Panic

In the small, economically depressed town of Carp, New York, graduating seniors participate each summer in a secret, high-stakes competition called Panic. Every student at Carp High pays a dollar per day into a collective pot throughout the school year, and the winner takes it all. Two anonymous judges plan increasingly dangerous challenges, and competitors are eliminated round by round. This year, the pot totals $67,000. In seven years of play, four people have died.

The novel alternates between two point-of-view characters. Heather Nill shares a cramped trailer at Fresh Pines Mobile Park with her eleven-year-old sister, Lily, her neglectful, hard-drinking mother, Krista, and Krista's boyfriend, Bo. On the night of the Opening Jump, the first event of Panic, Heather catches her boyfriend, Matt Hepley, kissing another girl. Devastated, she impulsively climbs a forty-foot rock ridge and leaps into the flooded quarry below, entering the game she had only come to watch. Dodge Mason, the novel's other narrator, is a quiet outsider who has moved frequently with his mother and older half-sister, Dayna. Two years earlier, Dayna was paralyzed from the waist down competing in Panic's final challenge, Joust, a head-on driving contest, against Luke Hanrahan. Dodge believes Luke tampered with Dayna's car and enters Panic to face Luke's younger brother, Ray Hanrahan, in this year's Joust and exact revenge.

Heather regrets entering but is too proud to withdraw. Her lifelong best friend, Bishop Marks, disapproves of the game but supports her loyally, driving her and her best friend, Natalie Velez, to each event. The first challenge requires players to cross a narrow plank between two water towers fifty feet above the ground. Heather crosses successfully despite intense fear. When a brawl erupts and police raid the scene, Dodge helps Heather carry the injured Nat to safety. Heather and Nat agree to split the prize if either wins. Nat separately proposes the same alliance to Dodge, who agrees, motivated less by money than by his growing feelings for her.

The next challenge sends players to break into the house of a volatile, heavily armed recluse. When the homeowner emerges firing a rifle, Heather enters alone and retrieves a handgun from the gun room, claiming a bonus. She and Dodge escape through a window under gunfire. Meanwhile, Heather loses her job and is hired by Anne, a kind widow who runs an animal rescue on a remote farmhouse, secretly housing two rescued tigers.

On the Fourth of July, Nat and Dodge share their first kiss. That evening, fireworks over the long-abandoned Graybill house signal the next challenge: Players must stay inside as long as possible. During the night, fire breaks out and traps Heather and Dodge in a storage room after Nat escapes through a narrow window to summon help. Firefighters rescue them. Heather wakes in the hospital to learn that Bill Kelly Jr., known as Little Kelly, a local veteran who had been sheltering in the house, was found dead in the basement. Police investigate the fire as arson.

The game stalls under police scrutiny. Dodge, fearing Panic will end before he can face Ray, contacts Ray directly, and together they stage unauthorized challenges against other players, forcing the game to continue. At a meeting at Bishop's house, conflicts erupt: Heather deduces that Nat made identical split-the-money deals with both her and Dodge. Nat lashes out, and Dodge reveals his alliance with Ray. Heather storms out. That evening, she finds Krista using drugs while Lily huddles outside in a rainstorm, locked out. Heather confronts her mother, packs for herself and Lily, and leaves Fresh Pines permanently. Living out of the car, she texts the group that she is back in the game, resolving to win for Lily alone.

The next challenge requires players to cross a six-lane highway blindfolded. Heather sets the fastest time, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car, while Nat freezes and performs poorly. At Nat's birthday party, Nat confesses to Dodge that she has been seeing someone else and manipulated his feelings for an advantage in the game. Dodge is devastated. Heather impulsively kisses Bishop, but he pulls away, saying he likes someone else. She later finds Nat overwhelmed by compulsive rituals and worsening anxiety, confessing she froze on the highway because nothing makes her feel safe.

Heather soon discovers that Bishop is secretly dating their classmate Vivian Trager. More devastating still, Dodge stumbles upon evidence in Bishop's shed, including a burner phone whose texts match the anonymous messages sent to players all summer, and forces a confession: Bishop is one of Panic's two judges, with Vivian as his partner. He became a judge before Heather entered the game, planning to give her his share of the fees to help her escape Carp. He started the Graybill fire as part of the challenge, but it spiraled out of control. He is consumed by guilt over Little Kelly's death. Dodge agrees to keep the secret in exchange for skipping his own solo challenge.

After police stop Heather for driving a car Krista reported stolen, Anne takes Heather and Lily in at the farmhouse. Krista later arrives drunk demanding Lily's return and is arrested, removing her as an immediate threat. The solo challenges test each remaining player's deepest fear. Heather's challenge is Russian roulette: She must place a loaded gun to her temple and pull the trigger. Matt Hepley tries to convince her to quit in an effort coordinated with Ray, but his interference only steels her resolve. Dodge arrives and secretly palms the single bullet while pretending to inspect the gun. Heather pulls the trigger to an empty click and later discovers the bullet Dodge slipped into her pocket. Nat's solo challenge requires her to enter the tiger pen at Anne's farm for ten seconds. She holds for nine before bolting and is eliminated.

Heather forgets to re-padlock the tiger gate, and the tigers escape. Bishop arrives and confesses to Anne and Heather that he is a judge and started the Graybill fire. Heather is furious. Bishop insists he did everything for her, then accuses her of wanting everything to be terrible so she has an excuse to fail. He turns himself in to the police, though it emerges that Little Kelly died of a drug overdose, not the fire. A neighbor kills one escaped tiger; the other remains at large. Anne does not expel Heather, telling her that caring for someone means staying through the bad as well as the good.

Dodge prepares for Joust by rigging a car with a homemade explosive, planning to switch vehicles with Ray so the device detonates when Ray accelerates. His sister Dayna, who has begun making progress in physical therapy, begs him to stop, telling him nothing he does will undo what happened, but Dodge refuses. He asks Heather to deliberately lose to him in the first round, and she agrees. On the night of the final challenge, Nat intervenes. Having learned from Luke Hanrahan about Dodge's threatening messages, she and Heather lure Dodge to Nat's house, where Luke restrains him. Heather must now drive the rigged car against Ray, unaware of the explosive.

Smoke rises from the hood as the race begins, but Heather accelerates to sixty miles per hour toward Ray's oncoming headlights. The engine erupts in flames. At the last moment, the escaped tiger appears in the road. Ray swerves and crashes into a tree. Heather brakes, leaps from the burning car, and rolls to safety before it explodes. She walks calmly to the tiger, places her hand on its head, and wins Panic.

In the epilogue, set in early October, Heather has divided the prize among herself, Dodge, and Nat. Dodge gave most of his share toward a memorial for Little Kelly. Nat takes acting classes, and Heather plans to enroll in a veterinary services program. Bishop, fulfilling community service for the arson, drives home from college every weekend to see Heather; they are now a couple. On a warm autumn day, Heather takes her friends and Lily back to the quarry where the game began. Lily climbs the ridge and jumps fearlessly into the water, and Heather reflects that there is always light beyond the fear.