Panic (15 page)
Authors: Lauren Oliver
DODGE HEARD VOICES IN THE LIVING ROOM AS SOON as he opened the door and immediately regretted coming home directly. It was just after eleven, and his first thought was that Ricky was over again. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with Ricky grinning like an idiot and Dayna blushing and trying to make things not awkward and all the time shooting Dodge dagger eyes, like
he
was the one intruding.
But then his mom called, “Come in here, Dodge!”
A man was sitting on the couch. His hair was graying, and he was wearing a rumpled suit, which matched his rumpled face.
“What?” Dodge said, barely looking at his mom. He didn’t even try to be polite. He wasn’t going to play nice with one of his mom’s dates.
His mom frowned.
“Dodge,” she said, drawing out his name, like a warning bell. “You know Bill Kelly, don’t you? Bill came over for a little bit of company.” She was watching Dodge closely, and he read a dozen messages in her eyes at once:
Bill Kelly just lost his son, so if you’re rude to him, I swear you’ll be sleeping on the streets. . . .
Dodge felt suddenly like his whole body was made of angles and spikes, and he couldn’t remember how to move it correctly. He turned jerkily to the man on the couch: Big Bill Kelly. Now he could see the resemblance to his son. The straw-colored hair running, in the father’s case, to gray; the piercing blue eyes and the heavy jaw.
“Hi,” Dodge said. His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat. “I was—
am
—I mean, we’re all sorry to hear—”
“Thank you, son.” Mr. Kelly’s voice was surprisingly clear. Dodge was glad he’d been interrupted, because he didn’t know what else he would have said. He was so hot he felt like his face was about to explode. He had the sudden, hysterical impulse to shout out:
I was there. I was there when your son died. I could have saved him.
He took a deep breath. The game was wearing on him. He was starting to crack.
After what seemed like forever, Mr. Kelly’s eyes passed away from Dodge, back to his mother. “I should go, Sheila.” He stood up slowly. He was so tall he nearly grazed the ceiling with his head. “I’m going to Albany tomorrow. Autopsy’s done. I don’t expect any surprises, but . . .” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “I want to know everything. I
will
know everything.”
Sweat was pricking up underneath Dodge’s collar. It might have been his imagination, but he was sure Mr. Kelly’s words were directed at him. He thought of all the Panic betting slips he’d been collecting this summer. Where were they? Had he put them in his underwear drawer? Or left them out on his bedside table? Jesus. He had to get rid of them.
“Of course.” Dodge’s mom stood too. Now all three of them were standing, awkwardly, like they were in a play and had forgotten their lines. “Say good night to Mr. Kelly, Dodge.”
Dodge coughed. “Yeah. Sure. Look, I’m sorry again—”
Mr. Kelly stuck out his hand. “God’s works,” he said quietly. But Dodge felt that when Mr. Kelly shook his hand, he squeezed just a little too hard.
That was the night Diggin went to a party down at the gully and ended up with a cracked rib, two black eyes, and one of his teeth knocked out. Derek Klieg was drunk; that was the excuse he gave afterward, but everyone knew it was deeper than that, and once the swelling in Diggin’s face went down, he told anyone who would listen how Derek had jumped him, threatened him, tried to get him to cough up the names and identities of the judges, and wouldn’t listen when Diggin insisted he didn’t know.
It was an obvious violation of one of Panic’s many unspoken rules. The announcer was off-limits. So were the judges.
Derek Klieg was immediately disqualified. He had forfeited his spot in the game, and his name was struck from the betting slips by morning.
And Natalie, the last player eliminated, was back on.
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 see 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 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 Trager. 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.
DODGE HAD LOST THE RECEIPT FOR NATALIE’S NECKLACE, and instead had to pawn it for half of what he had paid. He needed the money. It was August 3; he was running out of time. He needed a car for the Joust. A junker would do—he was even thinking of buying one off Bishop. So long as it drove.
He had just finished a shift at Home Depot when he got a text. He hoped for a wild second it was Natalie; instead it was from his mom.
Meet us @ Columbia Memorial ASAP!!
Dayna. Something bad had happened to Dayna.
He tried calling his mom’s cell phone, and then Dayna’s, and got no response.
He barely registered the twenty-minute bus ride to Hudson. He couldn’t sit still. His legs were full of itching, and his heart was lodged underneath his tongue. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Another text.
This time, it was from an unknown number.
Time to go solo. Tomorrow night we’ll see what you’re really made of.
He shut his phone, shoved it in his pocket.
When he reached Columbia Memorial, he practically sprinted from the bus.
“Dodge!
Dodge!
”
Dayna and his mom were standing outside, by the handicapped ramp. Dayna was waving frantically, sitting up as tall as she could in her chair.
And she was grinning. They both were—smiling so big, he could see all their teeth, even from a distance.
Still, his heart wouldn’t stop going as he jogged across the parking lot. “What?” He was breathless by the time he reached them. “What is it? What happened?”
“You tell him, Day,” Dodge’s mom said, still smiling. Her mascara was smudgy. She’d obviously been crying.
Dayna sucked in a deep breath. Her eyes were shining; he hadn’t seen her look so happy since before the accident. “I
moved
, Dodge. I moved my toes.”
He stared at Dayna, then his mom, then Dayna again. “Jesus Christ,” he finally burst out. “I thought something
happened
. I thought you were dead or something.”
