Don’t Let Me Go(70)

He stopped dead.

Rayleen stopped with him, but Grace walked a couple more steps, hit the end of his arm and bounced back.

“What?” she asked.

But Billy couldn’t speak.

“You need to go back?”

“Are you OK?” Rayleen asked.

He shook his head, and found the movement weirdly unsettling. As if he were only barely balanced, and any sudden moves could send him flying.

“You can go back,” Rayleen said. “If you need to.”

“Just a little more, Billy,” Grace whined. “Please? Just down to the corner.”

Billy shook his head again. More carefully this time.

“OK,” Grace said. “Well, that’s OK. You did good for your first time.”

They both let go of his hands at exactly the same time, apparently not thinking he might be a helium balloon, and they might be the only ballast pinning him to the earth. Without the warmth of their hands to ground him, standing on the street three doors down from the safety of his home was unimaginable. What had he been thinking?

He began to run.

It should only have taken a few seconds to reach his own front door again, but instead time stretched out, betraying him. He told himself it could only be an illusion, but it was such a vivid illusion, and so extreme. Still, in what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes, he arrived back at the front door of the building, twisted the knob violently, and tried to push his way through. Instead he bounced off again.

He tried again. It was locked.

A flare of panic struck him, a reaction similar to throwing a bucketful of grease on to a fire that had already been burning well enough to overcome him.

He steadied himself, and pulled in a big, manual breath.

“This door doesn’t lock,” he said out loud, surprised by the return of speech. He must have been doing a good job of calming himself. “We’re just not turning the knob correctly.”

He tried the knob again. No, he realized. There’s really only one correct method for turning a knob. And this door was locked.

He thought about trying to catch up with Rayleen and Grace, but that would involve moving in the wrong direction. He looked for them, to see if they were close enough to hear him if he yelled. But they were nowhere. They were gone. They must have turned a corner, but Billy didn’t know which corner, or which way they would have turned.

The only way out of this would require getting the attention of one of his neighbors inside.

Not Jesse, he thought.

He pounded hard on the glass of the door with the backs of both fists at once.

“Felipe! I’m locked out! Can you come open the door?”

He waited. Nothing.

He looked up at the second floor. Was it Felipe’s apartment that faced the street, the one whose windows he could see from the stoop? Or was that Jesse’s? He didn’t know, because he had never been upstairs.

“Mrs. Hinman!” he screamed.

A few desperate seconds later he saw the third floor window pop open, and Mrs. Hinman’s head poke out.

“My goodness,” she said. “What on earth is all that shouting about?”

“I’m locked out,” Billy said, and hearing his own words out loud forced a few hot tears to flow. He couldn’t hold them in, no matter how hard he tried.

“Well, my goodness. There’s no need to make such a fuss about it. Why didn’t you take your key?”

“I did! I did take my key! To my apartment! This front door doesn’t lock!”

“Well, of course it does, dear, or you wouldn’t be locked out.”

“Since when? Since when does this front door lock?”

“Oh, ten years at least.”

Billy sat down hard on the concrete stoop, his back up against the door. He couldn’t see Mrs. Hinman from that position, which seemed like an improvement.

“Or at least eight or nine,” he heard her say.

All the fight had gone out of him. He pressed his back harder against the door, feeling drained and sick. He still needed to get in, but he only had just so much energy left to do anything about it.

“Can you come down and let me in?” he called, not sure if his volume would even reach her.

“I suppose I could, though the stairs are awfully hard on my knees.”

“Can you please hurry?”

“Now why on earth would you ask me to hurry when I just told you the stairs are hard on my knees?”

Billy squeezed his eyes closed, semi-resigned to being stuck in hell. This is what happens when you go out. This or something else uncontrollable. You leave your safe environment and things just happen, and then what do you do? Well, there’s really not much you can do. You’re stuck. It’s what you get.

The door behind Billy opened in suddenly, spilling him on to his back in the hallway. He looked up to see Jesse standing over him.

“You OK, neighbor?”

Damn.

“I got locked out,” he said, sounding pathetically childlike. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. There were tears on his face, he was drowning in an obvious state of paralyzing panic, and his sneakers were too white. It was not the way he wanted to be seen. Damn. “I went outside, and I didn’t know they’d put a lock on this outside door, and I got locked out.”

Jesse reached a hand down to help him up.