sick with nerves.

“Are you okay?” Nat said.

“No,” Heather said bluntly.

“You’re so close, Heather. You’re almost at the end. You’re winning.”

“I’m not winning yet,” Heather said. But she put the car into gear. There was no more delaying it. There was hardly any light left in the sky—as though the horizon were a black hole, sucking all the color away. Something else occurred to her. “Jesus. This is Anne’s car. I’m barely allowed to be driving it. I can’t go up against Ray in this.”

“You don’t have to.” Nat reached into her purse and extracted a set of keys, jiggling them dramatically.

Heather looked at her. “Where’d you get those?”

“Dodge,” Nat said. She flipped the keys into her palm and returned them to her bag. “You can use his car. Better to be safe than sorry, right?”

As the last of the sun vanished, and the moon, like a giant scythe, cut through the clouds, they gathered. Quietly they materialized from the woods; they came down the gully, scattering gravel, sliding on the hill; or they came packed together in cars, driving slowly, headlights off, like submarines in the dark.

And by the time stars surfaced from the darkness, they were all there: all the kids of Carp, come to witness the final challenge.

It was time. There was no need for Diggin to repeat the rules; everyone knew the rules of Joust. Each car aimed for the other, going fast in a single lane. The first person to swerve would lose.

And the winner would take the pot.

Heather was so nervous, it took her three tries to get the key in the ignition. She’d found the LeSabre pulled over on the side of the road, practically buried in the bushes. It was Bishop’s car—Dodge must have borrowed it.

She was unreasonably annoyed that Bishop had helped Dodge in this way. She wondered if Bishop had risked coming tonight—somewhere in the crowd, the dark masses of people, faces indistinguishable in the weak moonlight. She was too proud to text him and see. Ashamed, too. He’d tried to talk to her, to explain, and she had acted awful.

She wondered whether he would forgive her.

“How are you feeling?” Nat asked her. She’d offered to stay with Heather until the last possible second.

“I’m okay,” Heather said, which was a lie. Her lips were numb. Her tongue felt thick. How would she drive when she could barely feel her hands? As she pulled the car up to her starting position, the headlights lit up clusters of faces, ghost-white, standing quietly in the shadow of the trees. The engine was whining, like there was something wrong with it.

“You’re going to be fine,” Nat said. She twisted in her seat. Her eyes were suddenly wide, urgent. “You’re going to be fine, okay?” She said it like she was trying to convince herself.

Diggin was gesturing to Heather, indicating she should turn the car around. The engine was making a weird grinding noise. She thought she smelled something weird too, but then thought she must be imagining it. It would all be over soon, anyway. Thirty, forty seconds, tops. When she managed to get her car pointed in the right direction, Diggin rapped on her windshield with his fingers, gave her a short nod.

At the other end of the road—a thousand feet away from her, a thousand miles—she saw the twin circles of Ray’s headlights. They went on and off again. On and off. Like some kind of warning.

“You should go,” Heather said. Her throat was tight. “We’re about to start.”

“I love you, Heather.” Nat leaned over and put her arms around Heather’s neck. She smelled familiar and Nat-like, and it made Heather want to cry, as though they were saying good-bye for the last time. Then Nat pulled away. “Look, if Ray doesn’t swerve—I mean, if you’re close and it doesn’t look like he’s going to turn . . . You have to promise me you will. You can’t risk a collision, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise,” Heather said.

“Good luck.” Then Nat was gone. Heather saw her jog to the side of the road.

And Heather was alone in the car, in the dark, facing a long, narrow stretch of road, pointing like a finger toward the glow of distant headlights.

She thought of Lily.

She thought of Anne.

She thought of Bishop.

She thought of the tigers, and of everything she’d ever screwed up in her life.

She swore to herself that she wouldn’t be the first to swerve.

While in a dark basement, with the smell of mothballs and old furniture in his nose, Dodge realized, too late, why Nat had taken his keys—and, crying out, fought against his restraints, thinking of a little time-bomb heart, ticking slowly away.…

Something in the engine was smoking. Heather saw little trails of smoke unfurling from the hood of the car, like narrow black snakes. But just then Diggin stepped into the center of the road, shirtless, waving his T-shirt above his head like a flag.

Then it was already too late. She heard the high-pitched squeal of tires on asphalt. Ray had started to move. She slammed her foot onto the accelerator and the car jumped forward, skidding a little. The smoke redoubled almost instantly; for a second her vision was completely obscured.

Panic.

Then it broke apart and she could see. Headlights growing bigger. The slick sheen of the moon. And smoke, pouring like liquid from the hood. Everything was fast, too fast—she was hurtling down the road, there was nothing but two moons, growing larger . . . closer . . .

The stink of burning rubber and the scream of tires . . .

Closer, closer . . . She was hurtling forward. The speedometer ticked up to sixty miles per hour. It was too late to swerve now, and he wasn’t swerving either. It was too late to do anything but crash.

Flames leaped suddenly out of the engine, a huge roar of fire. Heather screamed. She couldn’t see anything. The wheel jerked in her hand, and she struggled to keep her car on the road. The air stank like burning plastic, and her lungs were tight with smoke.

She slammed on the brakes, suddenly overwhelmed with certainty: she would die. She saw movement from somewhere on her left—someone running into the road?—and realized, a second later, that Ray had swerved to avoid it, had jerked his wheel to the left and was plunging straight into the woods.

There was a shuddering crash as she sailed past him, flames licking her windshield. She was screaming. She knew she had to get out of the car now, before she hit anything.

Skidding, shuddering, spinning in circles; the car was slowing, it was drifting toward the woods. Heather fought to open the door. The handle caught and she thought she would be trapped there as the fire consumed her. Then she shoved with her shoulder and the door popped open and she jumped, rolled, felt the bite of pavement on her arm and shoulder, tasted dirt and grit, heard a distant roar of sound as if people were yelling her name. Sparks showered from the wheels of the car as it flipped off the road and into the woods.

There was an explosion so loud, she felt it through her whole body. She covered her head. Now she could hear that people were calling her name—and Ray’s, too. A siren wailed in the distance. For a second, she thought she must be dead. But she could taste blood in her mouth. If she were dead, she wouldn’t be able to taste any blood.

She looked up. The car was in ruins; a column of flame was eating it, turning it to rubber and metal. Amazingly, she managed to sit up, and then to stand. She felt no pain, as if she were watching a movie about her own life. And now she couldn’t hear anything. Not the voices calling to her, urging her out of the road, away from the car—not the sirens, either. She was in a watery, deep place of silence.

She turned and saw Ray struggling to get out of his car. There was blood trickling down his face; three people were trying to pull him from the wreck. When he’d swerved, he’d gone straight into a tree; the hood was crumpled, compressed nearly in half.

And now she saw why.

Standing in the middle of the road, perfectly still, not twenty feet away, was the tiger.

It was watching Heather with those deep black eyes, eyes that were old and sorrowful, eyes that had watched centuries go to dust. And in that moment, she felt a jolt go through her, and she knew that the tiger was afraid—of the noise and the fire and the people shouting, crowding the road on both sides.

But she, Heather, wasn’t afraid anymore.

She was compelled forward by a force she couldn’t explain. She felt nothing but pity and understanding. She was alone with the tiger on the road.

And in the final moment of the game, as smoke billowed in swollen plumes into the air and fire licked the sky, Heather Nill walked without hesitation to the tiger, and placed her hand gently on its head, and won.