Time Bomb(43)

“You’re smaller than me,” Z said. “You’ll get through faster. Just make sure nothing happens to Kaitlin before I get to the other side.”

Well, hell.

“Okay, then.”

The fit was tight, and the sweat on Frankie’s back made him stick to the floor as he pushed himself along with his feet. He closed his eyes as dust from above showered down on top of him, and he winced as something scraped his skin. He shoved with his feet again and wriggled his hips to move several more inches. And then again until finally he opened his eyes and saw a hand appear in front of his face.

He looked at its long, brown fingers for a minute before taking it and letting Tad haul him to his feet.

“I’m out,” Frankie called and started to step toward the doorway to help Cas, but Tad’s fingers squeezed his arm tight as Tad quietly said, “Nice of you to finally drop by. I’ve been waiting.”





Things do not change; we change.



—Henry David Thoreau





12:48 p.m.





Cas





— Chapter 36 —


DYING WOULD HAVE BEEN easier than this.

Her arm throbbed. Her head spun from the pain and the smoke and the tears she’d refused to let fall during the climb down or when Frankie had insisted she climb through that hole after he did. Even if her arm hadn’t been injured, the hole would have been hard for her to squeeze through. With her arm injured—she had taken one look at the opening Frankie was pulling himself through and shaken her head. She wasn’t going to make it through that space. Diana would, no problem. But Diana had insisted on climbing down last. She didn’t need help. Not like Cas did. Diana could save herself.

Well, all the carrot and celery sticks her mother had given her for lunch mocked Cas as Frankie finished pulling himself through the gap and yelled that it was her turn. He would help her from the other side. Z was going to help from the rear.

That was the last thing she wanted.

She hugged her bag tight against her and thought about the gun inside.

“I know this isn’t a news flash, but I’m hurt,” Cas had said, backing up against a . . . She had no idea what it was she was leaning against. “It’s going to take a while for me to get through, so Diana and Z should go before me. It’s not fair to make them wait.” And then they wouldn’t have to see her struggle to get through the opening she knew wasn’t large enough.

“I got Kaitlin through. You’ll make it, Cas,” Z promised as, from somewhere above, Diana kicked something that rattled down the piles of broken desks to the ground. “Put your injured arm through first, and I’ll help guide you out.”

“You can make it Cas,” Frankie said from the other side. “Think snake-like thoughts, and you’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Trust him?

She wanted to. And she really didn’t want to stay in here alone. She’d wanted to die alone before when it had been her choice. Now she was choosing to live, and she wasn’t going to let this stupid school beat her. Not this time.

“Come on, Cas,” Frankie said.

The smoke made her cough.

Fine. Be a snake.

Cas unfastened the sling from around her neck and winced as she slid her injured arm through the opening. She twisted and turned and grimaced at the pain while squeezing her chest through the gap in the doorway. Then she tried to pull the rest of herself through. When she got stuck, she knew her mother was wrong. Things weren’t worse in her mind. There was nothing worse than being in massive pain and stuck in the only path to possible escape because you were too big to fit through the hole others had already gone through.

Panic bubbled. Heat flooded her face. Tears swam in her eyes because she was stuck and Z was now looking at her thighs and her butt and the way they were wedged in the opening that he needed to get through in order to live. She was stuck because she wasn’t thin and athletic like her father had tried to convince her she needed to be.

She took a deep breath, wriggled her hips, and moved another inch as Frankie squatted down and yelled for Z to grab the desk and pull it up on the count of three.

Frankie put his hands under her armpits.

“One.”

She bit her lip.

“Two.”

Cas held her breath.

“Three.”

The desk above her moved just a fraction of an inch, sending a bunch of other things flying, and Frankie pulled her free.

She’d made it. She was through.

Frankie helped her to her feet and pointed down the hazy, smoke-filled hall to a classroom.

“We’re going to hole up in there until help arrives,” said a guy wearing a dirty tux shirt next to Frankie. “My friend is in there with the injured girl.”

Frankie nodded. “Go ahead, Cas. We’ll all be there in a minute.”

A backpack was coming through the hole, followed by Diana’s head, as Cas turned and made for Mrs. Radke’s chemistry room.

Some of the tables in the room were overturned. There was a haze of smoke and a lot of dust and books on the floor, but the room was in better condition than most of the school. Kaitlin was lying across two chemistry tables that had been pushed together, and a boy Cas didn’t know was quietly talking to her while checking her pulse.