Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Author:Kevin Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

HOW ELSE COULD IT HAVE ENDED? I DROPPED OFF ZEKE, AND HE didn’t even say goodbye. And when I got home, my brothers were in the living room and my mom was on the phone pacing in circles, asking, “How hurt are you?”

“What’s . . . what’s happening?” I asked.

“You didn’t see when you drove home?” Andrew asked. When I shook my head, Brian told me that the Poster Posse had cornered a group of about five or six teenagers from our school, who were putting up more posters. The kids had painted their faces like Brandon Lee in The Crow, and when all the drunk old men in hunting orange threatened them, Casey Ratchet had thrown a bottle, knocking out Mr. Ferris, who ran the pool supply store out on the highway. And another man, they didn’t know who yet, had shot Casey, point-blank in the chest. And Casey was dead.

“What now?” I said, stunned.

“Casey Ratchet fucking died, Frankie,” Charlie said. “Hobart’s on the phone with Mom, because it’s bedlam over by the strip mall. It was all in the parking lot by Diamond Connection. He was there interviewing the Poster Posse. I guess somebody trampled him, and his leg is broken or something.”

“Casey Ratchet?” I said again. Casey was maybe five feet, four inches, but he had been in Thrasher Magazine and was a sponsored skater. He’d spent spring break in California filming a skate video. He got suspended as a freshman for dyeing his hair pink and had been cited lots of times by the police for skating on private property. He had never said a single word to me, but I’d always thought he was cool, was destined to leave Coalfield and do neat things. And he was dead.

“If you told me that Casey Ratchet had made the poster,” Andrew said, “I’d believe it. That would make sense. Remember, he had that Suicidal Tendencies T-shirt?”

“You think Casey made the poster?” I asked.

“I’m saying, I’d believe it if it turned out it was him,” Andrew clarified.

“I don’t know if anyone actually made it,” Brian offered. “Like, I think the CIA started it as a kind of mind-control experiment. To see what would happen. That’s why I never fucked around with it, because I didn’t want to get disappeared by some secret government hit squad.”

“I still think it’s lyrics from a song,” Charlie said. “Like, I know I’ve heard it before.” Then he kind of did a faux–heavy metal screech. “Tha EDDDDGE is a shantytown . . . ,” he said, sounding like Axl Rose.

My mom was off the phone and ran over to me. “You okay?” she asked. I nodded. “Hobart broke his leg, for crying out loud. I have to go get him from the emergency room and take him home.” She looked at the triplets. “Don’t leave this house,” she told them. “Protect Frankie, okay?”

“Mom,” I said, “I don’t need them to protect me.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said.

The triplets went outside to shoot baskets, and I stood in the living room, the house now empty.

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