It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the win. And Dodge had a secret—he knew something about Panic, knew more about it, probably, than any of the other people on the beach. Actually, he had two secrets. Dodge liked secrets. They fueled him, gave him a sense of power. When he was little, he’d even fantasized that he had his own secret world, a private place of shadows, where he could curl up and hide. Even now—on Dayna’s bad days, when the pain came roaring back and she started to cry, when his mom hosed the place down with Febreze and invited over her newest Piece of Shit date, and late at night Dodge could hear the bed frame hitting the wall, like a punch in the stomach every time—he thought about sinking into that dark space, cool and private. Everyone at school thought Dodge was a pussy. He knew that. He looked like a pussy. He’d always been tall and skinny—angles and corners, his mom said, just like his father. As far as he knew, the angles—and the dark skin—were the only things he had in common with his dad, a Dominican roofer his mom had been with for one hot second back in Miami.
