“However we have to.”
There it is. We can fit out this window the size of a license plate because there is no alternative. We can’t go back to our cell and wait for our jailers, or the investigator who hired them; this is the only opening. If we have to find a working chain saw in one of these boxes and go roaring through, then that’s what we’ll do.
Luckily, like everything else in the attic, the window is rotting. We’re able to pry the frame free with just our fingers and gain an inch or two on all sides. A desperate prisoner emaciated to near-skeletal condition could make it out now, but that still excludes Malcolm, me, and my hips.
There isn’t any drywall or insulation in the attic, so once we get rid of the wood we’re left with brick and mortar, which has fared much more favorably over the years. I could work my fingers to the bone—and likely would—trying to dislodge only one brick, let alone the dozen we’d need, and we’d still be trapped inside.
Defeat pulls at me, trying to force me to the ground. Malcolm is just standing there—half bent over because of the low ceiling—waiting for me to figure a way out.
Meanwhile, Mom is maybe preparing to turn herself in over a death that’s not as clear-cut as the authorities believe.
I reach a hand outside and let the moonlight envelop it. Rain has started spitting, and more will come. The gutters along the streets will flood, and roofs will leak. And we’ll be here banging our heads against a brick wall. The window might as well have bars.
That last thought hits me like a slap in the face. If Malcolm had said it, I would have hit him. Probably more than once. Giving up is not an option. Regrouping is. Reassessing is. Finding a way when there isn’t one.
I pull my arm back inside. At least the spiderwebs have been washed away. The ones in my hair are more stubborn, but they relent eventually. When they’re off me at last, I cast new eyes around the attic. “Somewhere, there is a way out,” I say. “We haven’t looked hard enough yet.” I don’t say it may be in the form of an ancient shotgun that we use to blow off the door to the room below and hold our captors at gunpoint until they let us go, but I allow for the possibility.
We are getting out of this house.
Malcolm is the one who finds it, or hears it. Birds tweeting. In a corner eave of the roof, where brick meets wood and shingle, a robin is nesting.
“She burrowed in,” he says. “Why can’t we burrow out?”
We both see the waterlogged boxes, a stack right by the scuttle hole that neither of us had looked at in our eagerness to reach the window. The roof has leaked in this spot, not a lot, and probably just recently, but once again our faces are tilted up and our hands are pulling down. The storm has picked up, adding in rolls of thunder and sharp cracks of lightning. We break through sodden plywood and roofing, synchronizing each impact with the thunder as best we can, balancing our desire for urgency with our need to remain unheard.
Time exists only in the strikes and rumbles of the storm, but as more rain beats down on us through our ever-widening hole, the faster we work. We stop the second we both agree my hips and his shoulders will fit. Nothing tears at my flesh as Malcolm lifts me through the hole, and I’m not being pursued, making it infinitely better than the last tiny opening I had to force myself through.
I emerge onto the rooftop into a mass of oak leaves and branches that dump chilled water down my collar, soaking me instantly, but I press them back and move so Malcolm can pull himself up. Once he gets his shoulders through, the rest of him comes out easily enough. We grin at each other as rain pelts us and lightning crashes near enough for the scent of ozone to fill the air.
I skirt out from under the dense canopy, searching for a branch thick enough for us to climb down. The one I find is not within arm’s distance of the roof, no matter how close I stand to the edge. But it is, I think, within jumping distance. If I were on the ground, I’d know I could make it. Without a running start, in the pouring rain and cloudy night, I’m less confident.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I leap.
The bark is thick and scratchy against my palms as I catch hold of the branch, with my feet hanging below. My grip feels sure, so I swing myself so that the tips of my shoes reach a larger branch below. Inhaling rapidly a few times, I rock my body forward at the same time that I release my hands. After a split second of blind terror, my upper body overtakes my lower and I wrap my arms tightly around the gnarled trunk of the tree.
Turning, I find Malcolm watching me with raised eyebrows from the edge of the roof, one arm still bracing his ribs. My body definitely did not enjoy my Tarzan act, so I can only imagine what his will do. He’s blinking furiously, maybe because of the rain streaming into his eyes, maybe because he can see exactly how high up we are and that there’s nothing below to break his fall beyond a minuscule woodpile.
Despite how slippery and precarious my position feels, I give up one handhold and extend an arm, beckoning. I don’t dare risk calling out to him.
I venture a step closer to the house. He has to jump. He’s taller than me, with demonstrably more upper-body strength, but he’s also injured, and we’ve had to rely on his much-abused ribs too much already.
The sight is terrifying. He hits the first branch with an impact that reverberates through the trunk, and grimacing, he drops a hand. Dangling from one arm, he pumps his legs and lets go the second they’re over the branch I’m on. We collide into each other, me grabbing him, him pinning us both to the trunk.
My breath comes out in a whoosh, and I can feel his heart pounding beneath his rib cage. Mine is pounding too.
“Nice catch,” he says before hugging me, without any pretense of holding us to the tree. My arms are already around him, but I shift them and hug him back in the rain.
Malcolm insists on climbing down the tree first. “In case I fall, I won’t take you out with me.”
I doubt that would happen, after seeing his one-armed catch, but I take his point and let him pick out the strongest branches before following. We look back at the house repeatedly during our relatively speedy descent, but I’m only seconds behind him when he hits the ground.
Hand in hand, we run.
Our post-prison-break swim through the suburbs is wet and cold. And I’m legitimately worried by some of the groans Malcolm is making with increasing regularity.
“Okay?” I call out over the heavy rain.
He nods, and we keep moving. He’s not, though. He’s been listing more and more to his left, but when I move around him to offer my shoulder, he waves me off almost angrily.
