If only we could reach the roof…
“Do they honestly think these bastards are just going to walk out with their hands in the air?” Ellie asked in shock.
“They won’t give up until they’ve done what they came here to do,” the most muscular of the three guys, the one who had just told Taylor he wanted to hand us over, shouted.
“Listen, shithead,” Taylor said—I cringed because provoking those guys when we were at a clear disadvantage was probably the worst strategy—“if you threaten me again, I swear to God those will be the last words you ever say.”
This was getting out of hand. The three guys were trying to surround him. We had to get out of there. We needed to leave the library before a fight broke out, or before the shouting got loud enough to alert the killers to our location. Ellie gripped my hand.
Out of nowhere, a girl yelled, “Stop it! Can’t you hear what you’re saying? What proof is there that they’re actually going to let us go if we turn them in? Do you think you can trust a bunch of murderers? The best thing we can do is wait here and let the police do their jobs!”
The room fell silent as everyone thought about what to do.
“It’ll be too late by the time the police come inside,” the tallest of the three boys said.
“You don’t know that! You’re not a cop!” the girl responded. “You don’t know anything. An hour ago, I heard you saying how lucky we were to follow Taylor in here, that we’d found a goodhideout. You were grateful to be alive, and now you want to hand him and his friends over and just let them die?!”
“Shut up!”
“Stop it!” Taylor shouted, and before we knew it, they were at each other’s throats. Taylor didn’t throw the first punch, but he dodged it in time to hit that asshole square on the cheek. Then the tall guy jumped in, and suddenly it was three against one, with the rest of us watching helplessly.
And then things got even worse, because we heard gunshots.
We stopped and held our breath, afraid of what would come next.
We all ran away from the door and hid as best we could. I didn’t know who I was more scared of: Julian and his friends with the guns, or my classmates, who followed us with their eyes, ready to sacrifice us.
How could they?
Taylor grabbed Ellie and me by the wrists and dragged us past row after row of shelves, past the study rooms, past the computers, past the newly installed audiovisual area. When we reached the far wall, we got down on our hands and knees.
“We can’t stay here,” Taylor said, looking at the two of us very sternly.
“We can’t leave, though; what if the killers see us?” Ellie replied in terror.
“Trust me, the other kids won’t hesitate to hand us over. They’re scared; there’s nothing they won’t do if they think it’ll help them make it out alive,” Taylor replied.
I couldn’t believe what people were capable of when they felt overrun by fear. Our friends, our classmates, the people we’d shared notes with and gone to games with, were now ready to throw us to the dogs.
“How, then?” I asked. “Where are we going to go?”
Taylor thought a moment, then said the same thing I’d been thinking: “We need to make it to the roof. Once we’re there, the helicopters can pick us up. There are skylights in several rooms. That might even be where the cops are thinking of coming in.”
“How are we going to get to the roof, though?” I asked.
The three of us looked at each other and shook our heads. Taylor repeated that we had to escape the library first and find a better hiding place.
“Taylor,” I told him, “I can’t leave without my brother. I have to find him… I don’t know if he made it out on his own, if he’s hiding somewhere, or if he’s…”
I burst into sobs; I couldn’t finish the phrase, and Taylor tried to console me: “Thiago knows Cam’s here, and he usually hangs out in the teachers’ lounge at the elementary school in the mornings. He wouldn’t abandon your brother. I promise you that. Cameron’s safe.”
That hadn’t occurred to me, but it was true. Thiago was almost always in the other wing. Had he found my brother? Had he known where Cam would be? Had the killers stayed away from the elementary school?
Ellie pulled me out of these thoughts, asking, “What’s the plan, then?”
Taylor peeked around the corner of a shelf. “There’s no reasoning with them. And there’s no way out except the same door we came in through.”
“But what if the killers are just waiting for us outside?” I asked.
I could see the fear in his eyes, and his mind working at top speed, asking himself how we could escape not just our classmates, but the killers, too. He concluded, “Look, they’ll come for us sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time until they reach thelibrary. When they do, that’s our one chance. I know it sounds terrifying, but we’re going to have to push past the other kids and run like hell.”