Dayna shook her head. She looked hurt. “Something
did
happen.”
Dodge took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He was sweating. He jammed on the hat again. Dayna was watching him expectantly. He knew he was being a dick.
He exhaled. “That’s amazing, Day,” he said. He tried to sound like he meant it. He
was
happy; he was just still wound up from the trip over, from being so afraid. “I’m proud of you.” He leaned down and gave her a hug. And he felt the tiniest convulsion in her body, like she was holding in a sob. Dodge’s mom insisted they go out to eat to celebrate, even though they couldn’t really afford it, especially now with all the bills.
They ended up at an Applebee’s outside Carp. Dodge’s mom ordered a margarita with extra salt and nachos for the table to start. Nachos were Dodge’s favorite, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat. His mom kept prattling on about Bill Kelly: how Bill Kelly was so nice, so thoughtful, even though he was grieving; how Bill Kelly had set them up with the appointment and made a phone call on their behalf and blah, blah, blah.
Her cell phone rang in the middle of dinner. Dodge’s mom stood up. “Speak of the devil,” she said. “It’s Bill. He might have news. . . .”
“What kind of news?” Dodge asked when she had stepped outside. He could see her pacing the parking lot. Under the glare of the lights, she looked old. Tired, kind of saggy. More momlike than usual.
Dayna shrugged.
“Are they screwing or something?” Dodge pressed.
Dayna sighed and wiped her fingers carefully on her napkin. She’d been picking apart her burger, layer by layer. This was something she’d always done: deconstruct her food, put it back together in a way that pleased her. With burgers it was lettuce and tomato on the bottom, then ketchup, then burger, then bun. “They’re friends, Dodge,” she said, and he felt a flicker of irritation. She was speaking to him in her grown-up voice, a voice that had always grated on him. “Why do you care, anyway?”
“Mom doesn’t have friends,” he said, even though he knew it was kind of mean.
Dayna set down her napkin—hard, in her fist, so that the water cups jumped. “What is up with you?”
Dodge stared at her. “What’s up with
me
?”
“Why do you have to give Mom such a hard time? That doctor isn’t cheap. She’s trying.” Dayna shook her head. “Ricky had to leave, like, his whole family to come here—”
“Please don’t bring Ricky into this.”
“I’m just saying, we should feel lucky.”
“Lucky?”
Dodge barked a laugh. “Since when did you become such a guru?”
“Since when did you become such a brat?” Dayna fired back.
Dodge suddenly felt lost. He didn’t know where the feeling came from, and he struggled to get out from underneath it. “Mom’s clueless. That’s all I’m saying.” He stabbed at his mac ’n’ cheese to avoid meeting Dayna’s eyes. “Besides, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. . . .”
Now it was Dayna’s turn to stare. “You’re unbelievable.” She spoke in a low voice, and somehow that was worse than if she’d been screaming. “All this time you’ve been telling me to keep trying, keep believing. And then I actually make progress—”
“And what about what
I’ve
been doing?” Dodge knew he was being a brat, but he couldn’t help it. Dayna had been on his side—she was the only one on his side—and now, suddenly, she wasn’t.
“You mean the game?” Dayna shook her head. “Look, Dodge. I’ve been thinking. I don’t want you to play anymore.”
“You what?” Dodge exploded; several people at a neighboring table turned to stare.
“Keep your voice down.” Dayna was looking at him the way she used to when he was a little kid and didn’t understand the rules of a game she wanted to play: disappointed, a little impatient. “After what happened to Bill Kelly . . . it’s not worth it. It’s not right.”
Dodge took a sip of his water and found he could barely work it down his throat. “You wanted me to play,” he said. “You asked me to.”
“I changed my mind,” she said.
“Well, that’s not how the game works,” he said. His voice was rising again. He couldn’t help it. “Or did you forget?”
Her mouth got thin: a straight pink scar in the face. “Listen to me, Dodge. This is for you—for your own good.”
“I played for you.” Dodge no longer cared about being overheard. The anger, the sense of loss, ate away the rest of the world, made him careless. Who did he have? He had no friends. He’d never stayed in a place long enough to make them or trust them. With Heather he’d thought he’d gotten close; with Natalie, too. He’d been wrong; and now even Dayna was turning on him. “Did you forget that, too? This is all for you. So that things can go back.”
He hadn’t intended to say the last part—hadn’t even thought the words until they were out of his mouth. For a second there was silence. Dayna was staring at him, openmouthed, and the words sat between them like something detonated: everything had been blown wide open.
“Dodge,” she said. He was horrified to see that she looked like she felt sorry for him. “Things can never go back. You know that, right? That’s not how it works. Nothing you do will change what happened.”
Dodge pushed his plate away. He stood up from the table. “I’m going home,” he said. He couldn’t even think. Dayna’s words were making a storm inside his head.
Things can never go back.
What the hell had he been playing for, all this time?
“Come on, Dodge,” Dayna said. “Sit down.”
“I’m not hungry,” he said. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her: those patient eyes, the thin, dissatisfied set of her mouth. Like he was a little kid. A dumb kid. “Tell mom I said good-bye.”
“We’re miles from home,” Dayna said.
“I could use the walk,” Dodge said. He shoved a cigarette in his mouth, even though he didn’t feel like smoking, and hoped it wouldn’t rain.