Heather shook her head, conscious of people still watching her. “It went quick,” she said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt better. It was over. She was standing in the middle of a crowd: the air smelled like damp fleece and cigarette smoke. Solid. Real.
“Forty-two seconds,” Nat said proudly. Heather hadn’t even heard her time be announced.
“Where’s Bishop?” Heather asked. Now she was starting to feel good. A bubbly feeling was working its way through her. Forty-two seconds. Not bad.
“He was right behind me.…” Nat turned to scan the crowd, but the truck’s headlights turned everyone into silhouettes, dark brushstroke-people.
Another cheer erupted. Heather looked up and saw that Ray had crossed already. Diggin’s voice echoed out hollowly: “Twenty-two seconds! A record so far!”
Heather swallowed back a sour taste. She hated Ray Hanrahan. In seventh grade, when she still hadn’t developed boobs, he stuck a training bra to the outside of her locker and spread a rumor that she was taking medicine to turn into a boy. “Got any chin hairs yet?” he’d say when he passed her in the halls. He only left her alone once Bishop threatened to tell the cops that Luke Hanrahan was selling weed from Pepe’s, where he worked, slipping bags of pot under the slice if patrons asked for “extra oregano.” Which he was.
It was Zev Keller’s turn next. Heather forgot about looking for Bishop. She watched, transfixed, as Zev moved out onto the plank. From the safety of the ground, it looked almost beautifuclass="underline" the soft haze of rain, Zev’s arms extended, a dark black shape against the clouds. Ray hadn’t come down the ladder. He must have been watching too, although he had moved behind the water tank, so he was invisible.
It happened in a split second; Zev jerked to one side, lost his footing, and was falling. Heather heard herself cry out. She felt her heart rocket into the roof of her mouth, and in that second, as his arms pinwheeled wildly and his mouth contorted in a scream, she thought, Nothing and none of us will ever be the same.
And then, just as quickly, he caught himself. He got his left foot back onto the board, and his body stopped swaying wildly from right to left, like a loose pendulum. He straightened up.
Someone screamed Zev’s name. And then the applause began, turning thunderous as he made his way, haltingly, the remaining few feet. No one heard the time that Diggin shouted. No one paid any attention to Ray as he came down the ladder.
But as soon as Zev was on the ground, he flew at Ray. Zev was smaller than Ray, and skinnier, but he tackled him from behind and the move was unexpected. Ray was on the ground, face in the dirt, in a second.
“You fucking asshole. You threw something at me.”
Zev raised his fist; Ray twisted, bucking Zev off him.
“What are you talking about?” Ray staggered to his feet, so his face was lit in the glare of the spotlight. He must have cut his lip on a rock. He was bleeding. He looked mean and ugly.
Zev got up too. His eyes were wild—black and full of hatred. The crowd was still, frozen, and Heather once again thought she could hear the rain, the dissolution of a hundred thousand different drops at once. Everything hung in the air, ready to fall.
“Don’t lie,” Zev spat out. “You hit me in the chest. You wanted me to fall.”
“You’re crazy.” Ray started to turn away.
Zev charged him. And then they were down again, and all at once the crowd surged forward, everyone shouting, some pushing for a better view, some jumping in to pull the boys off each other. Heather was squeezed from all sides. She felt a hand on her back and she barely stopped herself from falling. She reached for Nat’s hand instinctively.
“Heather!” Nat’s face was white, frightened. Their hands were wrenched apart, and Nat went down among the blur of bodies.
“Nat!” Heather shoved through the crowd, using her elbows, thankful now to be so big. Nat was trying to get up, and when Heather reached her, she let out a scream of pain.
“My ankle!” Nat was saying, panicked, grabbing her leg. “Someone stepped on my ankle.”
Heather reached for her, then felt a hand on her back: this time deliberate, forceful. She tried to twist around to see who had pushed her but she was on the ground, face in the mud, before she could. Feet churned up the dirt, splattered her face with moisture. For just one moment, Heather wondered whether this—the seething crowd, the surge—was part of the challenge.
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?