Authors: Lauren Oliver
Panic (21 page)
IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE TIGERS’ ESCAPE, HEATHER was so anxious she couldn’t sleep. She kept expecting Krista to show up with some court order, demanding that Lily return home. Or, even worse, for the cops or the ASPCA to show up and haul Anne off to jail. What would she do then?
But as more days passed, she relaxed. Maybe Krista realized she was happier with her daughters out of the house. That she wasn’t meant to be a mother. All the things Heather had heard her say a million times. And although the cops floated in and out, still trying to locate the second tiger, still patrolling Anne’s property, and the ASPCA showed up to verify the conditions of the other animals and make sure they were all legal, Anne wasn’t clapped in handcuffs and dragged away, as Heather had feared.
Heather knew, deep down, that her situation at Anne’s was temporary. She couldn’t stay here forever. In the fall, Lily had to go back to school. Anne was floating them, paying for them, but how long would that last? Heather had to get a job, pay Anne back, do something. She kept clinging to the hope that Panic would fix it: that with the money she earned, even if she had to split it with Dodge, she could rent a room from Anne or get her own space with Lily.
The longer she stayed away from Fresh Pines, the more certain she became: she would never, ever go back there. She belonged here, or somewhere like it—somewhere with space, where no neighbors were crawling up your butt all the time and there was no shouting, no sounds of bottles breaking and people blasting music all night. Somewhere with animals and big trees and that fresh smell of hay and poop that somehow wasn’t unpleasant. It was amazing how much she loved making the rounds, cleaning out the chicken coop and brushing the horses down and even sweeping the stalls.
It was amazing, too, how good it felt to be wanted somewhere. Because Heather believed, now, what Anne had said to her. Anne cared. Maybe even loved her, a little bit.
Which changed everything.
Three days until the final challenge. Now that Heather knew how it would go down—that she would only be called on to lose in the first round of Joust, to Dodge—she felt incredibly relieved. First thing she was going to do with the money was buy Lily a new bike, which she’d been eyeing when they took a trip to Target the other day.
No. First she would give Anne some money, and
then
she would buy a bike.
And then maybe a nice sundress for herself, and strappy leather sandals. Something pretty to wear when she finally worked up the courage to talk to Bishop—
if
she did.
She fell asleep and dreamed of him. He was standing with her on the edge of the water tower, telling her to jump, jump. Beneath her—far beneath her—was a swollen rush of water, interspersed with bright white lights, like unblinking eyes pasted in the middle of all that black water. He kept telling her not to be afraid, and she didn’t want to tell him she was terrified, so weak she couldn’t move.
Then Dodge was there. “How are you going to win if you’re scared of the jump?” he was saying.
Suddenly Bishop was gone, and the ledge under her feet wasn’t metal, but a kind of wood, half-rotten, unstable. Boom. Dodge was swinging at it with a baseball bat, whittling away the wood, sending showers of splinters down toward the water.
Boom.
“Jump, Heather.”
Boom.
“Heather.”
“Heather.”
Heather woke up to doubleness—Lily whispering her name urgently, standing in the space between their beds; and also, like an echo, a voice from outside.
“Heather Lynn!” the voice cried.
Boom.
The sound of a fist on the front door. “Get down here! Get down here so I can talk to you.”
“Mom,” Lily said, just as Heather placed the voice. Lily’s eyes were wide.
“Get in bed, Lily,” Heather said. She was awake in an instant. She checked her phone: 1:13 a.m. In the hall, a small fissure of light was showing underneath Anne’s bedroom door. Heather heard sheets rustling. So she’d been woken too.
The banging was still going, and the muffled cries of “Heather! I know you’re in there. You gonna ignore your own mother?” Even before reaching the door, Heather knew her mom was drunk.
The porch light was on. When she opened the door, her mom was standing with one hand to her eyes, like she was shielding them from the sun. She was a mess. Hair frizzy; shirt so low Heather could see all the wrinkles of her cleavage and the white half-moons where her bikini had prevented a tan; jeans with stains; enormous wedge heels. She was having trouble standing in one place and kept taking miniature steps for balance.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” she slurred. “What are you doing here?”
“Leave.” Heather took a step onto the porch, hugging herself. “You have no right to be here. You have no right to come barging—”
“Right? Right? I got every right.” Her mom took an unsteady step forward, trying to move past her. Heather blocked her, grateful, for once, that she was so big. Krista started shouting, “Lily! Lily Anne! Where are you, baby?”
