Panic(13)

Dodge gave a sudden shout. “Hold on a second,” he said, and left Nat leaning on Heather. He moved several feet away and scooped something up from the ground—a portable cooler. Heather saw, when he angled his cell phone light onto it, that it still contained ice and beer.

“Jackpot,” Dodge said. He smiled for the first time all night.

He took the cooler with them, and when they reached Route 22, made a makeshift ice pack for Nat’s ankle. There were three beers left, one for each of them, and they drank together on the side of the road, in the rain, while they waited for the bus to come. Nat got giggly after just a few sips, and she and Dodge joked about smoking a cigarette to make the bus come faster, and Heather knew she should be happy.

But Bishop’s phone was still going straight to voice mail. Matt and Delaney were probably cozy and warm and dry somewhere together. And she kept remembering being high in the air, teetering on the flimsy wooden plank, and the itch in the soles of her feet, telling her to jump.





SUNDAY, JUNE 26





dodge

DODGE NEVER SLEPT MORE THAN TWO OR THREE HOURS at a stretch. He didn’t like to admit it, but he had nightmares. He dreamed of long, chalky roads that ended abruptly, leaving him to drop; and sometimes, of a dank basement where he was contained, with a low, dark ceiling crawling with spiders.

Plus, it was impossible to sleep past five a.m. once the garbage truck came rattling by on Meth Row. Impossible to nap, too, during the day, when the lunch crowd made a rush on Dot’s Diner, and waiters hauled garbage in and out, and emptied grease traps, and rattled the Dumpsters past Dodge’s window and into Meth Row for collection. Every so often, when the diner’s back door opened, the swell of conversation carried the sound of Dodge’s mom’s voice.

More coffee, honey?

But the day after the challenge at the water towers, Dodge slept soundly, dreamlessly, all the way through the lunch rush, and didn’t wake up until after two o’clock. He pulled on a pair of track pants, debated whether he should shower, then decided against it.

“Heya,” Dayna said when he wandered into the kitchen. He was starving. Thirsty, too. It was like the game was opening up a hunger inside him. “How did it go?”

She was parked in the living room, where she could watch TV and look out the window onto the back of the diner. Gray light came weakly through the window, and dust motes floated in the air behind her. For a second, Dodge felt a rush of affection for the little room: the cracked TV stand, the thin, patchy rug, the lumpy sofa that had, for reasons unknown, been upholstered in denim.

And of course, for her. His Dayna.

Over the years, the resemblance between them had faded, especially in the last year, when she had put on a lot of weight in her face and chest and shoulders. Still, it was there, even though they didn’t share a father, and she was much lighter than he was: in the dark brown hair, and the hazel eyes spaced far apart; the definite chins; and in their noses, which both curved almost imperceptibly to the left.

Dodge opened the refrigerator. His mom must have gone out last night; there were cartons of leftover Chinese. He opened them and sniffed. Chicken with broccoli and shrimp fried rice. Good enough. Dayna watched him as he piled it all onto a plate and, without bothering to nuke it, grabbed a fork and started eating.

“Well?” she prompted.

He had wanted to save the news, to torture her by not telling, but he had to talk. He had to share it with someone. He put the plate down, came into the living room, and sat on the couch, which he and Dayna had nicknamed the Butt. “It was a bust,” he said. “Cops came.”

She watched him carefully. “Are you sure you want to do this, Dodge?” she said quietly.

“Come on, Dayna.” He was annoyed that she’d even asked. He hauled her legs into his lap. Massage was the only thing that would keep them from total atrophy, and he still insisted on working her calves every day, even though she’d been saying for a long time that it was useless. She’d seen a dozen different doctors. And she’d been going to physical therapy for well over a year now.

But there’d been no change. No improvement. She’d never walk again. Not without a miracle.

Despite the daily massages, Dayna’s legs were thin—stalky and pale, like something that would grow on a plant. Even as her face had become rounder, the flesh of her arms looser, her legs continued to wither. Dodge tried not to think about how often, as a kid, those same legs had pumped her forward during a footrace, and propelled her into trees when they had climbing wars. She had always been strong—as hard as polished wood, scrappy and made of muscle. Stronger than most boys, and braver, too.

For Dodge’s whole life, she had been his best friend, his partner in crime. She was two years older than him, and had been the de facto leader of whatever scheme or game they had invented. When he was five, they’d bottled their farts and tried to sell them. When he was seven, they’d spent a summer exploring their neighborhood in Dawson, Minnesota, looking for treasure, and wound up with a garden shed full of weird shit: an old top hat, a busted radio, two tire spokes, and the rusted frame of a bicycle. They’d found adventure in whatever shitty-ass town their mom had happened to dump them.

Now they would never have another adventure. She would never climb, or bike, or bet him five bucks she could still beat him in a footrace. She would always need help to bathe, to get on and off the toilet.