—
“Kelsey!” A shout from my mother’s office as I tested the material in the holder.
Ryan’s face glowed a pale white from the glare of the monitors he was staring at.
He turned to face me, his eyes wide, like the moment we fell. “They’re inside the gates,” he said.
Something tightened around my throat, like a noose, and I gulped twice before I could get any air, my hand at the base of my throat.
“Where?” I finally said, moving to stand beside him. The screens were too grainy—I couldn’t see anything. But then the clouds shifted outside, the moon shone, and a nondescript shadow passed in front of the camera—up against the house now. And then all the shadows felt too close, like spiders across my skin. I could feel them, just on the other side of the wall, searching for cracks. An involuntary noise escaped my throat.
My hand found Ryan’s, and his fingers laced between mine, and I started moving us backward, until we were out of that room, in the open area in the middle of the house. He slowly turned to face me, and I held a finger to my lips, wondering if he could see me. I moved his hand to mine so he’d feel what I was doing.
His were trembling, along with mine.
I listened for any sounds in the stillness. In the dark, behind the walls, the shadows could be anywhere.
And then I heard it, my head whipping around to the front of the house. Someone pressed on the front door, tried to turn the handle, testing for weak spots. I felt the resistance of metal on metal all the way down to my bones as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.
If someone gets in…It was so outside of the realm of possibility to me growing up. Not this house. Not with the three layers of protection and the locks and the bars over the windows. Not with alarms and cell phones and landlines. Not with my mother always here, who would know exactly what to do.
“How much longer until it’s ready?” he whispered.
“Soon,” I said, testing the tops of the two different containers I’d poured. Almost dry.
He held up his hand, showing me the black object inside it. “I found your mom’s phone.”
I ran my hands along it, to make sure I was seeing it right. It was bigger than my cell, and bulkier, and it had a stubby rubber antenna on top and a thick button on the side. I shook my head. “My mom doesn’t have a phone. Where did you find that?”
“In the back of a desk drawer,” he said.
“Did you try it?”
“Yeah, I tried it.” He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s dead.”
I ran my fingers along the side, where I felt a large button. I pressed it, but nothing happened. I ran my hand along the back and found a lever that opened a compartment.
My hands tightened around the device. “This isn’t a phone. It’s a walkie-talkie.” I had the other half of the pair somewhere buried in my room, from childhood. Whenever I went outside alone back then I brought it with me. “Batteries,” I said, pulling out the back square. I rummaged through the top kitchen drawer, feeling for the right-sized batteries. I grabbed an assortment and blindly started fitting them into the compartment, searching for the right one. I felt one click into place, and added another of the same size, flipping them around until the polarity lined up and the static faintly crackled.
I depressed the button on the side, and the device clicked once. I stared at Ryan.
“Do that again,” he said.
I found a dial with my thumb and pushed it up, in case it was the volume.
I pressed the side button again and spoke quietly into the receiver: “Hello?” I released the button, listened to the static crackle back.
“Is anyone there?” I asked again.
That crackle again, like static, but, underneath, something more—like there might be voices, straining to be heard.
I twisted another dial, and the stations switched with each click of the wheel—static, static, static. Higher pitched, lower pitched, the squeal of interference, the whispers underneath. I waited until I hit a station with silence, and tried again. “Please. If anyone’s out there, please answer. I need help.”
Dead air. Silence. Nothing.
I changed stations again. “Please. If anyone’s there, my name is Kelsey Thomas, and I live on Blackbird Court in Sterling Cross, and I need help. Please. Call the police. There are men trying to break in, and we’re trapped.”
Ryan stepped closer. “It’s a long shot,” he said.
“Everything we’re doing is a long shot,” I whispered.
There was a sharp whistle from outside, like something cutting through air, and a dull thud behind the curtains in the living room—the impact vibrating in the stillness. “What was that?” Ryan asked.
“A rock?” I asked, mostly to myself. I pictured a man on the other side, hurling stones at the glass, testing for weaknesses. One of us was going to have to check. One of us was going to have to peel back the curtain….
And of course it would be Ryan. He was already kneeling at the corner—he kept his head beside the wall and pulled the curtains back, then jerked himself away from the exposed window. He let them drop again, pulled his head away, and sat back on his knees, still staring at the spot.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Come here.”
I knelt beside him, and he moved the curtains in a wave again: the dark trees, the bright moon, and tiny fractures in the corner of the window, radiating outward like a spider web, frozen around—
“Is that a bullet?” I asked.
His wide eyes met mine. “That’s what it looks like to me, too.” He recoiled from the window. “You have bulletproof glass? Why the hell do you have bulletproof glass?”
“I don’t know!” I said. “My mom…” She’s paranoid, I wanted to say.
But I didn’t know anymore. The power was cut. The window was shot. My mother was missing. Someone was attempting to break in. There was nothing paranoid about this house any longer. And there was no place safer.
“They can’t get in,” he said, his face incredulous. He started to laugh, unexpectedly, like I had when I was hanging in the car, realizing some kid from my math class intended to rescue me with nothing but a harness and some hope. He grabbed my hand, pulled me closer, so I could feel his heart racing against his rib cage. “They can’t,” he said.
A fortress, Ryan had said, and maybe he was right. Maybe my mom knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe, all those years I felt like I had to hide and protect her, she was waiting, waiting for this, and she knew exactly how to keep me safe. Right now she was doing it.
I looked at the window again, at the bullet lodged in it. They were shooting at the corner. To break it. And they couldn’t.
“Really,” he said, and his arms tightened around me. “Nobody’s getting in.”
—
I heard someone at the back door, but this time my heart didn’t end up in my throat. The door would hold, as my mother knew it would.
I felt close to her suddenly—like her fears weren’t so hidden from me anymore. They were shadows, just outside the walls. And they were trying to get in.
Ryan was silent, and fixed in the middle of the room—away from the walls, away from the windows. But calmer. More confident. Maybe this was how it happened to my mother, too. These walls of concrete, these bulletproof windows, these bars and cameras—until she felt so safe that she became afraid to take a step beyond it.
“Come on,” I said, making my way back to the kitchen. The packed material was dry, the fuse firmly in place. “It’s ready,” I said. “One at a time—they don’t last that long.”
Ryan stilled, thinking. “So, what do we do?” he said. “Throw them out a window?”
“Onto the roof,” I said. “How’s your arm?”
He smiled. “Good,” he said. “I have a good arm.”
I pictured the slope of the roof, the places it slanted and lay flat. “My mother’s bedroom,” I said. “Not until I say.”