Panic(43)

But she couldn’t cry, not yet. She had to be strong for Lily.

Lily had fallen asleep in the front seat, her mouth open, her hair feathering slightly in the heat. Finally her lips weren’t blue anymore, and she was no longer shivering.

She didn’t open her eyes until they were just bouncing out of the entrance to the Pines and onto Route 22.

“Heather?” she said in a small voice.

“What’s up, Billy?” Heather tried to smile and couldn’t.

“I don’t want to go back there.” Lily turned and rested her forehead against the window. In the glass’s reflection, her face was narrow and pale, like a tapered flame.

Heather tightened her fingers on the wheel. “We’re not going back there,” she said. Weirdly, the words made the taste of sick come up. “We’re never going back, okay? I promise.”

“Where will we go?” Lily asked.

Heather reached over and squeezed Lily’s knee. Her jeans had finally dried. “We’ll figure something out. Okay? We’re going to be just fine.” The rain was still coming down in sheets; the car carved waves in the road, sending liquid rivers sloshing toward the gutters. “You trust me, right?” Heather asked.

Lily nodded without turning her face away from the window.

“We’re going to be fine,” Heather repeated, and returned both hands to the wheel, gripping tightly.

They couldn’t, she realized, go to Bishop’s or Nat’s. She’d taken her mom’s car and had no intention of returning it, which counted as stealing. And her friends’ houses would be the first place her mom would think of looking when she sobered up and realized what had happened.

Would she call the police? Would they track Heather down? Maybe her mom would convince them that Heather was a delinquent, and they would try to pin the fire on her.

But there was no point in worrying about that yet.

No one could know. It came down to that. She and Lily would have to be very, very careful for the next few weeks. As soon as they had enough money to leave Carp, they would. And until then, they had to hide. They’d have to hide the car, too, and use it only at night.

The idea came to her suddenly: Meth Row. The whole road was cluttered with old cars and abandoned houses. No one would notice one more shitty car parked there.

Lily had fallen asleep again and was snoring quietly. Meth Row looked even bleaker than usual. The rain had turned the pitted road to sludge, and Heather had trouble just keeping the wheel from jerking under her hands. It was hard to tell which houses were occupied and which weren’t, but she finally found a spot next to a storage shed and an old Buick, stripped nearly to its metal frame, where she could angle the car so it was mostly unseen from the road.

She turned off the engine. No point in wasting gas. They’d have to be careful about wasting anything now.

They’d be more comfortable in the backseat, but since Lily was already asleep and Heather doubted she would sleep at all—it wasn’t even six o’clock—she reached into the back and shook out all the things from the comforter. Stuff that had only an hour ago been littering their beds, the floor of their bedroom. Their home.

Homeless. It was the first time the word occurred to her, and she pushed it out of her mind. It was an ugly word, a word that smelled.

Runaways was better, a little more glam.

She spread the comforter over Lily, careful not to wake her. She found a hoodie in the back and put it on over her shirt, pulled up the hood, cinched the drawstrings tight. Thankfully it was summer and wouldn’t get too cold.

It occurred to her that she should turn her cell phone off too, to conserve battery power. But before she did, she typed out a text to Nat and Dodge. She included Bishop too. Like he’d said, he was in it, one way or another.

Changed my mind, she wrote. I’m back in.

She was playing for keeps now. For Lily. Forget the promise she’d made to Nat. The money would be hers, and hers alone.



That night, long after Heather had finally drifted off, head back in the front seat of the Taurus—when Nat was curled up in bed with her computer, searching for funny videos—when even the bars were shutting down and the people who wanted to drink were forced to do it outside, or in the parking lot of 7-Eleven—Ellie Hayes was woken up by two masked figures. They hauled her roughly to her feet and handcuffed her wrists in front of her body, as if she were a convict.

Her parents were gone for the week—the players knew what they were doing. Her older brother, Roger, heard the noise and the scuffling and burst into the hall, holding a baseball bat. But Ellie managed to cry out to him.

“It’s Panic!” she said.

Roger lowered the baseball bat, shook his head, returned to his room. He, too, had played.

Ellie’s biggest fear, other than floods, was enclosure, and she was relieved when instead of being packed in the trunk, she was guided roughly into the backseat of a car she didn’t recognize.

They drove for what seemed like forever—long enough that she began to get bored and fell asleep. Then the car stopped, and she saw a vast, empty parking lot, and a fence enclosed by barbed wire. Before the headlights cut, she saw a weathered sign tacked to a sad, saggy-looking building.



WELCOME TO THE DENNY SWIMMING POOL.



HOURS 9 A.M.–DUSK, MEMORIAL DAY TO LABOR DAY.