My Liz.
My Liz.
My Liz.
It echoed in my head long after he left. Long after the girls got up and started pacing. Long after the girls got tired of bumping into one another, so they came up with a pacing schedule. Long after the girls got tired of pressing buttons in the panic room, only to get a whole lotta nada. The only one who didn’t pace was Smoke. Ranger’s dog had planted himself in the dead center of the room and hadn’t moved an inch. Every once in a while, one of the girls would drift past him and drop a hand onto his back, and he’d let them. No fuss. No wriggling around. Just that steady, solid presence, like he understood exactly what his job was and had no intention of clocking out. At some point, Marla sat down cross-legged on the floor beside him and leaned her whole side against his ribs. He dropped his chin onto her knee. I watched her exhale for the first time since we’d been locked in here.
It echoed like thunder in a canyon.
“You okay?”
I flinched at Marla’s voice before she sat down next to me.
My God, it felt like it was ages since her and I had last talked.
And we were under the same fucking roof
“Hey,” I said with a soft smile.
She nudged me softly. “Hey, yourself.”
“You okay?”
She giggled softly. “I just asked you that.”
“How can you giggle at a time like this?” Jasmine asked.
“Everyone has their ways of coping,” Anna said as she laid there on one of the beds and threw a ball up into the air.
“I hope it falls on your face,” Jasmine muttered.
Anna just smiled as she threw the ball at her. Not hard, but enough to make her jump.
“Hey!” Jasmine exclaimed. “What the fuck was?—?”
“Sh, we need to be quiet,” Ariel said with a whisper.
“No one can hear us, I already told you,” Amanda said.
“She’s right, actually,” I said as I pointed to the walls. “You can tell by the way they are formed that they are soundproof. We can’t hear them, and they can’t hear us.”
A hushed quiet fell over all of us, and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand to see them so worked up and worried. Even Anna, with her cool nonchalance, had her eyes darting around a bit more than was usual.
The words came out of my mouth before I could catch them.
“Hey, I know we’re all worried, and I know we’re all worked up,” I said as I stood to my feet. “But not only are we in good hands, but this is Doc’s panic room, for crying out loud. Have you guys explored this place at all? Have you been out back to the pool and hot tub?”
“No,” Amanda said with a cheeky little grin, “because someone’s been hogging it all up with a certain someone else.”
I felt my cheeks grow a bit warm. “My point is, do you think Doc would spare no expense on his property, but then all-of-a-sudden start nickel-and-diming a panic room?”
Marla tilted her head. “She’s got a point.”
“Oh, you’re supposed to agree with her,” Jasmine said as she waved her hand dismissively at Marla.
I said, “She rarely ever agrees with me,” just as Em said, “I rarely ever agree with her.”
The girls laughed at that one while I just looked at my best friend and tossed her a playful wink.
