heather
HEATHER WAITED IN THE CAR WHILE NATALIE AND LUKE did whatever they had to do. She was trying to breathe normally, but her lungs weren’t obeying and kept fluttering weirdly in her chest. She would have to go up against Ray Hanrahan now. There was no giving in or weaseling out.
She wondered what Dodge had had planned for tonight. Luke hadn’t exactly known either, although he’d shown Nat and Heather some of the threatening messages that had come from Dodge. It was surreal, sitting in Nat’s kitchen with Luke Hanrahan, football star Luke Hanrahan, the homecoming king who’d gotten kicked out of homecoming for smoking weed in the locker room during the announcement of the court. Winner of Panic. Who’d once assaulted a cashier at the 7-Eleven in Hudson when the guy wouldn’t sell him cigarettes.
He looked like shit. Two years away from Carp hadn’t done him any good, which was shocking to Heather. She thought all you needed to do—all any of them needed—was to get out. But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.
He’d found Nat, he said, because of a betting slip that had reached him all the way in Buffalo. And because of that stupid video—the one filmed at the water towers, which showed Dodge with his arm slung around Nat. Nat had been the easiest of the remaining players to locate, and he was hoping he could talk her into helping him convince Dodge to bow out.
Nat emerged from the house at last. Heather watched her talking with Luke on the front porch; he was nearly double her size. Crazy how several years ago, Nat would have freaked at the idea that Luke might ever look in her direction or know who she was. It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities. She supposed if you could predict or foresee everything that was going to happen, you’d lose the motivation to go through it all.
The promise was always in the possibility.
“Is Dodge okay?” Heather asked when Nat slid into the car.
“He’s mad,” Nat said.
“You did kidnap him,” Heather pointed out.
“For his own good,” Nat said, and for a minute she looked angry. But then she smiled. “I’ve never kidnapped someone before.”
“Don’t make a habit of it.” They both seemed to have resolved not to mention their fight, and Heather was glad. She nodded at Luke, who was getting into his truck. “Is he coming to watch?”
Nat shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She paused, and said in a low voice, “It’s awful, what he did to Dayna. I think he must hate himself.”
“He seems like he does,” Heather said. But she didn’t want to think about Luke, or Dodge’s sister, or legs buried beneath a ton of metal, rendered useless. She was already sick with nerves.
“Are you okay?” Nat said.
“No,” Heather said bluntly.
“You’re so close, Heather. You’re almost at the end. You’re winning.”
“I’m not winning yet,” Heather said. But she put the car into gear. There was no more delaying it. There was hardly any light left in the sky—as though the horizon were a black hole, sucking all the color away. Something else occurred to her. “Jesus. This is Anne’s car. I’m barely allowed to be driving it. I can’t go up against Ray in this.”
“You don’t have to.” Nat reached into her purse and extracted a set of keys, jiggling them dramatically.
Heather looked at her. “Where’d you get those?”
“Dodge,” Nat said. She flipped the keys into her palm and returned them to her bag. “You can use his car. Better to be safe than sorry, right?”
As the last of the sun vanished, and the moon, like a giant scythe, cut through the clouds, they gathered. Quietly they materialized from the woods; they came down the gully, scattering gravel, sliding on the hill; or they came packed together in cars, driving slowly, headlights off, like submarines in the dark.
And by the time stars surfaced from the darkness, they were all there: all the kids of Carp, come to witness the final challenge.
It was time. There was no need for Diggin to repeat the rules; everyone knew the rules of Joust. Each car aimed for the other, going fast in a single lane. The first person to swerve would lose.
And the winner would take the pot.
Heather was so nervous, it took her three tries to get the key in the ignition. She’d found the LeSabre pulled over on the side of the road, practically buried in the bushes. It was Bishop’s car—Dodge must have borrowed it.
She was unreasonably annoyed that Bishop had helped Dodge in this way. She wondered if Bishop had risked coming tonight—somewhere in the crowd, the dark masses of people, faces indistinguishable in the weak moonlight. She was too proud to text him and see. Ashamed, too. He’d tried to talk to her, to explain, and she had acted awful.
She wondered whether he would forgive her.
“How are you feeling?” Nat asked her. She’d offered to stay with Heather until the last possible second.
“I’m okay,” Heather said, which was a lie. Her lips were numb. Her tongue felt thick. How would she drive when she could barely feel her hands? As she pulled the car up to her starting position, the headlights lit up clusters of faces, ghost-white, standing quietly in the shadow of the trees. The engine was whining, like there was something wrong with it.
“You’re going to be fine,” Nat said. She twisted in her seat. Her eyes were suddenly wide, urgent. “You’re going to be fine, okay?” She said it like she was trying to convince herself.
Diggin was gesturing to Heather, indicating she should turn the car around. The engine was making a weird grinding noise. She thought she smelled something weird too, but then thought she must be imagining it. It would all be over soon, anyway. Thirty, forty seconds, tops. When she managed to get her car pointed in the right direction, Diggin rapped on her windshield with his fingers, gave her a short nod.
At the other end of the road—a thousand feet away from her, a thousand miles—she saw the twin circles of Ray’s headlights. They went on and off again. On and off. Like some kind of warning.
“You should go,” Heather said. Her throat was tight. “We’re about to start.”
“I love you, Heather.” Nat leaned over and put her arms around Heather’s neck. She smelled familiar and Nat-like, and it made Heather want to cry, as though they were saying good-bye for the last time. Then Nat pulled away. “Look, if Ray doesn’t swerve—I mean, if you’re close and it doesn’t look like he’s going to turn . . . You have to promise me you will. You can’t risk a collision, okay? Promise me.”
“I promise,” Heather said.
“Good luck.” Then Nat was gone. Heather saw her jog to the side of the road.
And Heather was alone in the car, in the dark, facing a long, narrow stretch of road, pointing like a finger toward the glow of distant headlights.
She thought of Lily.
She thought of Anne.
She thought of Bishop.
She thought of the tigers, and of everything she’d ever screwed up in her life.
She swore to herself that she wouldn’t be the first to swerve.
While in a dark basement, with the smell of mothballs and old furniture in his nose, Dodge realized, too late, why Nat had taken his keys—and, crying out, fought against his restraints, thinking of a little time-bomb heart, ticking slowly away.…
Something in the engine was smoking. Heather saw little trails of smoke unfurling from the hood of the car, like narrow black snakes. But just then Diggin stepped into the center of the road, shirtless, waving his T-shirt above his head like a flag.
Then it was already too late. She heard the high-pitched squeal of tires on asphalt. Ray had started to move. She slammed her foot onto the accelerator and the car jumped forward, skidding a little. The smoke redoubled almost instantly; for a second her vision was completely obscured.