I looked up to see rebar sticking out of the framed wall. Crouching low, I jumped, and grasped the metal in my hands. It protested, but held my weight as I pulled up and then swung my leg over the top of the wall. I landed in a shower, careful to absorb the impact.
“Avery? It’s Grayson.”
“Here!” The sound came from the left, so I walked that way and saw a stream of light shining from under a pile of concrete.
She’s alive. Just dig. She’s there.
I startled as my phone rang, then pulled it out of my pocket. Jagger.
“What?” I snapped.
“Are you okay? Jesus, this place is destroyed. Not the house. We’re okay. Paisley, Josh, we’re good. But Grayson…we can’t reach Sam.”
My throat closed as I started pulling the concrete cinder blocks from the top of the pile, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder. “I know. I’m digging her out now.”
“Fuck. Is she…”
“I don’t know. It’s bad. Jagger, I don’t care if you have to get your fucking father on the phone, you need to get an ambulance here. We’re at the gym. Please. Do this for me. Do this and I’ll never ask you another thing. I’ll fail the next test and give you the OML spot. I don’t care, just help me.” My fingers were already scraped and raw as I lifted brick after brick off the pile. Off the girls.
“I’ll do my best to get an ambulance, but this town is blown to shit.” He swallowed. “I love Sam like a sister, Grayson. We’ll get someone there. I’m with Josh, and we’re already at the intersection of Rucker Boulevard and Eighty-four. We’ll be there in a couple minutes. Let me make some calls.”
I hung up without waiting for him to finish. He needed to get a fucking ambulance here, not baby me. “Avery?”
“Yeah?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“I need you to tell me if you start feeling more pressure, okay? If I do anything that squeezes you?” I flipped another brick.
“Okay.”
“What’s on top of you? Is it hard? Heavy? I need an idea of what’s pinning you.”
She was quiet.
“Avery?” I pushed the bricks faster.
“Sam.”
“What?” I paused.
“It’s Sam. She’s on top of me. She covered me when the lockers fell.”
My eyes closed as pain tore through my chest, at war with the overwhelming pride I felt in her. “Of course she did,” I said. “She loves you, Avery.”
“I know.” She squeaked the last part.
I dug and dug until I was joined by other hands. Josh and Jagger.
“Fuck. Grayson, look at your hands,” Jagger said, pulling at my arms.
My fingers were raw, dripping blood. “I can’t feel it. I don’t care.”
“Let us take over,” he urged while Josh started pulling the support beams off and away from the pile.
“If it was Paisley?”
Fear lanced through his eyes, and he clamped down on my shoulder. “We’re going to get her out.”
We dug, soon joined by other people, some in uniforms, some not. Finally we reached the blue metal lockers. “She’s directly under these,” I said so they didn’t fuck up and hurt her.
Six of them gripped the sides of the wall unit and then lifted slowly while I crouched next to the floor. As it rose, I saw her fingers dangling. “Stop! She’s wedged in one of the lockers!” I couldn’t pull Avery out, not without knowing if she had neck trauma. “Step three feet toward the showers.”
The group did so, and I crawled under, then rolled until I was directly beneath where Sam hung in a macabre suspension, her eyes closed. Don’t think about it. Don’t you dare. Her arm was twisted in an unnatural angle that sent saliva into my mouth. Livable. The other had a gash that was steadily dripping blood, but not pulsing. Cosmetic. It was the blood that ran in a steady stream from her hairline, down her cheek, and dripped off her chin that worried me.