My parents let me do it, even though several times my mother appears in my room. Her voice rings in my ear about the importance of an Asylum Scholarship. I don’t listen. I must look as awful as I feel, because she lets me off the hook. During the day after my parents go to work, I grab the comforter off my bed and hole up in the panic room. I don’t care if there’s no threat anymore. Every sound outside – car doors closing, engines roaring – makes me cringe. Dead bodies and Russell’s sneering face dance behind my closed eyelids. Even semi-catatonic as I am, I can’t miss the news. My parents talk about it in the hallway outside my room. My father’s radio blares it from his study. There’s a breaking story all over the internet about the disappearance of the Showdown crew. Their cars were found trashed at the bottom of a cliff off Highway One. Their footage is missing. It’s being called ‘The Shelter Valley Massacre’. The slaughter took place in Cordoba Bay but apparently the anathemas stashed the abandoned cars and wrecked equipment of the Showdown people in Shelter Valley.