“Stop it.” Heather tried to grab Krista by the shoulders, but her mom reeled away from her, swatting her hand.
“What’s going on?” Anne had appeared behind them, blinking, wearing an old bathrobe. “Heather? Is everything okay?”
“You.” Krista took two steps forward before Heather could stop her. “You stole my babies.” She was weaving, swaying on her shoes. “You goddamn bitch, I should—”
“Mom, stop!” Heather hugged herself tight, trying to keep her insides together, trying to keep everything from spilling out.
And Anne was saying, “Okay, let’s calm down, let’s everyone calm down.” Hands up, like she was trying to keep Krista at bay.
“I don’t need to calm down—”
“Mom, stop it!”
“Get out of my way—”
“Hold on, just hold on.”
And then a voice from the darkness beyond the porch: “What’s the trouble?” A flashlight clicked on, just as the porch light went off. It swept over all of them in turn, like a pointed finger. Someone emerged from the dark, came heavily up the stairs, as the porch light, in response to his movement, clicked on again. The rest of them were momentarily frozen. Heather had forgotten there was a patrol car parked in the woods. The cop was blinking rapidly, like he’d been sleeping.
“The problem,” Krista said, “is that this woman has my babies. She stole them.”
The cop’s jaw was moving rhythmically, like he was chewing gum. His eyes moved from Krista, to Heather, to Anne, then back again. His jaw hinged left, right. Heather held her breath.
“That your car, ma’am?” he said finally, jerking his head over his shoulder, where Krista’s car was parked.
Krista looked at it. Looked back at him. Something flickered in her eyes. “Yeah, so?”
He kept chewing, watching her. “Legal limit’s .08.”
“I’m not drunk.” Krista’s voice was rising. “I’m as sober as you are.”
“You mind stepping over here for a minute?”
Heather found herself ready to throw her arms around his neck and say thank you. She wanted to explain, but her breath was lodged in her throat.
“I
do
mind.” Krista sidestepped the cop as he took a step toward her. She nearly stumbled over one of the flowerpots. He reached out and grabbed her elbow. She tried to shake him off.
“Ma’am, please. If you could just walk this way . . .”
“Let
go
of me.”
Heather watched it in slow motion. There was a swell of noise. Shouting. And Krista was swinging her arm, bringing her fist to the officer’s face. The punch seemed amplified by a thousand: a ringing, hollow noise.
And then time sped forward again and the cop was twisting Krista’s arms behind her as she bucked and writhed like an animal. “You are under arrest for assaulting a police officer—”
“Let go.”
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
She was handcuffed. Heather didn’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified. Maybe both. Krista was still shouting as the cop led her off the porch, toward the squad car—calling up to Lily, screaming about her rights. Then she was in the car and the door closed and there was silence, except for the engine gunning on, the spit of gravel as the cop turned a circle. A sweep of headlights. Then darkness. The porch light had gone off again.
Heather was shaking. When she could finally speak, the only thing she could say was: “I hate her.” Then again: “I hate her.”
“Come on, sweetie.” Anne put her arm around Heather’s shoulders. “Let’s go inside.”
Heather exhaled. She let the anger go with it. They stepped into the house together, into the coolness of the hall, the patterns of shadow and moonlight that already looked familiar. She thought of Krista, raging away in the back of a cop car. Her stomach started to unknot. Now everyone would know the truth: how Krista was, and what Heather and Lily were escaping.
Anne gave Heather a squeeze. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “
You’re
going to be okay.”
Heather looked at her. She managed a smile. “I know,” she said.
The end of August was the saddest time of the year in Carp. Maybe the saddest time everywhere.
Every year, no matter what the weather, the public pools were suddenly clogged with people, the parks carpeted in picnic blankets and beach towels, the road packed bumper-to-bumper with weekenders descending on Copake Lake. A shimmering veil of exhaust hung over the trees, intermingling with the smell of charcoal and smoke from hundreds of barbecues. It was the final, explosive demonstration of summer, the line in the sand, a desperate attempt to hold fall forever at bay.
But autumn nibbled the blue sky with its teeth, tore off chunks of the sun, smudged out that heavy veil of meat-smelling smoke. It was coming. It would not be held off much longer.
It would bring rain, and cold, and change.
But before that: the final challenge. The deadliest challenge.
Joust.
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 Ray would 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.
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 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.”