Something inside Heather cracked, and in that moment she was conscious that all her life she had been building up walls and defenses in preparation for something like this; behind them, the pressure had been mounting, mounting. Now the dam broke, and she was flooded, drowning in rage and hate.
“Come on,” she said. She was surprised she still sounded the same, when inside of her was a sucking blackness, a furious noise. She took Lily’s hand. “You can sit in the car, okay? I’ll turn on the heat. You’ll be nice and dry.”
She brought Lily to the car. There was an old T-shirt in the back—Krista’s, reeking of smoke—but it was dry, at least. She helped Lily wriggle out of her wet shirt. She untied Lily’s shoes for her, and peeled off her wet socks, then made Lily press her feet up to the vents where the heat had begun to blow. The whole time Lily was limp, obedient, as if all the life had been washed out of her. Heather moved mechanically.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Lily. She felt detached from the words, as though she wasn’t the one speaking. The anger was drumming out the knowledge of everything else.
Boom, boom, boom.
There was music coming from the trailer, practically shaking the walls. The lights were on too, although the blinds were down; she could see a figure swaying in silhouette, maybe dancing. She hadn’t noticed before because she’d been too worried about Lily. She kept seeing her sister huddled underneath the pathetic birch, practically the single tree that Fresh Pines boasted.
Mom told me to go away. She told me to play outside.
Boom, boom, boom.
She was at the door. Locked. From inside, she heard a shriek of laughter. Somehow she fit the key in the lock; that must mean she wasn’t shaking. Strange, she thought, and also: Maybe I could have won Panic after all.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
There were three of them: Krista, Bo, and Maureen, from Lot 99. They froze, and Heather froze too. She was seized momentarily by the sense that she’d entered a play and had forgotten all her lines—she couldn’t breathe, didn’t know what to do. The lights were high, bright. They looked like actors, all three of them—actors you see too close. They were too made up. But the makeup was horrible. It looked as though it was beginning to melt, slowly deforming their faces. Their eyes were bright, glittering: doll eyes.
Heather took in everything at once: the blue haze of smoke. The empty beer bottles, the overflowing cups used as ashtrays, the single bottle of Georgi vodka, half empty.
And the small blue plastic plate on the table, still faintly outlined with the imprint of the Sesame Street characters—Lily’s old plate—now covered with thin lines of fine white powder.
All of it hit Heather like a physical blow, a quick sock to the stomach. Her world went black for a second. The plate. Lily’s plate.
Then the moment passed. Krista brought a cigarette unsteadily to her lips, nearly missing. “Heather Lynn,” she slurred. She patted her shirt, her breasts, as though expecting to find a lighter there. “What are you doing, baby? Why are you staring at me like I’m a—”
Heather lunged. Before her mother finished speaking, before she could think about what she was doing, all of the rage traveled down into her arms and legs and she picked up the blue plate, crisscrossed with powder like it had been scarred by something, and threw.
Maureen screamed and Bo shouted. Krista barely managed to duck. She tried to right herself and, staggering backward, managed to land on Maureen’s lap, in the armchair. This made Maureen scream even louder. The plate collided against the wall with a thud, and the air was momentarily full of white powder, like an indoor snow. It would have been funny if it weren’t so horrible.
“What the hell?” Bo took two steps toward Heather and for a moment, she thought he might hit her. But he just stood there, fists clenched, red-faced and enraged. “What the hell?”
Krista fought to her feet. “Who in the goddamn do you think you are?”
Heather was glad that they were separated by the coffee table. Otherwise, she wasn’t sure what she would do. She wanted to kill Krista. Really kill her. “You’re disgusting.” Her voice sounded mangled, like something had wrapped around her vocal cords.
“Get out.” The color was rising in Krista’s face. Her voice, too, was rising, and she was shaking as though something awful was going to detonate inside her. “Get out! Do you hear me? Get out!” She reached for the vodka bottle and threw it. Fortunately, she was slow. Heather sidestepped it easily. She heard shattering glass and felt the splash of liquid. Bo got his arms around Krista. He managed to restrain her. She was still shrieking, writhing like an animal, face red and twisted and awful.
And suddenly all of Heather’s anger dissipated. She felt absolutely nothing. No pain. No anger. No fear. Nothing but disgust. She felt, weirdly, as if she were floating above the scene, hovering in her own body.