Panic(11)

She felt a break in the crowd, a fractional release.

“Come on.” She managed to stand up and hook Nat under the arm.

“It hurts,” Nat said, blinking back tears. But Heather got her to her feet.

Then a voice came blaring, suddenly, through the woods, huge and distorted.

“Freeze where you are, all of you. . . .”

Cops.

Everything was chaos. Beams of light swept across the crowd, turning faces white, frozen; people were running, pushing to get out, disappearing into the woods. Heather counted four cops—one of them had wrestled someone to the ground, she couldn’t see who. Her mouth was dry, chalky, and her thoughts disjointed. Her hoodie was smeared with mud, and cold seeped into her chest.

Bishop was gone. Bishop had the car.

Car. They needed to get out—or hide.

She kept a hand on Nat’s arm and tried to pull her forward, but Nat stumbled. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I can’t,” she said.

“You have to.” Heather felt desperate. Where the hell was Bishop? She bent down to loop an arm around Nat’s waist. “Lean on me.”

“I can’t,” Nat repeated. “It hurts too bad.”

Then Dodge Mason came out of nowhere. He was suddenly next to them, and without pausing or asking permission, he put one of his arms around Nat’s waist as well, so that she could be carried between them. Nat gave a short cry of surprise, but she didn’t resist. Heather felt like she could kiss him.

“Come on,” he said.

They passed into the woods, stumbling, going as quickly as possible, moving away from the booming megaphone-voices, the screaming and the lights. It was dark. Dodge kept his cell phone out; it cast a weak blue light on the sodden leaves underneath them, the wet ferns and the shaggy, moss-covered trees.

“Where are we going?” Heather whispered. Her heart was pounding. Nat could barely put any weight on her left leg, so every other step, she leaned heavily into Heather.

“We have to wait until the cops clear out,” Dodge replied. He was short of breath.

A few hundred feet beyond the water towers, nestled in the trees, was a narrow pump house. Heather could hear mechanical equipment going inside it, humming through the walls, when they stopped so Dodge could shoulder the door open. It wasn’t locked.

Inside, it smelled like mildew and metal. The single room was dominated by two large tanks and various pieces of rusted electrical equipment; the air was filled with a constant, mechanical thrush, like the noise of a thousand crickets. They could no longer hear shouting from the woods.

“Jesus.” Nat exhaled heavily and maneuvered onto the ground, extending her left leg in front of her, wincing. “It hurts.”

“Probably sprained,” Dodge said. He sat down as well, but not too close.

“I swear I felt someone crack it.” Nat leaned forward and began touching the skin around her ankle. She inhaled sharply.

“Leave it, Nat,” Heather said. “We’ll get some ice on it as soon as we can.”

She was cold, and suddenly exhausted. The rush she’d felt from completing the challenge was gone. She was wet and hungry, and the last thing she wanted to do was sit in a stupid pump house for half the night. She pulled out her phone and texted Bishop. Where r u?

“How’d you know about this place?” Nat asked Dodge.

“Found it the other day,” Dodge said. “I was scouting. Mind if I smoke?”

“Kind of,” Heather said.

He shrugged and replaced the cigarettes in his jacket. He kept his cell phone out, on the floor, so his silhouette was touched with blue.

“Thank you,” Nat blurted out. “For helping me. That was really . . . I mean, you didn’t have to.”

“No problem,” Dodge said. Heather couldn’t see his face, but there was a weird quality to his voice, like he was being choked.

“I mean, we’ve never even spoken before. . . .” Maybe realizing she sounded rude, Nat trailed off.

For a minute, there was silence. Heather sent another text to Bishop. WTF?

Then Dodge said abruptly, “We spoke before. Once. At the homecoming bonfire last year. You called me Dave.”

“I did?” Nat giggled nervously. “Stupid. I was probably drunk. Remember, Heather? We took those disgusting shots.”

“Mmmm.” Heather was still standing. She leaned up against the door, listening to the sound of the rain, which was drumming a little harder now. She strained to hear, underneath it, the continued sounds of shouting. She couldn’t believe Bishop still hadn’t texted her back. Bishop always responded to her messages right away.

“Anyway, I’m an idiot,” Nat was saying. “Anyone will tell you that. But I couldn’t very well forget a name like Dodge, could I? I wish I had a cool name.”

“I like your name,” Dodge said quietly.

Heather felt a sharp pain go through her. She had heard in Dodge’s voice a familiar longing, a hollowness—and she knew then, immediately and without doubt, that Dodge liked Natalie.

For a second she had a blind moment of envy, a feeling that gripped her from all sides. Of course. Of course Dodge liked Nat. She was pretty and giggly and small and cute, like an animal you’d find in someone’s purse. Like Avery.

The association arrived unexpectedly, and she dismissed it quickly. She didn’t care about Avery, and she didn’t care whether Dodge liked Nat, either. It wasn’t her business.