Enne inched over to the cord. No net to catch her here.
“You could just wrap your legs around the cord and hang upside down,” Enne said as Lola crawled on her stomach closer to her, her chin pressed against the cool metal of the rafter. She looked absurd, all trembling and pale. Then Enne realized that maybe it was she who looked absurd, confident enough to stand and give direction.
“There are holes in the wire,” Lola said, indicating several bare patches with no covering. At the cord’s other end, it was plugged into a machine on the ceiling. “That might be on. Touch it, and you’re fried.”
“Rubber soles,” Enne reminded her. She flicked the cord in a safe spot. It wasn’t perfectly taut, but the give wasn’t severe.
“Fall and you die,” Lola countered.
“Then use your clothes.”
The black-haired girl slid off her jacket. She carefully walked around Enne, then slipped her coat over the cord and wrapped both sleeves around her wrists and clenched hands.
“You’re actually doing that?” hissed the boy beside her. He had swollen cheeks, like he’d recently had a tooth pulled.
She shot him a devious smirk. “Yeah. Tell them all to watch.”
She fell. The jacket turned over the cord, holding her, and she wrapped her legs around the wire. The other children watched in awe as she crawled upside down to the other side.
They were moving, and that was a start. “You go next,” the girl called across to the boy.
Crying unabashedly, he slipped his knitted scarf over the cord and bound it to his wrists. He slowly eased his way off the beam and wrapped his ankles around the top of the wire. It took him ages to move even an inch.
“Kelvin, you gotta move faster,” the girl urged impatiently from the other side. “There are others waiting.” However, only a few of the others looked willing to even attempt the cross.
“I... I’m...” Kelvin stammered. He was a third of the way across now and shaking uncontrollably.
“He looks like he’s gonna piss himself,” another girl behind Enne, around nine years old, said loudly enough for Kelvin to hear. Enne was torn between shock at her language and fear that Kelvin actually might.
He was halfway across now. The nine-year-old took off her jacket to go next.
Kelvin’s scarf snapped.
He didn’t react fast enough. His ankles unlatched, and he fell, screaming. The girl on the other side reached out desperately, as if she could catch him from so far away.
The crowd shrieked when Kelvin hit an old conveyor belt with a bone-crunching thud. His blood splattered across the metal, and his neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Enne hurriedly looked away, fighting her urge to be sick.
One of the boys behind Enne vomited into his hands. The girl on the other side hugged the beam and stared down at Kelvin’s body, moaning to herself.
The crowds grew louder at the gruesome display, and the chaos below them became more and more violent. As the protesters brawled with the whiteboots, several other officials were making their way toward the stairs. Toward them.
“Time to move,” the nine-year-old squeaked. “My jacket isn’t gonna break, so I’m going.”
She made it across. By that time, the first girl had crawled off the beam to the window. Lola and Enne shared a look, an unspoken agreement to wait until the other children had crossed, despite the whiteboots charging up the stairs. Lola closed her eyes and pressed her face to the beam. Every few seconds, she lifted one hand to make sure that her top hat was still pinned to her hair.
There was crying and pauses and cursing, but no more accidents. Everyone reached the other side.
“I should go last,” Enne said to Lola. “I’ll be the quickest.”
“If I die, I will haunt you. And your children. And your children’s children—”
“Just go.” They didn’t have time to waste. The whiteboots had made it to the ceiling’s rafters. Although they were admittedly far away, they wouldn’t be for long. Lola wore the mark of an assassin—the whiteboots very well might shoot first and ask questions later.
“Muck,” Lola murmured. She put her coat around the cord and slid upside down. During that split second of falling, she bit on her lip so hard it bled. Lola muttered to herself and moved inches at a time—quickly, in a worm-like fashion that would’ve made Enne laugh in any other situation—and was three-quarters of the way there when her hat slid off, exposing the white of her hair.
Gunshot.
It missed. Lola shrieked and grabbed hold of the beam on the other side. Two more gunshots. Enne crouched, her stomach in her throat. No. Please no, she thought. I didn’t even want to come here. I shouldn’t have come at all.
Lola pulled herself onto the beam and slid forward on her stomach toward the window. She motioned for Enne to hurry, but Enne was frozen. A bullet clattered off the beam below her feet.
Enne recited Lourdes’s rules to herself.
Don’t let them see your fear.
She took her first step on the cord. She was steady. Breathe.
Never allow yourself to be lost.
She took another. A gunshot whizzed past her outstretched arm.
She ran. Quickly, lightly.
One stride. Two strides. Three strides. Then she slipped.
She caught the rope by her underarms, and for a few seconds, no one shot. They thought that she was about to fall.
Trust no one unless you must.
She raised her arms so that the cord slid into her hands. It was a miracle she hadn’t touched bare wire. One kick forward turned into a swing. Two swings and she got her legs on the beam.
Lola jumped through the window while Enne lay down and kissed the metal of the rafter. Enne stood up and followed hurriedly, her acrobatic grace failing her in her rush to escape. Her foot caught the windowpane, and she toppled over the other side onto a roof. Enne landed on her back, and it knocked the wind out of her.
Lola, lying beside her, punched her shoulder. Good job, Enne thought she meant. You’re shatz, she probably also meant. She couldn’t argue.
Enne sat up and leaned against the wall. She was breathing hard and fighting down the urge to either laugh or cry.
The Scarhands gawked, gathered around a different window, where they’d watched Lola and Enne brave the cord. The girl who’d known Kelvin covered her face with the coat she’d used to cross, her shoulders heaving.
“We should still be moving,” Enne said. “The whiteboots saw us leave.” She looked out into the distance, at the unappealing view of the Factory District.
Someone tapped her arm. It was one of the kids. “Who are you?”
“Séance,” Lola answered for her. Enne shot the blood gazer a furious look. What sort of game was she playing?
“Are you one of the Scarhands?” She looked at Enne’s unmarked palms with confusion.
Lola grinned. “Would Scavenger be brave enough to do that?”
“No way,” the girl said. She looked at Enne with the kind of reverence she had once seen Mansi direct at Levi.
Enne had nearly forgotten why they’d come to Scrap Market in the first place. Ignoring them, she pulled the newspaper from her pocket and flipped through the pages until she found Lourdes’s article.
Lola nodded urgently. “We should leave.” But Enne wasn’t paying attention.
The ink was too blotched to read anything but the title: “Not Forgotten.” The paper looked as if someone had submerged it in water.
Enne stared at the incomprehensible words and balled the newspaper in her fist. “That. Horrid. Man.”
This had been her last chance to hear Lourdes’s voice, and it had been a trick. Tears blurred her vision. Usually she’d feel embarrassed for crying in front of others, but now she no longer cared.
Lola put her arm around Enne’s shoulder. It was an intimate gesture for someone who carried such conflicted feelings about Enne’s well-being.
“We need to leave,” Lola said. “You’re the lord.” Her words sounded forced—an act. She leaned down closer to Enne’s ear. “They’re waiting for you to move. And we all need to get out of here.”