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Panic Origin Story Part 2
Panic Origin Story Part 2
Panic Origin Story Part 2
“She can’t be serious,” Jake said, and then immediately regretted it, because already
Mike had climbed to his feet. He punched Jake hard on the arm as he passed.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he said. And then, in a slightly lower voice, “Sophia Robertson,
dude.”
She was walking backward down the slope, the wind whipping her hair around her
face, the remaining sun bloodred behind her, turning her face to shadow, so that for a
second Jake drunkenly thought she looked like an angel, or a demon; he couldn’t decide.
“You think he’ll do it?” TJ said, still focused on rolling a joint, as if they were talking
Savannah’s mood had rapidly shifted. She was sulking, annoyed that attention had
“He won’t,” she said with surprising vehemence. “He doesn’t have the balls. None of
you do.”
Jake got to his feet and discovered that he was drunker than he’d thought. The ground
wasn’t solid, but an oscillating surface, rising and falling away like waves under his feet.
He moved down the slope carefully, placing each step precisely, as only very inebriated
The train was visible now. It had emerged through a break in the trees. The Dick had
said he thought that freight trains didn’t go very fast. But how did he know? He didn’t.
The Dick was a champion bullshitter; everyone knew that. The train didn’t look as if it
were going slowly. It seemed to be swallowing the track, sucking it up into its metal grill.
Jake briefly imagined the train as alive, churning steel through its digestive system,
breaking apart distance and space like a great whale siphoning kelp.
Mike and Sophia were standing on the short gravel spit that ran parallel to the tracks.
Sophia’s hair was still going crazy. Mike was doing his best to look unconcerned, but he
“You in?” Sophia said, when Jake caught up. She had to shout to be heard over the
“This is nuts,” he said, which he knew wasn’t an answer one way or another. It was
hard to say no to Sophia, especially because she was standing so close he could smell her,
for—as well as something deeper, closer, more urgent, something like sweat but not
quite. Fear, maybe. She was afraid, then, even if she wasn’t showing it.
“Of course he’s in. We’re all in.” That was TJ, coming toward them, lurching a little
as he tried to correct for the slope. He had the joint in his hand, now lit. Behind him,
Savannah was still sitting next to the rubble of their party, surrounded by empty beer cans
and stubbed-out cigarettes. From a distance, it all looked quaint, unreal, like an old-
fashioned photograph found, weathered, a hundred years later in a drawer. How had the
“Who’s first?” Sophia said. “If you want—” She said something else, but the rest of
her words were whipped away. The train was on top of them now, rolling by in a blast of
hot air churned up by the wheels, so that her hair danced nearly vertically, like a fiery
halo.
You could feel it—the bulk, the mass, all those displaced particles of air, stirred and
scattered by the motion of two hundred tons. Rattling freight, cars bouncing and jostling
along the tracks, wheels grinding: it wasn’t an object now, but a force, a giant fist
Then: two oil tank cars, shaped like enormous bullets, each of them elevated at least
four feet off the tracks. For a brief moment—thirty seconds? Fifteen? Less?—the ground
on the other side of the tracks was visible between the wheels, another rutted stretch of
mud and gravel and grass running way toward the woods.
Then another series of freight cars plunged by them, these low-bellied, hanging low
to the ground, obscuring the view of the opposite side of the tracks.
They’d missed the chance. Jake felt nothing but relief. Maybe they would delay and
debate until the train was gone, until the last opportunity had passed, and no one would
look bad.
But no sooner had he begun to relax than Sophia turned to them and pointed, her eyes
lit up, her smile radiant. Once again, her voice was lost in the wind, but it was obvious
what she meant. More tank cars were coming, four of them in a row, all of them a filthy
and rusted black. Four chances. Jake’s palms were sweating. His breath hitched in his
“I’ll go first.” This was Mike, shouting, as the first tank car drew level with them, as
the train body thinned and lifted, revealing a vision of dark tracks, mud, the undercarriage
Jake was impressed and relieved and annoyed at the same time—the Dick had, since
the sixth grade, always been the first to do everything: touch a boob, lose his virginity,
score some molly. As he was turning to ask Mike whether he was sure, he felt a hand on
his back, a hard shove, and suddenly he was tumbling toward the tracks.
He was shouting without knowing it. For a split second time seemed to go white and
soundless, as if there had been an explosion, and he was falling and he was going to die.
He landed on his knees inches from the tracks, felt the weight of the train blasting by him
like a vibration through his whole body, sucked in a lungful of dirt and the sharp stench
of diesel. Six more inches, a slightly harder shove, and he would have been flattened,
hurtled under the wheels and crushed to death. He was so scared, his bladder relaxed—
realizing he was about to piss his pants, he scrambled backward, crab-walked away from
the tracks, away from the train. All of his fear transformed at once into rage, and he was
on his feet.
“What the hell?” Jake pushed Mike, hard. Mike fell backward, still laughing, on the
ground. TJ was laughing too. Even Savannah was laughing, sitting with her arms
wrapped around her bare legs, her head tipped back and her white throat exposed to the
sky. Only Sophia was standing, perfectly still, perfectly serious, watching the train.
Jake threw a punch at him and clipped TJ on the ear. TJ spun a half circle, howling,
“Your face!” he kept saying. “You should have seen your face!”
Jake went after Mike again. He wanted to beat the shit-eating grin off the Dick’s face,
take his perfect teeth out of his stupid mouth bloodied and broken. Mike held up both
hands to fend him off, still laughing so hard he was hiccoughing—“Come on, relax, it
was a joke, man”—when suddenly there was a scream, sharp as a bird cry. Savannah was
on her feet. All the color had gone out of her face.
And in that second, Jake realized that Sophia was no longer standing by the tracks.
She was gone. Then he saw a flash of blond hair underneath the train.
Jake wanted to move but he couldn’t. They were all frozen, stunned: Mike on the
ground, TJ cupping his right ear, Savannah swaying slightly on the hill.
One seconds, two seconds, three seconds. She was lying on her back, pressed to the
ground, as the belly of the tank car passed over her, casting her face in darkness. Jake felt
a desperate panic, an urge to do something—at the same time, his body was heavy with
For a moment she was concealed behind the grinding wheels, then visible again as
another oil tank passed above her. In an instant, she was moving, rolling to the other side
of the tracks. Jake saw a quick vision of a pink thong riding high above the waistband of
her shorts as she stood up. He was desperate to call out to her, to see her face. But now
another series of freight cars, enormous and painted over with faded corporate logos,
They waited together in silence, the whole group of them, until the train had passed. It
was as though Sophia had cast a spell on them. Jake’s whole body felt numb. His mind
There she was: standing serenely on the other side of the tracks, a leaf caught in the
tangle of her hair, hands hooked into her back pockets, as if nothing had happened. The
train disappeared into the distance with a final, mournful toot of its horn, as if it knew
Sophia picked her way carefully back across the tracks, smiling. That was
unbelievable, Jake wanted to say. You’re insane, he thought of telling her. But still, he
She came directly up to him. For one wild and irrational second, Jake was seized by
the urge to take her and to kiss her. But he knew also that he could never. She wasn’t
meant for him; she wasn’t meant for anyone. She was more than that.
“I won,” she said simply, smiling. She smelled like wildflowers and ocean, like