Will undid his shirt and knotted it, then extended it through the hole like a rope. His head was stretched through the vent while his arm dangled the shirt. I leaped and grabbed the end of it with my good arm. But when I tried to pull myself up the wall, I couldn’t hold to the crevices. I fell backward and let go, and Will nearly toppled from the ceiling trying to hold on.
I lay on my back on the floor. I did not cry. I was exhausted; we both were. We had traveled nearly two thousand kilometers, crossed several republics and the Empire of Canada, reached the Great Coast, seen hundreds dead, killed several ourselves, starved, thirsted, fought, and were dirtied and bloodied. But we were not dead yet. And neither was Ulysses or Kai.
“You go,” I said. “Find the way out, and come back and get me.”
It was the only option, and Will knew it. He nodded. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
Then he was gone.
I sat for a long time on the floor. I listened to the fading echoes of Will’s feet overhead and the indistinct rattling of activity occurring somewhere outside the prison walls. If I was very still, I could feel the floor swaying slightly, as if it were moving in a breeze. I thought about all that had happened, each event leading inexorably to the next: if I hadn’t seen Kai; if we hadn’t become friends; if I hadn’t gone to his home; if he hadn’t come to mine; if he hadn’t told us about the river, or showed me the secret spring; if we’d never kissed. But I also knew many things had been set into motion years before I was born: if there hadn’t been the Great Panic; if there hadn’t been war; if there had been enough water…Where did it all begin? Our father remembered rivers, but now the rivers were gone. Our mother remembered boat trips and warm baths, but now she was ill. Even Will could remember school before they closed the doors at recess and forbade students from going outside. What did I remember?
Our mother at the kitchen table, laughing at something our father had said. Both our parents, hand in hand, watching the news on the wireless. Climbing into our parents’ bed with Will in the morning—the warm blankets and the clean smell of newly sanitized sheets. Will and I running for the bus, screaming madly as we raced to be first. All those memories—once vibrant, now faded. Earth itself changed.
Somewhere in my recollections, I nodded off, and then the memories mixed with dreams and became tangled in half-truths and impossibilities. My mother was lifting me in the air as the clouds spiraled and the sun broke through in curtains of yellow light. Again, I cried. Again! We twirled and spun beneath the luminous rays. Her head tilted back, my mouth tilted open, spinning, breathing, whirling, alive.
There was a thump and then a bang, and suddenly the outer door swung open.
“Will!”
He turned the handle on the door. “It’s not even locked,” he muttered with what sounded like disgust. With no knob to open the door from the inside, there was no need to lock it from the outside. But now that it was ajar, I wasted no time joining him.
The hallway was dingy and grimy. No sign of life. The walls were covered in chipped white paint and orange rust. We passed open doors and empty cells. If the prison had held other captives, they were long gone. We moved stealthily toward a pair of double doors at the end of the short hallway. Will put a finger to his lips, although that was unnecessary. My feet glided over the floor without weight or friction. It felt as if my body had escaped gravity, floating just a few centimeters above the surface. Despite the pain in my shoulder and our desperate situation, we had escaped.
Now we were on a steel island, policed by a private army.
We moved like ghosts. Nearby there was water: moisture in the air, on the crease of my neck, in the folds of my elbows and knees. The crinkly, crunchy dryness that was usually my skin felt elastic here, plumped with a thousand invisible molecules. I plucked at the back of my hand, just to make certain, and it sprang back into place without a wrinkle.