An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(94)

I looked at the metal drawer I had removed from the desk still lying on the floor by the door. There was the pot too. It was a weird choice. Metal drawer or clay pot . . . which tool will I use to smash the window through which I will then hurl my body without regard for whether I can survive the fall?

But, like, I wouldn’t actually have to do that, my mind told me. Carl would save me. He had saved me before. Two times. Where was he now? Where was Hollywood Carl’s hand? Why had he let me come in here? A feeling of frustration welled up in me so intense that I almost screamed.

“April, are you OK?”

I coughed. “Yeah.”

“Can you break the window?”

“Yeah.”

“OK, just stay on the line, and when the smoke gets too thick, you’ll need to break that window.”

“How do I know when that is?”

He paused for a second, then said, “You’ll know.”

I looked out the window—it was so thick with smoke that I couldn’t make out the far wall. There was, however, an occasional flicker of orange light.

I grabbed the livestream phone. I can’t believe I was still streaming. The audience had now ballooned to well over ten million viewers. My largest stream to date! Turns out broadcasting your own ongoing attempted murder is a great way to get views. Also, probably doesn’t hurt to do it in just your bra and skinny jeans.

I guess, unsurprisingly, I wasn’t concerned with modesty at the moment.

I coughed a few times, but not uncontrollably, and said, mostly to distract myself, “Hey, everybody. How’s the David Bowie lyric thing going?” The little iPod was still playing.

Comments flew by too fast to see. I scrolled up to pause them. The people who weren’t being blandly sympathetic (or accusing me of faking this whole thing) assured me that the conversation had moved over to the Som, which was, of course, built for just this sort of thing. Some people had already tried touching Carl with gold. White gold, yellow gold, twenty-four-karat gold, nothing had happened.

I just sat there reading comments as the smoke built up, my eyes started to water, and my lungs started to burn. Occasionally I would answer a question or make a remark: “I’m too much of an attention whore to fake my own death” or “That’s really nice of you to say, Parker.” That kind of thing. Eventually, I moved behind the desk because I could feel the heat coming off the wall. The smoke out the window was a consistent orange, and I could barely go two breaths without gasping.

I picked up my personal phone. “Hey, policeman?” I hacked a half dozen uncontrolled coughs.

“Hey, April. The fire department is here now, but we still need to give them as much time to work as we can. When you break the window, the smoke will come in fast, so you’ll need to move quickly.” He said all this without pausing.

“OK,” I replied, in a croak.

“OK, I need you to do that now. The smoke is your biggest enemy.”

“OK, I’m going to jump out of a window now,” I said, suddenly aware that those might be my last words.

“OK,” the man replied.

So I stuffed both phones in my jeans pocket. I grabbed the desk drawer and slammed it into the window. Smoke started pouring into the room. My next breath was excruciating. It didn’t feel like it contained anything except tiny needles, and the coughing fit that ensued made me involuntarily gasp in more smoke. I coughed more. I realized I wasn’t getting any real air.

I thought I would have time to clean off the glass, but I didn’t. I took my shirt off my face and placed it over the glass nubs sticking up from the window frame—some protection, at least. I plopped my right ass cheek onto the shirt and nonetheless felt the glass biting through the shirt, my jeans, and my skin.

But I was retching now. I rushed to get my body positioned to lower myself from my hands—to save those precious five feet between me and the ground—but then I just fell. Ungainly, and listing to one side, I fell into open air. I felt the sudden heat of the fire—the little room had been protecting me—but in those milliseconds before I slammed into the ground, I could see the smoke begin to clear.

I hit, left foot first, then left arm, then my head slammed against the concrete. Somehow, this wasn’t enough to knock me unconscious. I continued to cough, my lungs still filled with the evil particles of smoke. But now when I gasped, it didn’t get worse. My brain could tell that I wasn’t suffocating anymore, and so it moved to the more pressing issue of the screaming pain coming from my arm and leg.

The smoke was so clear down here that I could see the fire . . . It was licking every vertical surface in eyeshot. Several sensations screamed simultaneously through the fog of my concussion, but my leg was the loudest. I raised myself on my good right arm, getting myself into a rough sitting position. I looked down. The lower part—above the ankle—was very broken. Blood was already starting to soak through my pants.

“This Is God Damn Bull Shit!” I shouted.

I realized that everyone, seeing only the darkness of my pocket on the livestream, heard me say those words. Even now, I was still thinking about the audience.

I reached into my pants pocket, pulling out both phones. “OK, I’m OK—I mean, not OK. I’m badly injured, but I’m not dead yet. Let’s hold on to the fact that I’m not dead yet.” I could feel the heat beating on me from every direction, but more from the top and the right than from the left. So I started to move myself in that direction. There was a loud and persistent roaring filling the warehouse.