Trouble is a Friend of Mine

‘Digby …’ I said.

‘You’re going to fire a gun around explosive chemicals?’ Digby threw the phone he was holding at the lone light bulb. The basement went black. I scrambled behind a plastic drum. Digby’s voice whispered from elsewhere in the basement, ‘Don’t miss.’

For a long time, nobody moved. Zillah swore, stubbed her toe, swore some more, and then stumbled up the stairway. ‘I’ll be back for you two later. You’re not going anywhere.’ She slammed the door and turned the lock.

‘Digby? Now what?’ I said.

‘I’m thinking,’ he said.

‘We have to get my mom out.’

‘Shh … thinking,’ he said. ‘If they cook here, they’ve got to have an air vent …’

After crawling around, he found the phone he’d thrown and panned its light around the room.

‘There.’ The beam of light pointed at the mouth of a filtration unit at the top of one wall. ‘How are we getting Mom up that?’ I said.

‘Sorry, Princeton. We’ll have to come back for her.’ Then, before I could argue, he said, ‘If we stay, we all die. We’ll come back for her, I promise.’

We half dragged and half rolled a barrel across the basement and under the air duct.

‘This probably leads outside.’ Digby climbed up the barrel. ‘Whole neighborhood’s been inhaling the fumes of them cooking meth, but everyone assumed it was those girls cleaning.’

‘What if that vent gets narrower and we get stuck?’ I said.

‘Beats getting shot,’ he said.

‘Seriously, stop trying to make me feel better.’

‘Just come up and don’t make any noise.’

And so I followed him up the rabbit hole.

It was funny where my mind went while I crawled in the dark, going up a smooth inclined tube not much wider than my body, running from not one but two psychos who’d take a break from killing each other to kill me.

To distract myself, I registered details like how cold the metal felt under my knees. How the taps on my shoes clacked against the duct’s sides. But I also wondered if when Henry said I looked nice, he meant he thought I looked nice. I mean, he said it twice. I was there in that duct but also somewhere else. Being split like that was a huge relief. Kind of like my mind was reassuring me, Yeah, we’re going to live. And we’re going to still want to date Henry.

Meanwhile, Digby was doing his best to prove that wrong.

‘Turn left,’ I said when we came to a fork in the duct. Inexplicably, Digby turned right. ‘The cold air’s coming from the left.’

‘Listen,’ he said.

A little girl was sobbing.

‘Digby, we got to get out of here,’ I said. ‘No side trips.’

I tried to grab his pant leg, but he took off. I followed him until we got to a spinning duct booster fan. It was a miniature of an action movie cliché. I heard a thwack when Digby tried to stop the spinning blades.

‘Ow! That’s sharp.’ He sucked on his injured fingers. ‘Hey, pass your shoe.’

‘What? Use your shoe.’

‘I need your metal tap do-hickeys. These fan blades would rip right through my shoes.’

And because I didn’t want to waste more time arguing, I gave him my shoe. Moments later, I heard the spinning fan blades chew it up.

‘Like that,’ he said.

‘Great,’ I said.

‘Pass me your other shoe.’

‘I should probably warn you now – I only brought two of these.’

‘Yeah, ha-ha … ever heard of a learning curve?’

‘Sure, same time I heard of trying to outrun killers while barefoot in an air vent.’

‘Just pass me your shoe. It’s not like you’ll run any faster with one shoe than none.’

It was a good point.

This time, he caught a blade with the metal tap and pushed until, with a metallic clunk and the smell of burning rubber, it stopped spinning. Digby pushed the fan off its mounts and we crawled toward the sounds of girls talking. I came across my mangled shoes on the way.

Digby pushed off the vent cover and we shimmied into the room. There were eight girls ranging in age from about five to eight years old. One very young one cried while other girls comforted her.

‘Who are you?’ one little girl said.

‘Zillah sent me to check on you,’ Digby said.

‘I don’t believe you. No one who really knows Amber calls her Zillah,’ the little girl said. She seemed to be the eldest and the self-designated spokesperson.

‘Well, that’s one of the things I’m here to check. If you were remembering to use her code name … code-name Zillah. She also wanted me to check your arms,’ Digby said.

‘Our arms?’ she said.

‘She wants me to put stickers on you for tonight’s trip,’ Digby said.

‘What for?’ she said.

Digby produced Post-its from his pocket. ‘To help us keep track of you.’

She pulled up her right sleeve and let Digby stick a Post-it on her arm.

‘There,’ Digby said.

She frowned at Digby. ‘Post-its? Gimme a break. Would you have believed that when you were eight?’

‘What’s your name?’ Digby said.