Hwa’s hands lit on the emergency ladder. It was lightweight yellow nylon. Joel would have no trouble hauling it up after her.
“You’re not supposed to leave me,” Joel said. His voice was flat. He wasn’t afraid, but he wasn’t happy, either. Hwa had a feeling this was the first time he’d seen somebody on the family payroll doing something they weren’t supposed to.
Well. It was a school. Might as well make it a teachable moment. “You’re safe up here. But everybody else down there is still in danger. Now you can order me to stay, or you can let me try to help. Which is it?”
Joel didn’t answer at first. Instead he turned and plucked out a bunch of the gels from the lighting cabinet. On their black envelopes was an orange sticker with a campfire on it. WARNING: EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE, it read. Then he held up a black glass tube with an electrical cord dangling from it.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a black light. Probably the last incandescent bulb in this whole town. It absorbs most of the visible light spectrum, so it’s spectacularly inefficient. That makes it good for checking for lint on a red velvet curtain, which is why it’s up here.” He knelt down and plugged in the light. He reached for a bottle of water from the tub of snacks. Then he started unfolding the black envelopes.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“I’m starting a fire,” Joel said. “I don’t want him to hear you coming.”
The fire caught almost immediately. Joel quickly fed it more gels. A weird metallic smell arose from them. Smoke started to rise. Joel backed away. The fire leapt up about three feet. Then the alarm sounded. It was a shrill keening sound, as though the whole building were shrieking in agony at being burned. Then the sprinklers came on. Together they stared up at the water. It tasted of ocean.
“Great,” Hwa said. “Just great.”
“I’ll get the ladder.”
Hwa stomped out the fire and opened the exit. Joel secured the ladder to a set of hooks hanging off the threshold. Hwa watched the ladder fall into the darkness around the nearest catwalk. If she fell, she would die. Period.
Joel’s head stuck out above her. “If you kill him, I’m sure my dad’s attorneys will defend you in court. They’re very good. They got him out of a whole criminal negligence thing with an oil spill, before I was born. So you probably won’t do any time.”
Hwa winced. “That’s a real comfort, Joel.”
He held up both thumbs. “Good luck.”
“You, too. Lock that door, and turn off all the lights when I’m gone.”
Going down a nylon ladder with one arm and a heavy toolbelt wasn’t easy, but it was a lot easier than the ducts. Her arm was oozing, but she felt okay. Sitting still and focusing on it would have just made the pain worse. Her feet found empty air, and she looked down. The catwalk was another two feet down. Holding the ladder with her wounded arm she quickly changed her left hand’s grip on the ladder to something more like a one-armed chin-up. Then she slowly let herself dangle down off the ladder, and dropped onto the catwalk. It was slick and she slipped, gripping the railing with her whole body and getting an eyeful of auditorium. One of the screwdrivers dived out of the toolbelt and glittered as it fell into the deep dark far below.
Righting herself, Hwa looked up at Joel. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he gave her one, too. Then he started pulling up the ladder.
Twisting on the flashlight and sticking it between her wounded arm and her body, Hwa navigated across the catwalk and down a set of stairs to the backstage area. Right near the outdoor exit (locked) was a fire extinguisher. Hwa lifted it off its housing and carried it to the interior exit that led to the drama department (also locked). She lifted the fire extinguisher and bashed at the lever on the door.
Behind the door, she heard screaming.
“It’s just me!” Hwa bashed at the lever. After two more tries, it fell out with a clunk. She opened the door, and a stage sword jabbed her in the belly. “Ow! Fuck!”
“A rat! A rat!” Mrs. Cressey said. She was holding on to two crying girls. She smiled. Hwa thought she had maybe gone a little crazy. “Dead for a ducat! Dead!”
Hwa pushed the stage sword away and gave the huge boy holding it a hard stare. He backed off, and she pushed into the classroom. All the other students stared at her. They were freshmen. They looked so small and formless. Like little tadpoles. She had never felt old before. Not until this moment. She was still young, and she knew that, intellectually. But staring at these kids with their jewelled eyelashes and chipped nail polish and their knees all hugged to their chests, she felt like some ancient thing that had crawled up out of a very deep and ugly pit.