I had finally found purchase with the last binding. Marisa cradled her wrist against herself.
“You might have sprained it,” I said.
She looked up at me, tears in tracks down her dirty face. “Dahlia…”
Somewhere, deep in the building, I heard a thump.
“No time,” I said.
I had her up and through the door almost before the words had left my lips. We clipped the trash bag outside the door and scattered food containers, the gray recycled kind Alex hated. Tater tots tumbled out, old French fries. Marisa stumbled, weak, against me. My foot found the creaking board.
We froze.
“Footsteps,” she whispered.
I could hear them, too. Someone was coming up the stairs from the alley. The only exit was blocked.
“It might be the other one,” Marisa whispered, her voice rising into panic. “He’s the one who scares me.”
They both scared me. Everything scared me. I’d never imagined I would die in this place I’d played in as a kid—
I hauled Marisa around and back toward the bedroom.
“Not in here!” she cried, but I hushed her, dragging her back over the threshold and toward the closet.
“Like he’s not going to find us—”
“Shh!”
The closet door opened with a small squeak, like air being let out of a balloon. I shoved her inside, shuffled over our footprints in the dust leading up to the closet, and closed the door behind me.
Marisa whimpered as I pushed past her to the back of the closet. It was dark, but I knew what I was looking for. The door to the passage between the two apartments. But on this side, the door was—
Small. Smaller than I remembered. I pushed at the low panel. A shaft of dull light lit up my boots.
“Is that an opening for thetooth fairy?”
I’d been a kid, okay? Six years old, discovering a magical portal into another realm. It should be a tiny door. That wascanon.
I could hear Marisa’s uncertainty. She sucked in a breath to tell me it wouldn’t work. I reached back and grabbed her leg.
The front door to the apartment had just opened.
I knelt down and put my head through the opening. The scuttle space, known only to mice and six-year-old transients, was about ten feet across. There was just enough dim light to see a few misplaced boxes—and my destination. On the opposite wall was the door at the back of Oona’s closet. A nearly full-sized door—if we could reach it.
I wiggled through the fairy door up to my waist, and then pushed against the doorway and pulled my legs through. I sat up on the other side, dusty, among boxes of old holiday decorations and outdated vinyl menu holders.
Marisa was shaking her head at me through the opening.
Come on,I mouthed, and stretched out my hand.
A floorboard creaked.
Marisa dove head and shoulders through the opening, but almost immediately had an arm wedged awkwardly.
I pushed her back through, pantomimed with my hands to give me hers, and pulled her through whimpering over the sprained wrist. She got stuck at the hips. “Suck itin,” I hissed.
As soon as Marisa’s feet were through the opening, I dropped her arms and dove past her, closed the little door, then planted my back in front of it, heels dug in.
